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I have been scouting out newspaper columns, with one ear cocked to the grapevine that is often more accurate than what one finds in print. And then there are the phone calls to informed sources in Islamabad, as well as to ladies who lunch and gentlemen who drink coffee at the Marriot in Islamabad and the Pearl Continental in Lahore. All in an effort to find out why my friend Naveed Malik is without a flag on his car so far.Naveed Malik, who has often described politics as the romance of his life, remains out in the cold, despite this being high summer. I am disappointed but not much surprised, because the Lady is not there any more and decisions being taken in her name may not necessarily accord with those she might have favoured. Naveed Malik’s name is indelibly associated with the legendary welcome she received on her return from exile during Zia’s time. The largest and most magnificent greeting sign on the Mall as her mammoth procession crept forward was that put up by Naveed Malik. She never forgot that. No one was closer to that master strategist and doyen of politicians, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, than Naveed Malik. In fact, if the Nawabzada who was a majority of one in politics could be said to have had a deputy, it was Naveed Malik. In fact, he kept the Nawabzada and the Lady’s second government out of harm’s way - not easy when you are dealing with the Seer of Nicholson Road who could actually count the feathers of a flying sparrow, especially if the sparrow had been bobbed up by those guys in dark glasses and cars without number plates.

Naveed Malik and I of course go back a long way, all the way to the Lahore of the late 1960s, a city which now exists in some vanished dimension of time only. Today, there is not a moment of peace and quiet to be had on the city’s roads because they remain infested with noisy, polluting traffic all night. Back then, if you cycled or scootered late in the evening from, say, Temple Road to what Madam Nur Jehan has immortalised as “nehar wala pul,” you were likely to be more or less by yourself on the road, except for stray dogs who barked at you out of habit and not because they wished to do you harm. That Lahore and several of its evergreen characters are no longer around - men like Sardar Muhammad Sadiq, whom Muslehuddin used to call the “uncrowned king of Lahore.” Also gone is Muslehuddin himself; and Khwaja Asadullah Mauk, the Kashmiri dreamer who was quite sure of the success of what he had codenamed Operation K-2, the two Ks standing for Kashmir and Khalistan. And then there was Naveed Malik, barely in his twenties and one of the most nattily dressed of the city’s young blades.

Naveed Malik, whom Sardar Sadiq had named “Leader”, left Lahore around the time of the Lady’s first term, renting a house in Islamabad’s Sector 7 for which he must have paid more rent the thirteen or so years he was there than the entire value of the house. By the way, how can Pakistan ever be coup-free when its capital is divided into sectors, a classification unknown outside the military? Naveed Malik was single then – and remained so until a few years ago – but there was a battery of attendants to look after him and the friends who gathered in his living room every evening without fail. There were certain rules of the house, one being the 7.28 p.m. deadline, that being the hour when all present would raise their respective glasses to their lips. Orange juice drinkers were as welcome as the other kind. Dinner was served every evening at a fixed hour on a properly laid table, with silver and starched white napkins. That was then. Last year, Naveed Malik informed me as we sat sipping morning coffee that he is now on the wagon. No, it is not the lady wife but the gentleman doctor who is responsible for this unfortunate turn of events. However, such hospitality as his friends and visitors are accustomed to continues to be available, one understands.

Naveed Malik was among the first of the young hotheads to join Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s party when it was formed. Sardar Sadiq was asked at the time about his view of “Islamic socialism.” “Simple,” he answered, “neither Islam nor socialism.” Once, on a dare, Naveed Malik travelled all the way to Larkana and held a press conference across the street from Al-Murtaza because he had another opinion about something ZAB had said. ZAB may not have been amused, but he valued firebrands such as Naveed Malik. There are some who are happy being just a number. Naveed Malik is not one of them, which is why he formed his Pakistan Solidarity Front back in the late eighties. He has played host to more opposition gatherings than anyone else. I once wrote that the Front may not have a membership of millions but its leader is known to everyone. Naveed Malik does things with panache and style. Summer or winter, he is to be found in a suit. I don’t think he wears one to bed, but it is hard to picture him in pajamas.

Naveed Malik was Nawaz Sharif’s political assistant when the latter was chief minister of Punjab. Few political associations are forever, since they are not made in heaven but on earth, and neither was this one. Naveed Malik moved to Islamabad and came close enough to Bibi to author for her the slogan “Go Baba Go,” which proved to be Ishaq Khan’s requiem in the National Assembly on that memorable day when the old Khan just stood at the podium waiting to make a speech that nobody wanted to listen to. Bibi made Naveed Malik deputy chairman of her policy coordination committee in April 1994. He refused a salary, and he had no interest in loot or plunder, being one of those rare birds who do politics with their own money. In December 1994, Bibi made Naveed Malik chairman of the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission. In a letter to the cabinet secretary, of which I recall seeing a copy, he wrote that he wasn’t sure he had done anything to deserve a salary from the “poor taxpayer’s money,” so he would work voluntarily. To be of service to the people, he added, was his “childhood romance.” He also returned Rs. 100,000 that he had been given to “furnish the residence,” saying, “I already live in a furnished house and I do not want to waste government money on new furniture.”

It is not the Salman Farooqis, the Zia Ispahanis (bridge anyone?) or other “purdah-nashins” that Asif Bhai needs, but a man like Naveed Malik who has forgotten more about politics than the bunch that one reads about. What Naveed Malik does not know about politics either does not exist or is not worth knowing. So Asif Bhai, grab him pronto.

I simply had no idea men blacking their hair were such a hot ticket. In the one week that the column has been in print, I have received more complaints than land on the WAPDA complaint desk in Sheikhupura, asking why my list of Kala Kola Klub members is so sparse. Why have some of the most eminent Knights of the Black Order been left out? And why have others been included? What follows is an attempt to make amends.

The big miss — and there is popular consensus on this one — is Chaudhry Nisar Ali. The first time I saw him from up close was fifteen years ago to the day. He had a thick head of hair on him and I had no reason to suspect that not a single one of those hair belonged to him in the sense that they had not grown out of his noggin. Also, now that I think of it, I may not even have taken a close look at his hair. There he was with his full black mop and that was good enough for me.

Also I have learnt to be careful when staring at hair, having once inadvertently made Riaz Qadir, Manzur Qadir’s even more brilliant brother, explode with anger, much like the Hulk does when he gets upset. Riaz Qadir, who wore no wig, but his head, which was full of the purest intellect, including the scintillating English verse that he wrote, was not so generously endowed when it came to hair. As a matter of fact, he had few, but what he had was carefully combed one by one over his scalp. But woe unto the mortal whom he caught staring at his head.

This happened at Vogies, across from the old Ciro’s cinema in Rawalpindi Sadar. Vogies was the hangout of writers, lecturers, time-wasters and those who dropped in to check the place out. Riaz Qadir spoke impeccable English and he spoke it with an impeccable, ultra British accent. “What are you staring at,” he roared. He had caught me looking at his bald pate though I was doing so absentmindedly. I was just looking. “Nothing,” I stammered. “Then look at nothing,” Riaz Qadir roared like a lion. I slunk away. Next day, if I recall, I apologised to him but it did not turn out to be a good idea because it reminded him of the day before and how I had been caught ogling his head. Once again, I had to slink away in sackcloth and ashes.

But to return to Chaudhry Nisar Ali, when I saw him next, in person that is, more than a dozen years later, his head of hair looked exactly what I remembered it looking like back in 1993. The question was: Had he been able to discover the elixir of youth? Did his village of Chakri have the fountain of eternal youth playing in some secret back garden? Had Chaudhry Nisar Ali become the first man in the world to reverse the process of aging?

Sadly, one was constrained to conclude that he was wearing the same head of hair. One also had to admit that originally his shimmering locks had belonged to someone else, may be an Indonesian or (God forbid!) an Indian, perhaps a member of the Bajrang Dal. How can one tell! I like Chaudhry Nisar Ali because when he speaks, his words flow like a stream. As such, I forgive him his wig, which is no guarantee Admiral Ardeshir Cowasjee will do likewise. The only hair-blacker he has not riled against is President Pervez Musharraf for whom, inexplicably, the great Rantier of Karachi has a soft corner in his heart.

Then there is Raja Zafarul Haq. He may have a golden heart and a silver tongue but the black in his hair and his Mughal court moustache is not his. What is it with Pakistani men — and the Saudis — that regardless of their years, they insist on coating their hair jet black! There are other colours that nature and chemical labs have gifted us with.

Why not, for instance, a salt and pepper mix of white and black, but second not third degree black? Or why not just leave it as is? If hair turns white, it is how the nature’s rhythmic cycle runs, just like the seasons but there is a difference. Spring turns into summer, then autumn then winter, and back to spring. That alas is denied to human beings. Once the hair turns grey, it remains grey, and, in fact, keeps getting greyer till it acquires a yellowish tinge, which may not look very nice, but at least it looks natural.

Nothing can be done about sagging skin. There are things like Botox that rejuvenate the skin but only temporarily. Wrinkles like greying hair refuse to be beaten back. Raja Zafarul Haq, whom Gen Ziaul Haq used to call “the opening batsman of my team” is well respected, which makes him a rare bird since politicians and used car salesmen enjoy the same kind of reputation. I sometimes feel sorry for politicians because half the world thinks they are crooks. Whatever one might think, one has to admire their tenacity because despite the rotten eggs and tomatoes thrown at them, they remain wedded to this oldest profession of all.

My friend in Canada, Dr Arshad Majeed, who married the delectable Musarrat Nazir, who is still looking for that sparkler that flew off her pert nose as she ran over the tree-lined path to get home before being discovered by her suspicious family, used to say whenever he would see a man with painted hair, “Satrangla kabootar” or “There goes the seven-coloured pigeon.”

While this description does not apply to Chaudhry Nisar Ali, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, President Pervez Musharraf, Kaptan Imran Khan and others because they like their hair black as sin, there are others who add a touch of red to the mix and do remind onlookers of Arshad’s seven-coloured pigeon.

Maybe someone should put together a directory of Pakistani males in public life who colour their hair with a foreword by Admiral Ardeshir Cowasjee. In conclusion, I ought to share a mail someone sent me asking if Mushahid Hussain was already a member of the Kala Kola Klub. All I can say is that at the rate at which he is losing his hair, he would soon follow the lead of the man he used to call “Made in Pakistan prime minister”. Or he may join the Chaudhry Nisar Ali, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed Wig Rig Klub, which should be no more difficult than changing parties.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

How many people in Pakistan know that there is a lone American by the name of Greg Mortenson who has been building schools for children, girls in particular, in the remotest corners of our Northern Areas for the last fifteen years? At last count, he had built forty-five of them. Ten have been built in Afghanistan. While some of his countrymen make war, he makes peace – and peace that will last. Greg Mortenson, like the most venerable Abdul Sattar Edhi, is a hero. He has his Pakistani helpers and the government has been cooperative and understanding; but his greatest assets and his most crucial friends, without whom this admirable humanitarian enterprise would not have got off the ground, have been the people of the areas where he has been working. They are his mainstay.Mortensen I have met once, at an event in Washington marking the publication of his book Three Cups of Tea: one man’s mission to promote peace … one school at a time . How did it all begin? In Mortenson’s own words, “I had a sister named Christa, who struggled with severe epilepsy from early childhood, but she never once complained and inspired all of us. She had always wanted to go to Dyersville, Iowa, to see the “Field of Dreams,” where the baseball movie was filmed. Her bags were packed and she was ready to go when my mother went down to wake her up, but she had died in her sleep. To honour Christa’s memory, I decided to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world second highest mountain, and one of the most difficult to climb. After 78 days on the mountain, I did not quite reach the summit, and was exhausted, emaciated and emotionally spent. On the five-day way back to civilisation, I stumbled into a local village named Korphe, where the Balti villagers helped nurse me back to health. When I went to see the local school, I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt doing their school lessons. Most were writing with sticks in the dirt, and they shared only seven slate boards. Yet, despite abject poverty, I felt their fierce desire to have an education, and saw their spirits soar. At that moment, I realised that I had not come to Pakistan to climb a mountain, but to help the children build a school to honour Christa.”

Haji Ali, the headman of Korphe village, said to Mortensen, “Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die.” Haji Ali also taught him to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught him that he had more to learn from the people he was working with than he could ever hope to teach them. When Mortensen returned to the States after his failed K2 attempt, having already decided to build a school at Korphe, he estimated that he would need $12,000. He didn’t have the money, so he went to the local library and looked up the names and addresses of hundreds of wealthy people, including celebrities. He did not have a computer and would not have known how to use one even if he had had it, so he hand-typed 580 letters asking for help. Only one person out of the 580, the TV news anchor Tom Brokaw, answered with a $100 cheque. Motenson applied to 16 institutions asking for grants and was turned down by each one of them. But he did not give up. He sold all he had, including his climbing gear and his car. He also cashed in his retirement policy. “For the first two years, I was essentially homeless and gave up everything I had to get this off the ground,” he says. By the spring of 1994, he had raised only $3,000 and was in a state of near despair. His mother, a school principal, asked him to come and spend a day with her 600 students. A kid named Jeffrey and two teachers started a “Pennies for Pakistan” drive after he had left. Within six weeks, they had collected 62,340 pennies, which eventually inspired adults to contribute. But it was a children’s crusade that started it.

A Pakistani also lent a helping hand when Mortenson most needed it. His name was Kishwar Syed and he ran a copying outlet in Berkeley, California. Mortenson walked into his place trying to rent a typewriter because the IBM Selectric he had he could not quite get used to. “This is 1993,” Kishwar Syed told him, “why don’t you rent a computer?” “I don’t know how to use one,” Mortenson replied. When Syed learnt what his visitor was trying to do, he lent him a computer and taught him how to use it. Mortenson said later, “It was pretty interesting. Someone from Pakistan helping me become computer literate so I could help Pakistani kids get literate.” Mortensen said once that when he sees the first girl walking into a new school in her village, it is like man first walking on the moon. He says it only takes one dollar a month to educate a child in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Among those he admires is our own Dr Mahbub ul Haq.

His life in Pakistan and Afghanistan was not without its hazardous moments. In July 1996, Mortenson was kidnapped in Waziristan. For eight days he was kept locked up in a room with only a tiny window and a dim oil lamp. He told his kidnappers that back home his wife Tara was seven months pregnant and expecting a son. That must have helped. On the eighth day, he was driven to Peshawar and released. He was also given a wad of 100 rupee bills and an apology. In Baltistan, one Shi’a cleric issued a fatwa against him, but when he wrote to Qom for approval, the fatwa was rescinded. The charge against Mortenson was that he was educating girls, which was against Islam. He also survived another fatwa based on his being an “infidel” and opening schools, especially for girls. He later learnt that the second fatwa was an attempt to get some money out of him. It had nothing to do with Islam.

Mortenson sums it all up in one memorable line. “Here in America, we have two minute football drills, 30-minute power lunches, and ‘shock and awe’, but that does not work in Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

I hope the new government in Islamabad will confer a high state honour on Greg Mortenson, who is a true hero.

 

What is common between President Pervez Musharraf, Imran Khan, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry? Even a schoolboy knows the answer: They are all members of the Kala Kola Klub.

Imran Khan is a member with enhanced credentials. He has had a hair transplant too and he has had it dyed. I am a life-long member of the Imran Khan fan club and I would be in his corner even if he dyed his hair shocking pink. And even if he had no hair.

Since we are on transplants, at the risk of having Raiwind county guards set bloodhounds after me, were I reckless enough to enter its green acres, mention needs to be made of the most famous of our transplanted: the brothers Nawaz and Shahbaz. I hope they will not hold it against me or consider me a member of the Musharraf Glee Klub were I to say that I would prefer them as they were.

These are two good looking guys and they didn’t need those extra hair, each single one of which has been yanked right out of their scalps (Ouch!) and replanted one by one. How long does it take, one must wonder? Is it painful? Or is the recipient put under general anesthesia? I have the most formal of relationships with the former prime minister, but the younger sibling I could have asked, but dare not do so since he now rules the gallant province of Punjab and his police adviser is said to be a bearded gent who has long had the reputation of not eating breakfast unless a few enemies of society have been dispatched to you know where.

Ah! summary justice: executed before you can say Tully (Mark, not the former Farzand-e-Rawalpindi).

Admiral Ardeshir Cowasjee has always had a thing about dyed hair, which makes it hard to answer why he is such an ardent admirer of Gen. Musharraf. I suppose it is something else about him that he likes so much that he is prepared to overlook his jet black head of hair, with only the sideburns left stylishly gray. I have seen the Admiral getting worked up when it comes to dyed hair. I am relieved that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto never dyed his hair otherwise the Admiral would have hated him even more.

The other day, there was a report in Los Angles Times about Pakistani men — the kind that only reporters from American newspapers manage to find — increasingly given to manicures, pedicures, removal of unsightly hair and God knows what else. Some men there are who qualify to be officially certified as ‘All Wool’ but they are not to be found in male beauty clinics.

There used to be a family in Sialkot, each of whose male members had hair growing out of every single inch of his body. When one of them would shave, he would soap himself right down to the point where the neck ends and the chest begins. Before we had those super shaving blades that we have today, these brothers used to spend more on blades in one week than what the rest of the city used to spend in a year. However, nature had failed to show a matching amount of generosity when it came to their topsides.

Transplants, I am told, are not for the faint of heart or the parsimonious. Each hair on a transplanted head cost $$$ — or if done in Old Blighty Pounds Pounds Pounds — which means that Imran Khan’s head is worth more than a new Toyota Corolla. As for Mian Sahib’s and Shbbazshaib’s heads, roughly the price of a Rolls Royce.

And that brings me to the head of Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, on which not a single hair has gone gray in the last 25 years. But then how could it because what he has on his head are not human or animal hair, unless it is a Rawlakot bear that has been skinned and dispatched to Lal Haveli for necessary plucking. I fear what he has instead of hair is black shiny rayon thread. I have always suggested to the Squire of Lal Haveli to get himself a new wig but since he wants the world to believe that he has defeated the laws of nature and not lost or grayed a single hair on his head, he has ignored my advice. It has been said that slathering the hair on your head with black shoe polish can be forgiven, but a wig is a deal-breaker.

A hair colouring advice column on a US website was asked by a correspondent who signed himself ‘Colour Me Manly, Philadelphia’, “I’m in a creative business where you are judged by your appearance and need to keep up with the young guys. I know it’s cool for men to colour their hair, but I’m still timid to visit a salon and get my hair coloured. I wouldn’t even know what kind of salon or barber to go to for starters… it would seem weird to go to the same hair colourist as my girlfriend. I’m willing to try something different, but I guess, I need the encouragement to take the plunge.”

This is the answer he was given, “Dear Colour Me Manly, Beauty rituals are no longer reserved for women. Men know that looking polished means going that extra round in the grooming department, particularly when lasting impressions are made after one brief mental snapshot. Waxing back hair? No problem. Trimming chest hair? Takes two minutes. Hey! We even know about all those he-men who wear pantyhose. Take the plunge.”

Not everyone is so upbeat. Consider this posting, “Thing is, you can TELL the dye is dye. Dye on a young person don’t look too bad but after you are getting old it makes you look older! Maybe it’s that the hair is too (bright?) in comparison to the pale face? Makes ‘em look like death warmed over! My hair is snow white. I dyed it for at least 40 years and when I quit I feel so much better and actually (according to the spouse) don’t really look as old! Ain’t nothing worse than an old man swearing his coal-black hair is from his Indian ancestors and suddenly you notice a hank of gray hair hanging out one nostril.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

There haven’t been many crusading editors in the history of Pakistani journalism. The ones who stand apart from the conformists and occupy a place of honour all their own are Hamid Nizami, Mazhar Ali Khanm, I H Burney and Inam Aziz.

It was to the memory of the last name in this list that tribute was paid in London on April 22 this year, to mark the 15th anniversary of his death and the publication of the English translation of his autobiography Stop Press: a life in journalism. Inam, who began his long career with Ehsan in the early years of Pakistan, when he was not even 20, moved on to Jang where he rose to become news editor. He accepted a BBC offer to move to London in the 1960s but soon left for his first love, print journalism, to become the founding editor of Jang, London. However, he is best remembered as editor of Millat, the only newspaper that waged a brave and lonely fight against the despotic regime of Zia ul-Haq. In the end, Inam lost the fight, both in terms of his health and the savings that he had put into the paper that the regime finally managed to kill.

At the London meeting, hosted by Maleeha Lodhi at the Pakistani High Commission, a number of Inam’s friends and colleagues spoke. Among them was Hamraz Ahsan, who worked for Millat having earlier escaped from Pakistan where, after a stint in jail, he had found himself on the regime’s hit list. The London of the Zia years offered refuge to many such fugitives, because it was – and still is – a city with a big heart. But I will let Hamraz tell the story. The only liberty I have taken is that of putting it into English. “I had heard of Inam Aziz as the ‘warrior of Urdu journalism’ in Pakistan but I was not to meet him until March 1979 in London. When Bhutto was toppled in July 1977, I was a feature writer at Imroz, and the vice president of the Punjab Union of Journalists. Since Yahya’s time, I had been in and out of jail, including a six month stint in Mianwali. Those were awful times: press censorship was in effect; hundreds of journalists were jailed when they staged protests; in Lahore, some were flogged. In Karachi, journalists were taken to Malir and tortured in a military camp. I was on the run much of the time and when I was about to be arrested as a terrorist, I escaped to London.

“There were two Urdu dailies in London – one being Millat – and four weeklies. The People’s Party was holding marches and protest meetings in several major cities. After Bhutto was sentenced to death, London saw one of the largest public protests in its history. With a group of political exiles, I was living in Hendon, but without work. One evening, the phone rang. It was Inam Aziz. ‘Do you want to work for Millat?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Then come to the office tomorrow morning at 10. More when we meet.’ And he rang off. Next morning I got off at East London tube station in front of which in a set of rented rooms on two floors stood the Millat office. I pushed the door open, and found one side of the hallway lined with newsprint rolls, leaving barely space for one person to pass. To the left was a large room containing the printing machines, which could print in tabloid size only. What Inam Aziz had done, using his inventiveness, was to join the front and back pages to make a broadsheet, while the inside pages remained tabloid. This must have been the world’s only newspaper with an odd, not even, number of pages. Next to the press was the editor’s room; on the first floor sat the paper’s four or five calligraphers. Copy-pasting was also performed in this room. A small room next to it was for me, the news editor. It also served as the tea making facility, complete with a wash basin.

“I was expected and was welcomed, but when I asked where Inam Aziz was I was told that he would come in the evening. ‘What sort of a joke is this!’ I said to myself. ‘Why evening?’ I finally asked, while getting ready to leave. ‘He is in court dealing with a libel case. He has also left a message: you have to produce tomorrow’s newspaper.’ While I had done everything from reporting to feature writing, I had never worked on the desk. I only had a vague idea of how a newspaper was actually produced. I asked Mushtaq, one of the calligraphers, how it was done. After he had told me what he could, I placed the day’s issue in front of me, rolled up my sleeves, clipped items of interest from the sheaf of papers from Pakistan that were on the desk, tore off the copy that the Reuters ticker in the editor’s room had spat out, picked up a few stories from there and began to translate them into Urdu. I did not eat lunch because my hunger had flown out the window. Mushtaq kept serving me tea though. I translated more than 20 stories, placed headlines on them, chose a lead that needed some padding; and when I was sending the last copy to press, Inam Aziz arrived. He checked everything and I could see from his face that the fatigue I had noticed as he had come in was gone. ‘Hamraz sahib, aap nain tau kamal kar diya . This is exactly the paper I would have made,’ he said. It was only later that I realised that ‘ kamal kar diya ’ was Inam’s favourite phrase.

“I stayed with Millat for a year and got to know and observe Inam Aziz at work. Despite limited resources and countless problems, he always managed to bring out the paper and he truly deserves to be called the warrior of Urdu journalism. Our editorial team was three-strong: Inam, myself and the teleprinter. Inam’s translation speed was phenomenal and he would rarely cross out anything he had written, something clear-headed people are known for. If Abbas Athar was the ‘king of headlines’ in Lahore, Inam was the king in London. When the day’s work was done by about 7 pm, the evening’s work would begin as Inam’s friends would drop in. On evenings when none of them turned up, he would insist that I stay. We would divest our hearts of the burdens that we carried, curse Zia’s rule and wonder what the future held. Inam, I was delighted to discover, came from my beloved native city of Gujrat and had studied at Zamindar College. Our mission was clear and it admitted of no compromise: we were a crusading newspaper fighting the Zia regime. That was what kept us going. No matter how late Inam went home – and he lived in a faraway London suburb, not too far from Heathrow airport – he would arrive the next day full of beans and ready to take more potshots at the military regime in Pakistan.

“For reasons beyond our control, we had to move from Angel to King’s Cross to become part of Habibur Rehman’s Azad office; but things were no longer the same there and the staff was unhappy because of the behaviour of some new managers over whom Inam had little control. The calligraphers went on strike and I refused to cross the picket line. Then I was offered a job in Nottingham and I left. Two months later, my phone rang. It was Inam, who told me that he was going to have heart surgery and I should return to London to take over Millat. I said I would need to give my employers a month’s notice. His response was, ‘No, you have to come in a day,’ which was exactly what I did. I have never worked harder or felt more satisfied with my work than I did during those months. Athar Ali would drop in some days and help out with translation. His speed and command over both languages was amazing. Inam’s operation was successful but he stopped coming every day. There was a change of management and a new editor was brought in who told me on the first day that Gen Zia was to be referred to as President Zia and not as Dictator Zia. I replied, ‘In my copy he will remain Dictator Zia.’– I left Millat the same evening. That I worked under the command of the warrior called Inam Aziz is something I will always remain proud of.”

First there were roving ambassadors, who no doubt are roaming the world as I write, except Husain Haqqani who has landed safely in Washington and is up, about and around. The other two rovers — if my count is right — are keeping their movements classified, although I suspect that while one may be getting his plush Manhattan apartment redone, the other is on the French Riviera playing bridge with Omar Sharif.

Part two of this serial is built around the adventures in distant lands of special envoys. Why do we need special envoys when we have the Internet, when we have ambassadors and when we have telephones that work? Washington always tends to get hit first when it comes to such ventures and it has been no different this time either. Last week, we got hit by two tornados. The first one was tornado tornado, which came out of nowhere in the afternoon, knocked out power lines, brought down trees and doused Washington with a cloudburst that made our monsoons look like a light drizzle.

The other tornado materialised in the form of MB Abbasi, who, so went the buzz, had been dispatched here to lick Pakistan’s food crisis. Now who can quarrel with that, I ask you! The inspiration behind this great feed-the-hungry mission was said to be a gentleman who is a cardiac plumber by profession, since he flushes clogged arteries that all good Pakistani cholesterati carry as evidence of their life-long love of deep-fried sheep trotters. I might add that Dr Dreamhearts was always the proud host of and physician to the Man of Few Words in Dark Glasses from the fair city of Gujrat.

Times change and smart people change with them. Losers stay where they were. The other gentleman behind the visit hails from the city of Al Capone and has been heard saying that if so required, he can access the White House, Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. These two miracle workers are said to have induced the Abbasi visit, promising to get him to meet Sen Tom Harkin from the wheat-growing state of Iowa. Sen Harkin is such a good friend of Pakistan as to have required no intermediaries, but then…

I missed Mr Abbasi’s appearance on the Hill — though it was seen on TV in Pakistan — but I did hear him at a Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) meeting arranged by a helpful former congressman, who is a good friend of another gentleman from Chicago, who is a friend of … (get the drift?).

The special envoy was introduced as Pakistan’s designated ambassador to Iran, which sent a shiver down the spines of those present. A flyer distributed to us said that the Pakistan prime minister’s special envoy MB Abbasi was here to “apprise key senators, congressmen of the political situation in Pakistan, particularly the food-grain shortage emerged from ill planning and mismanagement of outgoing military-backed government.” Mr Abbasi, according to the flyer, had done “post-graduation programme(s)” at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard and the Stanford Business School.

This is what Special Envoy Abbasi said to the twenty or so of us sitting around an oval table. He said the United States was leading the world, having brought it enlightenment, mobile phones, computers, technology and much science. The Muslim world has a lot of questions regarding the war on terror. India, he then said, “is our model — same culture, same people, same social system. India became a democracy, but Pakistan failed. Muslims and Hindus struggled for independence for 200 years but our leaders like Iqbal and Chaudhri Muhammad Ali died. Jinnah came out but he died too. Then came martial law and the crop of leaders was cut down by EBDO. The seed was sown but no roots came from bottom. In 1958 politicians struggled, some were hanged. Army ruled. Politicians have been polluted. But they made ‘big sacrification’ and they have to be compensated.”

The situation, Abbasi declared, is “not hopeful”. It is “polluted”. There are serious questions. “It is not (an) immediately hopeful position.” “Rule of Law will take time, say 10 years.”

At this point, someone interrupted him to ask if Asif Zardari would like to clear his name given the allegations made. Abbasi replied, “Everyone watching. He knows it, if not then God help us. PPP has the same creed. Zardari spoke to Harkin about wheat. There is deception and mistrust and a whispering campaign. Other partymen are damaged by his reputation.”

Asked if there was going to be an independent truth commission in Pakistan and if Mr Zardari would declare his assets, Abbasi answered, “Good idea. I will pressure them to set up commission.” Answering a question about the NRO, he pointed out that Mr Zardari had spent eight years in jail and was not found guilty.

Next came food, which is why we were told the Special Envoy was in Washington. He said most wheat from Pakistan is smuggled to Afghanistan, where the living standard has risen. He said if he were made finance minister, he would privatise everything. “That is the only answer, no government control.”

Asked about the restoration of judges, he replied, “I agree and will take the same message to Pakistan.” To another question about Mr Zardari, Abbasi said, “I am frank to him. I’ll tell him again. He always argues.” He next said, “I see his business friends in the corridor whispering. Some returned from exile. They want to be compensated.”

About Pakistan’s choices, Abbasi called a civilian government as the choice of the “lesser evil” since “both military and civil are corrupt”. Warming up to his point, he added, “I don’t think civilians can control corruption. The writ of the government is weakened. Murderers get away. Army is ruling. Corruption is irreversible. I see no hope of change. People have private guards outside their houses and mobile generators. The political worker thrives on the threshold of government. I am not hopeful. Police is controlled by MQM. I see very depressing situation. I wonder why I moved back to Pakistan (think of Iran, brother, despair not). Army decided after Ayub that Pakistan should never get united. Pakistan is going to have a semi-mafia regime. Military, mafia and politicians. PPP has soft line on army; Noon has hard line on army.”

And on that unhappy note the meeting ended. But it was not without its bright side. We were served fresh sandwiches and coffee.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

A young woman in Houston, who should go by the initials FV, says that given what she has been reading on a South Africa-based fatwa site, it might be straight to hell for her because she is or does all of the following: disobedient wife; meets men; does not press husband’s legs. When I asked her for more of her black marks, she said she had already transgressed the limits by exchanging emails with a na-mehram .

I think she is perfectly justified in believing that she is blazez-bound, because that is where Mufti Ibrahim Desai – no kin to Morarji one hopes, which would make his fate in the hereafter problematic – would send women who do not press their husbands’ legs. He runs something called the Fatwa Department on his site, which going by the number of fatwas he hands out, gets more hits than the sinful will get from the fiends pushing them towards the eternal bonfire. Mufti Desai has pontificated that when a wife presses the legs of her husband without being asked, she gets the sawaab of giving seven ounces of gold in charity. And if she presses his legs after he asks her to do so, she receives the sawaab of giving seven ounces of silver in sadqa. If she refuses to press her husband’s legs, asked or unasked, she is in big trouble, both here and in the hereafter. FV wants to know why nothing has been said about the husband offering to press his wife’s legs, considering that she has been toiling all day at home, polishing floors, dusting furniture, washing clothes and cooking three different dishes including her husband’s favourite Qorma Jalfrezi .

I am less amazed at Desai and more at those who send him the questions troubling their souls. One woman wants to know if it is permitted to peel a banana from the bottom up. Answer: No. We are also told that a single pious, practicing woman is equal to 70 saints and a single bad woman the equal of 1,000 bad men. The single prayer of a woman well-versed in matters of religion is better than 80 of those offered by the average bibi. The debate over breastfeeding or bottle-feeding a baby is settled with the fatwa that for each drop of milk that a baby imbibes from its mother, she gets one good deed registered in the book of heaven. We are also told that when a man comes home full of worries and the wife extends a warm welcome to him and consoles him, she receives the reward of “half-jihad” - whatever half-jihad is. A woman who is deprived of sleep owing to her child crying at night receives the sawaab of freeing 20 slaves. I did not know there were any slaves left to be freed in the lands of the faithful.

We should also know that a woman who sends her husband to do his duty to God and stays at home by herself, maintaining her honour, will enter paradise 500 years before her husband, while 70,000 angels and houris will serve her. She will be given a bath in paradise and, sitting on mountains of pearls, she will await the arrival of her husband. Dare I say that while the pious lady would not want for room service, it is going to get pretty lonely waiting for her husband for 500 years. Women are also told that if they pray and fast and perform khidmat for their husbands, all eight doors of paradise will be thrown open to them. They will be free to enter through any door they choose. And if a woman is disobedient to her husband, her prayers will fail to reach heaven. Another piece of good news for women is that if they die 40 days after giving birth, they will have the same status as that accorded to martyrs. In other words, nobody should grieve for them if they take leave of the world. There is a grave warning for erring women, which I reproduce unedited: “Woman who wears thin garment (transparent, see-through garment) or who arouses passion in men, or meet men they are not allowed to mix or move about openly while heavily made up or who live without pardah , will never enter jannat . In fact they will not even smell the fragrance of jannat .”

Mufti Desai had advice for a woman from Desai who wrote to him about veiling. “It is good to know that you have started wearing the Abayah and Hijaab. This should be worn at all times whenever leaving the house. If you cannot wear the Abayah for some reason and resort to wearing a scarf, utmost care should be taken that your head is well covered and you are wearing clothing which does not reveal your figure.” Another questioner is told, “Women, having been created from a rib have a degree of imbalance in their nature.” They also suffer from their common trait of being ungrateful to their husbands, and of being hasty in cursing those who hurt their feelings. While not all women are ungrateful, “the quality of ungratefulness will manifest itself” unless they make an effort to be grateful. Asked why women should not visit graves, he replied that the reason for prohibiting females from visiting graves is due to “our corrupted environment” in which women who do not adhere to the laws of Hijaab and thus attract strange men. “Therefore, it is not permissible for young females to visit the graveyard,” the South African pontiff declaimed.

One woman wanted to know if it was all right for a Palestinian girl who worked with her to go to a Christmas party wearing a knee-length skirt. Answer: “The actions of this sister are definitely questionable from an Islamic point of view. Firstly, attending parties of the Kuffaar (infidels) can never be regarded as permissible … By us attending such functions we will be showing our support rather than opposition to them.”

Need I add that not a word I have reproduced above has the remotest basis in the Qur’an or in the teachings of Islam. The question is where does this all come from; and who are these Muftis and Maulanas and Mashaikh who are sending everyone to hell (barring themselves of course)? Well, they have a big surprise coming on Judgment Day.

As I walked past the other day in front of the abandoned Pakistan embassy on 2315 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington’s diplomatic row, I thought of all the ambassadors who had come and gone and how nothing of theirs now remains except fading memories of what they did or did not do for the country that had sent them here.

Husain Haqqani, who arrived here this week is the 20th of our representatives in Washington. He must also be the youngest. Anjum Niaz, who likes to stick her tongue out at anything that moves on two legs, is unhappy that a post for which civil servants recruited in the foreign service — whose self-important PFS acronym was abolished by ZA Bhutto — should have gone to an outsider, might sometime take a look at the list of the twenty men and women who have represented Pakistan in Washington.

She will discover, if she counts, that only six of them have been from the Foreign Service. While increasingly in Pakistan we rely on opinion rather than fact, there is no harm in looking up the latter from time to time, especially when writing for publication.

The first of our ambassadors, appointed by the Quaid-e Azam himself, was M A H Ispahani (incidentally the grandfather of Farah Naz, Haqqani’s winsome wife, now in the National Assembly). The Quaid was not only an astute judge of men but he always had an eye out for good property. Both the abandoned chancery and the residence on S Street, that lies five minutes away by foot, were purchased with the approval of the Quaid, initially, with Isphahani’s money, which was later reimbursed to him, but only for the chancery. The residence he generously gifted to Pakistan.

Today, the Pakistan government cannot make up its mind as to what to do with the magnificent chancery building. On one of his visits to Washington, Gen Musharraf declared that it would become the seat of a new Pakistan Centre. That promise has remained as fulfilled as that of “enlightened moderation”. Let’s see if the new steward of our fortunes in this country can do better.

The embassy moved to International Drive in the upper reaches of Connecticut Avenue some years ago to a new building with a Shish Mahal-like entrance. The rest of the structure is invisible unless one views it from the side where stands, well, the embassy of Israel.

One can be reasonably sure that every spoken word from Shish Mahal gets beamed to Tel Aviv, which may be a good thing because now Mossad is probably as confused about us as we are about ourselves. In the first floor reception chamber of the old chancery, there used to hang pictures of the ambassadors who had served here. Those pictures can now be seen in the new chancery, past the reception area. Here is a guided tour.

M A H Ispahani came to Washington on October 8, 1947, less than two months after independence, and stayed until February 8, 1952. He was followed by Muhammad Ali Bogra, who arrived on February 27, 1952, and was recalled on April 16, 1953, to be made prime minister.

They say nobody was more surprised at that happy turn of events than the affable Bogra himself. He was succeeded by the enterprising and popular Syed Amjad Ali who landed in the capital on 26 September 26, 1953, and stayed until September 17, 1955, which was an eventful period as it saw the signing of the mutual defence treaty between Pakistan and the United States.

He made way for the redoubtable Aziz Ahmed who arrived on Pakistan Day 1959, five months after the first martial law and stayed until July 1963. It is said that such a stickler for hard work and devotion to duty he was that the moment he would walk out of his S Street residence five minutes before the embassy’s opening hour, everybody would be at his desk. He was both respected and feared. He was followed by his brother G Ahmed, a senior member of the police service, who stayed from 19 July 19, 1963, to September 15, 1966.

None of these, I should add, was Foreign Service, though that was made up for by the arrival of Agha Hilaly, whose tenure lasted from October 21, 1966, to October 20, 1971. He it was who handled the delicate and highly secret arrangements of the Kissinger visit to China. A seasoned diplomat like Hilaly should have been allowed to stay on because of the civil war raging in East Pakistan, but Yahya Khan being Yahya Khan replaced him with General (retd) N A M Raza on October 22, 1971, whom Bhutto recalled on April 22, 1972. General Raza is now remembered for holding a birthday party for his daughter on December 16, 1971, the very day Dhaka fell.

His successor was the aristocratic Sultan Muhammad Khan, one of the finest diplomats in Pakistan’s service, who was a personal friend of Zhou en-Lai. He was in Washington from May 15, 1972 to December 8, 1973. He, like Maleeha Lodhi many years later, had two stints here, the second one from January 13, 1979, to December 31, 1980. He was followed by that superb soldier, diplomat and linguist, Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, who stayed from December 19, 1973 to January 3, 1979. His successor was another gentleman soldier, Lt Gen (retd) Ejaz Azim — July 7, 1981 to September 15, 1986.

Gen Azim was replaced by what by any measure is the best and most effective ambassador Pakistan has ever had: Jamshed K A Marker, who represented us here from September 17, 1986, to June 30, 1989.

His successor was another man from the services, Air Marshal (retd) Zulfiqar Ali Khan (July 12, 1989, to September 15, 1990). Najmuddin A Sheikh, a career man, came next but his innings were short, from October 14, 1990, to November 22, 1991.

His successor was the irrepressible Syeda Abida Hussain (November 26, 1991, to April 24, 1993), who was followed by another career diplomat — and one of the best — Riaz Hussain Khokhar (March 12, 1997, to September 7, 1999).

Maleeha Lodhi arrived next, serving from January 21, 1994, to June 30, 1997. Her second assignment lasted from December 17, 1999, to August 4, 2002. The sixth diplomat to serve here was Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, “the pink panther of Pishin”, who was here, though mostly there, between August 19, 2002, and August 6, 2004.

Gen (retd) Jehangir Karamat, who earned much respect for himself in the short time he was here (November 17, 2004 to June 3, 2006) made way for Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani, who arrived on June 5, 2006, and departed on May 9, 2008. Two ambassadors who were sent but recalled without their having presented their credentials were Akram Zaki and Tariq Fatemi, both career men.

If this story has a moral, it is this: ambassadors come, ambassadors go, Pakistan stays.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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