Come back Naveed Malik

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.