Salmaan Taseer: The Last of the Mohicans

When I heard the shocking news of Salmaan Taseer’s assassination at the hands of his own security guard, my instant reaction was that we had lost the last of the Mohicans. The bullets that pierced through Mr Taseer's body killed the souls of millions of moderate people who had not allowed militancy and violence to dictate their lives, even in what had been considered difficult times. But at that moment, I felt that the difficult times had just begun.

The Last of the Mohicans — James Fenimore Cooper's most popular work which remains one of the most widely read novels across the world — has impacted the way many view both the American Indians and the frontier period of American history. The romanticised images of the strong, fearless, and ever resourceful frontiersman (i.e. Natty Bumppo), as well as the stoic, wise, and noble ‘red man’ (i.e. Chingachgook) were derived from Cooper's characterisations more than from anywhere else. And the phrase, ‘the last of the Mohicans’, has often been used to refer to the sole survivor of a noble race.

The place where Salmaan Taseer was murdered is a favourite haunt of Islamabad-based journalists. Hardly a week back, I had taken my journalist friend Shahzad Raza (who once worked at Daily Times, published by Salmaan Taseer), for a lunch at the restaurant outside which he was silenced. Shahzad is currently studying in the US and was in Islamabad on a brief holiday. I don’t know why we both started discussing the bold stance taken by Salmaan Taseer in favour of Aasia Bibi. I did not have the remotest idea that one week later, I would be reading a depressing email from Shahzad — he is now back in the US — who was feeling ashamed in front of his American classmates. His long phone call from Washington, in search of much-needed answers from me, did not help either since I, too, was at a loss to say anything.

I liked the blunt and friendly Taseer from the moment I got to know him — though he would often complain about some of my stories being against him. But, like a true politician and a forthright man, he would not make you feel as if you were meeting him for the first time. I met him first at his house in Islamabad where I went to meet Najam Sethi. We were considering the possibility of me joining the new reporting team at Daily Times. Mr Taseer came down from upstairs with a smiling face. I liked his informal style of greeting us — and this was only the beginning.

One day, he came to Islamabad and took me to a restaurant where, over lunch, we had a long discussion on his political views. I never found him short of replies to my pointed and loaded questions. But, I really got a chance to know him when one afternoon, on a Lahore bound flight, I found Governor Taseer sitting next to me. We soon learnt that we were both admirers of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. He smiled and quoted from the book when I asked him about his love-hate relationship with the Punjab government: “Revenge is a dish, best eaten cold”. This one line fully conveyed his political philosophy.

A talkative Taseer told me several tales during the one-hour journey to Lahore. “Why don’t you come for dinner at the Governor House tonight, so I can tell you some interesting past tales”, he asked me when he found me fully lost in his mesmerising life story. I could not find time to meet him that night, but we agreed to meet at another time. This brief journey greatly helped me understand the brave soul of this man, who was not afraid of anyone, not even those who were out to silence him.

My last meeting with Salmaan Taseer took place in the last week of December. This was a Sunday. He called to invite me to a dinner he was hosting in honour of a western ambassador. Usually, I don’t answer calls from unknown numbers, so his efforts to contact me remained futile. Finally, I got a text message from Farrukh Shah, his spokesman, saying Governor Taseer wanted to talk. I called him back. As I was about to apologise for not taking his calls, he laughed and said: “You seem more worried about your own security than me so you don’t bother to answer phones of people not in your contact list”.

The last text message contact I made with him was only two days before his assassination. I was working on a story and it struck me that Governor Taseer could be the best source to reconfirm things ‘off the record’. He did not disappoint me either, immediately replying by texting “will try”.

Unlike our ruthless and indifferent ruling elite, Salmaan Taseer stood for certain principles, whether we liked them or not. He was an honourable man who died while trying to save the life of a poor Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, a mother of six children including a ten-year-old handicapped girl. It will go down in history that a governor of a province, (ironically himself a father of six children, like Aasia Bibi), laid down his own life not for some personal or family gains, but for the sake of a mother on death row.

After witnessing deafening and shameful silence all around after this most foul assassination, I can say Salmaan Taseer was the Last of the Mohicans in today’s Pakistan — a man we will miss in the days to come, as our motherland seems to be slipping fast into the quagmire of militancy and extremism, without any matching response from parliament, government or society, which have been made hostage at a gunpoint by a minority, mainly thanks to our impotent leadership.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11^th, 2011.