Salmaan Taseer’s assassination: Crime scene cleans out restaurants

Kohsar market’s business owners file petition to have road reopened.

ISLAMABAD: Prawn Masala and French Onion Soup, comes the morose reply from Amjad Akhtar, the manager of Table Talk restaurant, whose handful of customers now badger him about Salmaan Taseer’s last meal that fateful day. For Akhtar the question is a painful one to answer not just because it makes him relive the horror of the Punjab governor being assassinated after eating at his establishment but also because business has dropped 80 per cent since then.

“People are emotional and scared at the same time,” he told The Express Tribune. “The environment is not as friendly as it used to be.” Waiters who barely had the time for a cigarette break during lunch hour, now watch the door anxiously for someone to appear. Anyone.

It used to be a 20-minute wait for a table at the up-market restaurant frequented by fair-faced foreigners, thick-jowled politicians and ladies who lunched. But nine days after the crime anyone can walk in and be served instantly. Not that they are.

“People are just not comfortable coming here any more,” said Usman, who works with a computer technology company and is a daily visitor to Kohsar Market. “It will take time before the market is back in full swing.”

For one, the police squad car is constantly parked by the scene of the crime, cordoned off by a marquee, the kind used by caterers. Usman felt that the market’s “casual” feel would only start to return after the barricades and surveillance are removed. He is not wrong. Kohsar’s business owners have filed a petition for the road to be opened up again.

Table Talk is not the only establishment to have taken a hit. Gloria Jeans, Kohsar market’s coffee and sheesha hotspot, has also lost out on the lunchtime crowd.

“Sales [for that time of day] have gone down 40 per cent and there is a lot of confusion among the public as to where Mr Taseer was present before the assassination,” said Mohammad Liaqat, the coffee shop’s manager. People do not want to go anywhere near the crime scene.

Bank employee Hamza told The Express Tribune that the barricades shrouded the spot in even more secrecy and “terror” even though it was a necessity for the investigators to put up.

For those who have decided to go back to the market, it is to belabor an ideological point at the risk of seeming callous. “Even though the number of people has gone down a lot, we come here just as we used to,” said a group of law students drinking coffee. “If we back down, terrorism will prevail. We are not scared and this is our salute to Mr Taseer’s bravery.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th,  2011.