Has the time come to switch off?

The disparaging remarks that Donald Trump addressed to Bush and Blair were richly deserved

I have a friend of very long standing who belongs to a highly educated Sindhi professional class. He used to practise medicine and I often wondered how he ever made a living because many of his clients belonged to the poor class, whom he never charged a fee. What’s more, he would give them medicines that salesmen from pharmaceutical companies would hand over after extolling the benefits of the new drugs. And when their stock was depleted he would give the wretched patient money to buy whatever had been prescribed.

In the early 1970s we used to run into each other in the Goethe Institut, where we first developed a nodding acquaintance and later became good friends. There were, of course, many books in German, but the overwhelming majority was in English. There was a Pakistani librarian who was just this side of a bus pass, who spoke German and wore his glasses on his nose. He had a gift for patronising enthusiasm and enjoyed sharing a tender moment with the reader, especially the female Indonesian student who was a regular visitor and had divine amplitude of upholstery.



The retired doctor and I have quite a few things in common — classical music, bridge, chess, the distilled essence of grain and reading. Of late, he has shut himself off from what is happening in the rest of the world. I often call him at home in the morning and say in my best Rampur Urdu “Sain… Main G M Syed ka Murid arz kar rahan hun.” And he would answer “Just give me a minute sain, while I take off the Also sprach Zarathustra CD you gave me. I have been listening to it for a week.”

I keep regaling him with accounts of the numerous videos I receive on my cell phone, especially the latest in which an Arab-American points out, in no uncertain terms, that the basic purpose for the creation of the Islamic State (IS) was the complete destruction of the Middle East so that Israel could expand its territory. In the process lots and lots of American lives have been lost. The American military was only sparring with those mercenaries. The real damage to the IS forces was done by the air force of Vladimir Putin.

My personal hatred of George W Bush and Tony Blair is for what they did to Iraq and the Iraqi people. The disparaging remarks that Donald Trump addressed to these two rascals were richly deserved. At least he knocked out the younger Bush from the race.

But, my friend, the doctor, always has the same answer. “Critics have been saying the same thing over and over again. But irrespective of what we feel and say, who the hell is going to listen to us anyway when we can’t even stand on our own feet financially, live on hand-outs from the World Bank, can’t defend ourselves against the terrorists and can’t even look after our own minorities and keep on making threats that we will wipe out terrorism? At our age we live in the corridor of uncertainty and I would rather devote the time left to me to indulge in the things that I enjoy, like listening to Bach.”

He is still fond of good food and spends time on the net collecting recipes. But whenever he mentions fish I say to him… “Let us take a train to Hyderabad, sain, where we can eat some palla, liberally coated with the masala used in lower Sindh and then barbecued over a charcoal fire.” So far he has never said no. But the day has not come as yet.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2016.

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