Protesting against his release — but why?

Protesting the release of Raymond Davis? Yes, this is certainly what we should be protesting.

This morning when I looked out my window, I saw that the development along the beachfront was moving along at a good speed. There was now a wall of huge boulders that lined the shore. This made me think that if there were ever a cyclone or tsunami, those rocks would come hurtling onto my apartment building. When I looked to the left, I saw that the community of camel riders had increased. Despite the unprecedented 10 degree rise in temperature over the past few days, they were spending their days shelterless under the sun. I know that they had come to Karachi because there was little or no livelihood for them in their villages in interior Sindh.

When I left home, I drove along what used to be the main artery of our neighbourhood, and found that the route was blocked because the president was in town. Meanwhile, the fence that he was building in the middle of the road was coming along smoothly. My parents told me that it was almost impossible for them to get to their corner store because all the lanes behind his ‘house’ were blocked, and I did wonder at the brick wall that emerged overnight, blocking the mouth of their quiet lane. Coming back to the fence in the middle of the road, it has two layers of metal-plating and three layers of cement that separate our ‘fearless’ leader from us. I thought to myself that it must be a highly isolating experience, building that wall to keep himself from us. This made me conclude that things must be really bad, and if our president feels so paranoid, we do not stand a chance against whatever is out there that terrifies him so.

Further up, the policemen keeping our streets secure stopped a car, and asked the driver for Rs50, saying they hadn’t had tea the whole day. I know that people are particularly sympathetic to cops these days, but I must confess that I didn’t feel too bad.

As I kept going, I noticed that there were two new billboards selling lawn cloth, but at the same time there were at least 20 more people sleeping on the pavement along the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi. Some of them were heroin addicts, but most were families; mothers, fathers, grandparents and children. It occurred to me that the bulging stomachs of the children were caused by malnutrition, not because they were well-fed.

It was then that I heard about the protest at the press club against the release of Raymond Davis. Someone asked, “Well, what is the protest against? His release? His arrest? Is it that the families of those murdered by him allegedly took the money the Americans offered? Perhaps it’s that the deal was brokered by Shahbaz Sharif, who is a bastion of Islam. Or maybe it is that the negotiation was done under the same Islamic laws that were responsible for the assassinations of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti.”

Yes, this was certainly what we should be protesting, I thought.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2011.