Fear and fury at Faizabad

Surrender is surrender, whether through capitulation or orchestration. Faizabad will forever live in infamy as the place where the state rolled over in front of a belligerent crowd and played dead.

The terms of surrender, inked no doubt by a pen dipped in shame, were heralded by many as a relief. Some even celebrated it as a ‘victory’ saying how Pakistan was saved from a ‘catastrophe’ by the timely intervention of the army. A cacophony of voices danced to choreographed tunes and gently shredded the Quaid’s vision of this country into ugly ribbons. Never had a thousand rupee envelope cost so much more than its numeric value.

That day — and night — the collective might of the state cut its nose to spite its face; then cut its face to spite its head, and still not satiated, is preparing to slice its head to spite its body. In Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore thick darkness seems to have descended upon the senses of those who are paid to make sense for the rest of us. It is a darkness spawned from the womb of loathing — the type that is blind to reason and rationality; that subsumes sanity in the flames of hatred and contempt. We are numb to the pain as we hack away our own limbs while sneering at the world at large.

It is the worst of times in the true Dickensian sense when nothing makes sense in the land of ours. The irony is not that we are headed in the wrong direction but that no one has a clue which direction we are headed:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

It is a passionate intensity devoid of reason or logic, an intensity that feeds on the deep reservoir of emotional acrimony and drives men and women to lacerate their backs with whips of their own rage. This perfect storm of fury, disgust and revenge fanned by the imminent threat of violence is tearing apart the fabric of this society. Like ghouls returned from the bowels of Hades, the mandated ones are gnawing and clawing at the soft flesh of this body politic as it writhes in agony.

It is the agony of witnessing the surrender of the state in front of a frenzied mob. It is the agony of watching men of substance sign away the writ that isn’t theirs to sign away; to hear the victory chants from the hoarse throats of those who struggle yet to straddle the yawning gap between medievalism and modernity. It is the agony of grappling with the wretched and rank opportunism of self-proclaimed saviours who would rather lose their souls than lose their election; the agony of reconciling with the guardians of our galaxy vanquishing their own while the mandarins of the capital stew in their own spineless incompetence. It is an agony that sprouts from the fertile bed of anguish nourished by the blood of citizens and soldiers massacred by barbarians who are still perceived by many as our misguided brothers-in-arms.

Look at them smile their vile smiles as they feast upon unrealised dreams; look at them lap up crumbs of political munificence with their forked tongues while drooling over the spoils of the promised electoral victory. Look at them justify their pandering to base instinct in terms of popular sentiment while sharpening their teeth for the engineered hunt; look at them defile the sanctity of this nation’s foundational spirit by lending their shoulders to those who shoulder the unenviable responsibility of misguiding the gullible youth of this land — the same youth who have been force-fed illiteracy, bigotry and dogma all in the name of national interest. Look at them feign helplessness and victimhood while getting fat on the high-protein diet of power, pelf and privilege; look at them bemoan the ineptitude of a police force they themselves were responsible for professionalising — that they themselves were mandated to revamp, reform and repair. Look at them grovel and cower and kneel before those who will drag us back into the dark, drab and dingy caves of obscurantism, prejudice and dogmatism. Look at them — just look at them.

For too long have the aspirations of this nation been held hostage by enormous egos of small men (and women) with big titles. It is these inflated egos massaged by a misplaced sense of entitlement that have repeatedly led to institutional clashes and societal mayhem. And yet, again and again they repeat these mistakes and hurl this nation back into the vortex of political and ideological chaos. Yes the kind of chaos that has risen like a ferocious cyclone and is ravaging its way across the land whipping up emotions and raking up dangerous sentiments in the hearts of men starved of a diet of reason and rationale.

Must this be our fate? Must we resign to a life of passive acceptance of such a fate? Must this nation — forged by the iron will of the Quaid and sculpted in his image — be hammered into submission by those undeserved to hold the hammer? Must we accept the permanence of instability, inequity and injustice in this land we call home? And must we live in fear of saying what’s on our mind, writing what’s in our heart and doing what our conscience allows?

The shameless surrender at Faizabad has put a noose around the state. And yet it has also vacuumed away any doubts about who stands where when it comes to deciding the direction we want. Between the medievalists, the appeasers, the opportunists and the incompetent cowards, we have ourselves a motley crew of ‘leaders’ that do not have the muscle or the will or the capacity to lead in times of distress. At a time when the Right is wrong and the Left is irrelevant, Pakistan needs to salvage clarity of purpose from within the burning carcass of the state that lies strewn across concrete wasteland of Faizabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2017.

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