An open letter to General Musharraf

Dear (former) President General (retired) Pervez Musharraf, With the on-going commotion regarding your return to the dilapidated political landscape of Pakistan, one can’t help but wonder how quickly you’ve recovered from the blows of your ugly fall. The circumstances for the most notorious of contenders to eventually arrive as your replacement reflects your indifferent nation’s cynical worst in having readily embraced them over you amid cheers and baskets full of mithai.

Phantasmal slogans and legalistic tenacity can become great fads in a land where verses of communist poets are used by (nominal) stalwarts of democracy to taunt alleged dictatorships; not without help from missionaries of justice and gypsies of the mystical Liquid Crystal Display (read TV news channels).

Belonging to a faction of society, albeit tiny and voiceless, that consists of undaunted admirers of your relative spotlessness and sincere ideologies – ironically all of which failed to deliver due to the proverbial ‘other factors’ and ‘invisible hands’ that perpetually haunt this land of the (im)pure – I would like to quote Martin Luther King Jr. for your benefit: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

I hope you don’t forget how anxiously the ‘silent majority’ emphasises its signature trait. The more we’re cornered, the greater the silence. No electricity could mean higher UPS sales, but not storming of the Raja’s palatial abode. Yet we dream of change and, with hypocrisy dubbed as political-correctness, shy away from the bloody realities of revolutions.

Your political advisers have painted rosy pictures out of their own need to use you and your return as a launch pad for their political survival. As for your 200,000 plus fanbase on Facebook, these are nothing more than ‘keyboard warriors’ and they are mostly outside Pakistan. In case you do return, it is very unlikely that even a small fraction of so many people will come to greet you.

Wait for our amnesic masses to get weary of the present set-up which they ‘elected’ themselves but who for some reason blame you for the evil burden of the NRO on this country. Only when this cycle of democratic fascinations nears its natural end shall the moment be ripe enough for your return from your foreign abode. For only then will you find a truly opportune moment to save Pakistan from the rut of totalitarian democracies and dictatorial deliverances through leading a disoriented and irrational crowd which, by then, would be passionately reminiscing of your sham dictatorship. We may need you, but to actually deliver. Until your field gun isn’t ready to hit bull’s-eye we don’t want you wasting your rounds and our silence on a lost cause. Momentarily things may seem congested at Edgware, but open spaces in Chak Shahzad aren’t blowing any fresh air either.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th, 2010.