Guilty innocents

You may scoff at the sheer improbability of this posit, but it makes more sense than the governmental stance.

Maybe it’s just a complicated form of mass suicide. All these Karachiites dropping dead of gunshot wounds are simply seeking the release offered by death of their own volition. The sheer stress of living here has overcome them and the choice they face is to continue to exist in a world in which they have no control; or they can hire someone to surprise them on a motorbike when they least expect it and shoot them dead.

After all, that way you get the end result of suicide, but without the judgmental pronouncements of a suicide-unfriendly hereafter. The rapid increase in numbers can simply be attributed to this death-by-planned-surprise idea going viral.

You may scoff at my theory, at the sheer improbability — nay, insensitivity — of this posit, but it makes more sense than the governmental stance. Every political party involved in the day-to-day dismantling of this city has claimed innocence. The PPP, the MQM and the ANP all proclaim blamelessness and victimisation. So if the ANP says that the MQM is responsible for the killing and the MQM says the ANP and the PPP are responsible for the killing and the PPP blame vague entities and things that go rat-tat-tat in the night, then the only guilty party left that can’t shift the blame are the citizens of Karachi. We must be killing ourselves just to malign the pristine reputations of these innocent, hard working, peace-obsessed parties. What scoundrels we are. Truly, we make me sick.

The prime minister, taking time out from complaining about the lack of respect afforded his office, issued a statement asking that “[All] should sit together to resolve the issue and prepare a joint strategy to defeat the militant elements who are destroying the peace of Karachi.” Apparently no one has informed him that the ‘peace of Karachi’ was destroyed a while back. Now it’s just a fight over the rubble and strewn body parts of that peace. He is also being willfully ignorant or blissfully naive when he asks for the parties to all sit together. The only outcome of such a meeting would be everyone walking out slowly with guns held to each other’s heads like a Tarantino film.

In PM Gilani’s defence though, his statement seems positively charming when compared to everyone else who has piped up on the issue. The MQM issued a “day of mourning” — what seems like enforced anguish is actually just a way of keeping us off the streets, thus decreasing the number of easy targets available to those gun-wielding motorcyclists who seem to drive by police check posts unmolested. (How is it that I can’t go to the corner store for milk without having my car searched half a dozen times but two men carrying weaponry on a motorbike can drive up to their targets, shoot them and then drive away without so much as a pat down?).

The PPP’s Nabeel Gabol has asked for a military operation in Karachi as the administration has found it difficult to control things. Isn’t that just a more localised form of the same thinking that results in military coups?

The funniest part of his statement is his assumption that the administration was ever in ‘control’ of things. When I say ‘funny’, by the way, I am misspelling ‘rage-inducing’. Shahi Syed of the ANP has, of course, taken time away from counting the number of guns his personal security escort carries at all times to demand the ‘de-weaponising’ of the city and more power being given to the police. Apparently he lives in an alternate-reality Karachi where the police are capable of effectiveness and all guns are accounted for.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to pay someone to surprise-suicide myself.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2010.