A city burning
I can give voice to my anguish at it all, but I fear only the dogs will hear my words.
Last week, silliness hit a note so high only the dogs could hear it. When a 17-member bench of the highest court of the land can be thrown into a panicked midnight session over a falsely reported rumour, then one is truly in an absurd drama of Dadaist proportions.
The spectacle brought to mind the parable of a medieval city whose inhabitants angrily debated questions like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” while barbarian armies gathered outside the city walls. I’m not sure if there is an actual, or literal, instance of such a situation ever occurring but the parable points towards a situation that is almost universal: people so immersed in their quarrels, so consumed by their petty squabbling, that they remain oblivious to the historical storm lapping on their city gates.
So on the night of October 14, while the media carelessly ran with a rumour, while the alarm bells rang in the minds of the judges, as the bench assembled and a meeting was underway in the Presidency, somewhere in Karachi somebody was loading a gun, charting out a route to their target, and their escape route. Throughout the next day, as the rabble that is the television-consuming public sat with mouths gaping, while the Supreme Court asked again and again whether the “notification” can be withdrawn, while the attorney general pleaded for more time, somewhere in Karachi rooms echoed with the sounds of guns being loaded, lists were being prepared of doomed people and jobs were being assigned to hitmen in all localities of the city, as the most troubled by-election in the city’s history got underway.
On October 16, as the prime minister of our country announced that he would address the nation on the whole “notification” affair, guns emerged from their hideouts. The simultaneity of these affairs is obviously not connected. But the backdrop to the “notification” drama is the grim bloodletting that got underway in Karachi last Saturday, and escalated into a mini civil war by Tuesday (October 20), when armed gangs sprayed gunfire on hapless shopkeepers in Shershah. So while the prime minister was busy writing his speech, weighing the prospect of directly addressing the Supreme Court’s concerns, consulting his advisers on how to comport himself, as all the careful choreography for this theatre was underway — kicked off and made necessary by the panicked haste of the judges on Thursday night — Karachi was teetered on the edge of a civil war.
Think about that for a moment please. Think about the fact that shrines of the patron saints of Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar have all been bombed. Think about the fact that this country is in late term pregnancy with a civil war the likes of which we can probably not even imagine. The fault lines of conflict are so numerous — sectarian, ethnic, religious, class — that they would resemble a kaleidoscope if pictorially represented. And through it all, we sit around debating whether an executive notification can be withdrawn or not.
I wish we had the luxury to debate arcane issues of law and philosophy. I would love to know whether a notification, once issued, can be withdrawn or not, or what the exact meaning of “void ab initio” really is. I wish I had learned Latin at a younger age so I could follow with greater precision the burning issues of our capital city these days. But I didn’t, and I must admit, it’s all Latin to me. Because the city I live in, the city I love to hate, is burning with issues of its own. I can give voice to my anguish at it all, but I fear only the dogs will hear my words.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 21st, 2010.
The spectacle brought to mind the parable of a medieval city whose inhabitants angrily debated questions like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” while barbarian armies gathered outside the city walls. I’m not sure if there is an actual, or literal, instance of such a situation ever occurring but the parable points towards a situation that is almost universal: people so immersed in their quarrels, so consumed by their petty squabbling, that they remain oblivious to the historical storm lapping on their city gates.
So on the night of October 14, while the media carelessly ran with a rumour, while the alarm bells rang in the minds of the judges, as the bench assembled and a meeting was underway in the Presidency, somewhere in Karachi somebody was loading a gun, charting out a route to their target, and their escape route. Throughout the next day, as the rabble that is the television-consuming public sat with mouths gaping, while the Supreme Court asked again and again whether the “notification” can be withdrawn, while the attorney general pleaded for more time, somewhere in Karachi rooms echoed with the sounds of guns being loaded, lists were being prepared of doomed people and jobs were being assigned to hitmen in all localities of the city, as the most troubled by-election in the city’s history got underway.
On October 16, as the prime minister of our country announced that he would address the nation on the whole “notification” affair, guns emerged from their hideouts. The simultaneity of these affairs is obviously not connected. But the backdrop to the “notification” drama is the grim bloodletting that got underway in Karachi last Saturday, and escalated into a mini civil war by Tuesday (October 20), when armed gangs sprayed gunfire on hapless shopkeepers in Shershah. So while the prime minister was busy writing his speech, weighing the prospect of directly addressing the Supreme Court’s concerns, consulting his advisers on how to comport himself, as all the careful choreography for this theatre was underway — kicked off and made necessary by the panicked haste of the judges on Thursday night — Karachi was teetered on the edge of a civil war.
Think about that for a moment please. Think about the fact that shrines of the patron saints of Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar have all been bombed. Think about the fact that this country is in late term pregnancy with a civil war the likes of which we can probably not even imagine. The fault lines of conflict are so numerous — sectarian, ethnic, religious, class — that they would resemble a kaleidoscope if pictorially represented. And through it all, we sit around debating whether an executive notification can be withdrawn or not.
I wish we had the luxury to debate arcane issues of law and philosophy. I would love to know whether a notification, once issued, can be withdrawn or not, or what the exact meaning of “void ab initio” really is. I wish I had learned Latin at a younger age so I could follow with greater precision the burning issues of our capital city these days. But I didn’t, and I must admit, it’s all Latin to me. Because the city I live in, the city I love to hate, is burning with issues of its own. I can give voice to my anguish at it all, but I fear only the dogs will hear my words.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 21st, 2010.