Making peace with the mirrors

Musharraf’s uncanny gift of discord notwithstanding it is our readiness to divide all the time worries me most.

There is no villain greater than nostalgia. The spectre that lurks in the dark recesses of the soul and haunts you when you are alone. Bitter-sweet memories can make you laugh and cry simultaneously. And yet, it must be a sad existence when you look back at the wide expanse of your bygone life and cannot find a single moment when you were truly happy. Such is the tragedy of my young nation, and so is mine. When something as mirthfully pure as the birth of children first evokes a heart-rending fear for their safety and happiness in a land whose residents are their own worst enemy, tell me where one can find the elusive muse of pleasure.

The only phobia that has really stalked this heart throughout its painful journey is of collapsing roof and four walls. But such a fear imbues one with a unique gift of mental agility, consciousness and survival instinct that enables one to see genuine threats approaching from miles away. I have often wondered why my beloved nation that has lived in more or less the same challenging circumstances. That can only happen when one is has given to the fondness for intoxication and altered states of mind. The only altered states of mind my country has known, been obsessed with and fallen in love with are those of authoritarianism, obscurantism and self-induced coma. And the authoritarianism I speak of is not restricted to autocrats alone. Democrats have not been impervious to its temptations either. The founder of this nation refused to let Bengali, the language of the then majority of the country, be elevated to the position of national language along with Urdu. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a hawk through and through until the signing of the Simla Agreement. And our sitting prime minister in the late 90s was only a hair’s breadth away from becoming Amir-ul-Momineen.

And yet, it is the autocrats on the horseback who take a bad situation and make it worse. When Ayub Khan assumed power, the cracks within the state and society were thinly veiled, but his prolonged rule witnessed such polarisation among the two wings of the country that Yahya, his immediate successor and a dictator, supervised over the dismantling of the united Pakistan. When Zia took over, Bhutto was already meddling with the internal matters of Afghanistan by flirting with the would-be religious militants. But it was he who perfected the recipe for the Frankenstein’s monster, that apart from destroying lives of countless Afghans, is still out to get us. And after feeble attempts from the Sharif government to distance itself from the Taliban, when Musharraf took over and decided to disown the militant rulers of Afghanistan, he did so in a fashion that quite contrary to the Urdu proverb which suggests that one could not kill the snake but definitely broke the stick (saanp bhi na marra aur lathi bhi toot gayi).

When, last week, I wrote the piece on Afghanistan, my only submission was that if it wants to be treated like a nation, it better start acting like one. Sadly, my own nation has not learned how to act like one. I am yet to come across a more polarising person than General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. The whistle-blower account of Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz reveals how a civil war was risked on October 12, 1999 to save the then aspiring dictator’s neck. Throughout his reign, the man ruled by dividing and further dividing the nation. Today, he is back in the news to divide us further. It takes every atom of my restrain to suggest that instead of a prolonged trial he be sent into exile like Iskander Mirza. But I do so because in my war fatigued and ravaged country, we can do without more controversies and distractions. Never mind precedents, for an unsung hero like General (retd) Kayani established a better precedent of keeping the army away from politics. I desperately want to believe that our civil military elite have come of age. But in the past 10 days, I, as a concerned citizen I have seen the immaturity of our media, our politicians and those faujis who cannot tell the difference between a dictator’s legacy and the army’s integrity. The language used by all three is unacceptable. Musharraf’s uncanny gift of discord notwithstanding it is our readiness to divide all the time that worries me most.

When I left home to study, the working class values that brought me up sent me off with three idols — namely family, faith and patriotism. The first two vanished soon. The last one remains. If, sirs, you cannot make peace with what you see in the mirror then I implore you to free me of the third so that I can go elsewhere and find true happiness in life.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.