Foretold Again

We cautioned that Memo charade will be come back one day to haunt Nawaz. That day has come, and hopefully gone.

In a sane world, a day after Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away, one will not be thinking or writing about the mundane, even vulgar politics and intrigues and instead pour oneself a glass or few of the holy waters and do nothing but re-read Chronicle of a Death Foretold  in silence. Alas, we have appearances to keep, weekly space to fill and indeed pontificate on matters everybody else is also pontificating on. To write about Marquez in any detail should be left to those who can; the rest of us can simply revisit his magic and be awestruck again and again.

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” is how One Hundred Years of Solitude begins. Chronicle of a Death Foretold opens with, “On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on”. Who but Marquez can write like this? To start with the fatal, the violent and trace it back to the ordinary, the tranquil, the surreal and indeed the magical.

The Chronicle of a Death Foretold is the story of an honour killing, the remarkable thing is that the plan for the murder is announced and everybody in the town knows. Yet, for some reason or the other, everyone collectively fails to prevent it. Some refused to believe the plan; some believed that someone else will warn the victim, some didn’t want to warn the victim.



The thing about warnings of doom is that they are hollow, up to the point that they are not. One crosses one’s heart and prays to the heaven that the day Pakistan produces a Marquez, the chronicles will not begin with the end at the hands of our ‘annoyed brothers’ (as a side note, Marquez and his ‘magic realism’ would have had tough competition in Pakistan from just hard, cold reality, from the nine-month-old killer baby on the loose to the dark comedy of no law to be found to deal with the cannibals — perhaps, more accurately, necrophiles — of Bhakkar). The TTP has withdrawn the gracious offer of ceasefire. In other words, they will now go back to killing our people. The TTP leaves no room from ambiguity in their plan, they never have; yet some refuse to believe the plan. The announcement has been made; yet the town (all of which will be victims) is waiting for someone else to warn someone else. The noisy few do not want to warn the victims.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has the habit and history of ignoring warnings (admittedly and thankfully milder in nature). Not, the warnings of the defence analysts (the sole qualification for becoming one is being a retired general or admiral of any sort, in case you are wondering). Nor those of the chat show hosts who have abandoned even basic commitments to journalism and decency and are inciting adventurism and even outright violence against the prime minister and the defence minister. The ISPR’s periodic displays of displeasure should be illegal, they certainly are improper. These are not warnings, these are naked threats. They need to be ignored.

The warnings that one thinks about are from those of us who cautioned Mian Sahib and indeed Khawaja Asif who went in as petitioner in the Memo charade. We cautioned then that it will be come back one day to haunt you. That day has come, and hopefully gone. Yet the line from Ghalib; “Mein ne Majnoon pe larakpan mein Asad, Sang uthaya tau sar yaad aya.” (When in my youth I threw a stone at Majnoon, I was reminded of my own doings) has relevance.

Mian Sahib has gone through enough to learn. Mian Sahib has been on both sides of the game, from Zia’s blue-eyed boy to facing the Commando’s persecution. Khawaja Asif’s speech on the floor of the National Assembly in 2006 is what bravery and eloquence in the face of dictatorial power looks like. Yet when the Memo witch-hunt went on, both Mian Sahib and Khawaja Sahib slipped, to be fair they did realise their mistake and attempted to make amends (most notably, when Mian Nawaz Sharif stood with democracy in the Tahirul Qadri drama).

The smear campaign is now against Khawaja Asif and for saying what every reasonable person should have felt and said during the Commando’s regime. He should not have to apologise or have to leave the defence portfolio for this. Mian Sahib should stand by his Minister, and from the looks of things he will. The show of support from former president Asif Ali Zardari is also heartening.

However, more significantly, Mian Sahib and the PML-N have to demonstrate that Khawaja Asif’s position and the present stance of the federal government is a principled, well thought out position. General Musharraf has to be tried, yet this has to be done on principle, and not ego. The Commando needs to be tried for abrogating the Constitution and the government does not need to apologise for it, and nobody’s morale needs to dip on this account.

To ask Mian Nawaz Sharif to publicly apologise for the Memo affair is perhaps, to ask for too much. However, one will do with even the private realisation, that the dock in which Husain Haqqani was persecuted with loud cheerleading is being used for Khawaja Asif with (surprise, surprise) loud cheerleading, and the PML-N played a small part in the construction of the dock. Yet, all is not lost. Mian Nawaz Sharif has the mandate of the people, and should have the confidence which the mandate should bring. Any opposition party having fancy notions of playing this civil-military conflict to their advantage would do well to bear in mind, as long as the dock exists it will not remain unoccupied for long, and our guardians are bound to get bored and change victims.

Marquez had something for everyone. The odds are that the Commando has only seriously read one book in his life — his own autobiography, and must have been pleasantly surprised by it. Yet, Marquez’s The General in His Labyrinth might strike a personal note with him, and particularly the line “But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none”.

Rest in Peace Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2014.

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