Trying to understand

My failure to understand is failure to understand that madness is the new sanity, and it was me that was mad all along

Of course, it may be that I am plain old stupid. Or just mad. Because after over twenty years in the land of the impure, there is so much I still do not understand.

Like, how is it that a motley bunch of self-proclaimed ‘educators’ can organise an anti-Malala day on the grounds that she is somehow an ally of an infamous author, failed to show correct religious observance in her book and is hand in glove with the CIA? And the Mysterons, the Daleks and the Illuminati. False equivalencies abound in the arguments of these crackpots and what do the sheeple of Pakistan do? Why, they lap it up. Music to their ears. Just what the doctor ordered and yes, it was all a conspiracy and no, she was never shot in the head and it was just a money-making venture by her pushy father.

Let us remember that this is the country that swallowed the concept of the water-powered car hook, line and sinker. Whatever happened to that, I wonder? Spotted any puttering about on the street where you live? No… me neither.

Thus far, foreign agents have not been blamed for the gruesome killing of a Christian couple who were falsely accused of blasphemy and — after being publicly tortured probably in sight of their three children — they were thrown, possibly still alive, into a brick kiln, there to be reduced to bone fragments. Hidden hands have not yet appeared in that matter but it is probably only a matter of time before they do, and it will all be the fault of somebody else other than the baying mob that had long since busted its moral compass.

There was a procession by Christians in Bahawalpur to protest the murders, and activity on my Facebook page trying to raise money for the orphans, now cared for by their extended family. I did not notice any non-Christians in the procession. Nor, any roadside support. But by midweek, when this is written, the story had dropped ‘below the fold’ as print journos are wont to say. As for Malala…well, she can be trotted out for a jolly good kicking every few weeks just for Pakistan to make fool of itself yet again, in the eyes of a world outside that it is largely unaware of.

Nobody will ever be prosecuted for the murder of the Christian couple, and their story will fade away, apart from an annual resurrection in the form of a ‘where are they now’ story. The murder and persecution of religious minorities is now so commonplace, it is merely a matter of reporting the facts… there is no mission to explain or even, heaven forbid, understand why it is that an entire nation can seemingly abandon its senses. To say nothing of a moral handbrake that failed long ago.

There was further baffled incredulity this week with the announcement by the interior minister that contrary to the contents of a secret leaked memo, there are no members of the Islamic State active in Pakistan. Oh really? Well, that is not what I hear from colleagues and friends in Peshawar — or what I hear from my chatty visiting LHV’s who have sharp eyes when it comes to the contents of homes they visit in the course of their duties. And the literature they see when they do. Further grim mirth was occasioned by the assertion that Pakistan does not harbour terrorist groups or give them safe haven. Of course, it doesn’t. Perish the thought.

And this was a not-atypical week. A week when a national heroine and global icon was vilified by people who claim to represent private education in Pakistan. A week when two of our most senior politicians made statements that are not only palpably untrue but border on the delusional. A week when the casual butchery of a pregnant woman and her husband on entirely specious grounds raises no more than a frisson of interest.

This is where the epiphany occurs, as I am sure you knew it would, Dear Reader. You see, my failure to understand is a failure to understand that madness is the new sanity, and it was me that was mad all along.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2014.

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