Feet of Clay

FEBRUARY 2004 - The metallurgy road is paved with good intentions, ‘good faith’ and lots of gold. The bewildering details of the personal fortune of Pakistan’s answer to Oppenheimer send the mind reeling. A luxury hotel in Timbuktu named after the wife – how sweet, luxury villas every few yards in the city of the powerful people, bank accounts that are beginning to emerge, bulging with millions of dollars that refuse to be accounted for, funds dispersed here and there with the kind of princely generosity you’d associate with emperors in stories from the ‘Arabian Nights’ – all this and more keeps coming out.

The people of Pakistan are long past being shocked over anything. The man who was their hero for two decades and more has large feet of clay, wider than the metallic fencing that supposedly kept KRL’s secrets locked inside. Sharing secrets with the Ummah is one thing, though North Korea being part of the Ummah is news to most of us. If it was all in ‘good faith’ why the cloak & dagger caper? Where were the sleuths? How do you ship out a centrifuge through high security with none the wiser? While we, the commoners couldn’t even photograph a bridge because of ‘security concerns,’ there was a free-for- all at KRL and billions of rupees were changing hands – well that’s another game altogether. In Manto’s ‘hamam’ there would have been many more than the good doctor, but mutual protection works wonders here. Now with an official and generous pardon, the thin chances of the establishment revealing the rogue elements within, is a matter over which most sensible and cynical Pakistanis won’t be losing too much sleep. When the going gets tough here, the tough close ranks, pull masks over their faces and melt into the shadows with their loot. It’s an old story and the plot never changes. Only the actors do.

What great secrets lie embedded in this land where nothing you see is what it is? These are deep questions and as there are answers, except they are not there for the likes of you and me. In the end, everything is expendable – people, policies, priorities, principles, everything. All these have been on sale here for years except the price keeps falling, though in the nuclear case, one has to agree that the prices just kept climbing. A former chief of the armed forces, pooh poohed the whole shady business about nuclear proliferation. He stated that nothing sinister, God forbid, was going on. All that was shared was simple information. You want this and that, well buddy just go there and ask for it and you can have it, you know it is very easy. Last time I asked somebody to bring me socks from Marks & Spenser in London, all I got was one pair and that too in the wrong colour. I guess nuclear shopping is a breeze.

All this and more, the faithful have mulled over as the country has had another OD of holidays, holidays, holidays. We have been out of touch with the rest of the world for about a week and more, so hello to all you earthlings plodding along the universe – we are back, yawn, yawn, yawn. We have slaughtered with the zeal that only we can churn up, having long forgotten what it was in essence all about. Happily for the populace, the principles are long gone; the ritual remains in full glory. Meat prices went through the roof two days before Eid and will remain high for days to come. The country’s livestock reserves, not in the best of health for years, take another fatal nosedive. Like the trees that we are felling with such single-minded devotion, this orgy of the year-round meat-eating binge that all red-blooded Pakistanis indulge in, doesn’t offer livestock any hope in hell of ever attaining a favourable balance. Add to it the recent chicken scare and the stampede of the populace is towards good old mutton, beef and all else in between. Add to that the annual ritual of sacrifice and you have a problem that is cascading out of control, but hey who’s counting? What a pity Abraham didn’t sacrifice something else to please the Lord. Somewhere along the line, there must be a solution that takes stock of the situation, that takes into account the ground realities and above all, that examines in depth the kind of sacrifice that the good Lord envisaged, but like our poverty line, it too is a blurred line and not many can stop brandishing knives to understand the meaning within the parable. Surface reality is all that matters.

This Eid has brought with it days and days of closure. Everything is shut down. The Pakistani passion for holidays is beyond satiation. If there are three holidays, people want four. If there are four, they want five. It is a country, says a friend, which is in self-denial. We had a binge the last Eid. This government, whose generosity knows no bounds, shut down the country, imaginatively coupling Saturdays and Mondays and then Fridays and Tuesdays, stretching the days like elastic. Now, with the second Eid and the country still recovering from a hangover of over-indulging in eating, sleeping and yawning, there has been a deluge of holidays. Miraculously – Allah indeed moves in mysterious ways, the first three days of the week were declared official holidays. Those slumbering through a 5-day week added their long weekend to the government’s three official holidays. Kashmir Day arrived, most conveniently, sandwiched finely between the 5 holidays and just a Friday to demolish at the other end. That takes the score to 6 and we are still batting. After Friday, lo and behold, there’s another long weekend, so what’s the point in coming to work on Friday anyway? Besides, there are the Friday prayers to attend. So, Friday is off as well and that takes the score to 9. Not bad for a country tottering on various forms of bankruptcy, the reassuring noises of Minister Shaukat ‘Armani’ Aziz notwithstanding.

However, there is some bad news for the country’s holiday infatuated hordes. 2004 may have taken off in holiday-mode like the blazes, but down the year, the government will have to really scratch its head to satisfy its people, at least on this count. The 9th and 10th of Muharram will fall on Monday and Tuesday, so there’s a 4 day holiday here for the taking and Pakistan Day is conveniently falling on a Tuesday, which means that Monday could well be declared a holiday, officially or non-officially and that means another 4 day break to yawn through. So far so good, but Labour Day is bad news, falling on a Saturday, as is Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, which falls on a Sunday – drat. Independence Day and Bank Holiday before Ramadan fall on Saturdays, which is jolly bad luck. Iqbal Day on a Tuesday and no chance of coupling it with the Monday and adding to Saturday and Sunday to make a happy 4 again, because Iqbal Day is kind of unimportant. Then, in a shattering development, Eid-ul-Fitr is on a Sunday and Monday – and that’s a blow. Hopefully, the government will give Tuesday off in lieu of the Sunday and that will make it another 4. As for Mr. Jinnah’s birthday – he really is no more in sync with this land. It’s falling on a Saturday, not a Friday or a Monday, which would have been good fun. A mixed year ahead as I see it but does that surprise anyone? Surely nothing can surprise us any more.