Free Country

MAY 2002 - All year round, just about everyone who supports a coconut over his two shoulders bleats about the need for democracy. Either we don’t have it, because the country’s largest commercial enterprise, the largest political party and the largest collection of do-gooders, all rolled into one behemoth, is ruling the roost or humpty dumpty and his clowns are bobbing up and down in plastic paddle boats laughing their heads off or the daughter/princess/lily white Cinderella and her handsome, rakish and irrepressible Dark Prince are taking 90 per cent of everything, including everything – whatever and whoever is having a go at Pakistan, the bleaters keep bleating – there is no democracy and there is no freedom.

This freedom business has me foxed – it could have had me stumped in the old days, but that was when we played cricket. Right now, we might as well sign up with the cricket board of Chad and build commercial plazas in the cricket grounds we have. As last reported, even New Guinea has refused to tour Pakistan and Ethiopia said no last year. That doesn’t leave much unless the next team is picked up from the brawny, black-clothed body builders of the Elite Force and foreign teams can be kidnapped by cricket-loving crazies of the Al -Qaeda group and forced to play test cricket with us on our terms and our grounds, irrespective of bombs going off during play. But forget cricket - all countries aspire to be free and most countries attain some form of it, but no country can claim to be as free as Pakistan – and that’s a fact.

In Pakistan, you are free to kill any one you like and even freer to kill any one you don’t like. In fact you are free to kill any one for any reason and then again, for no reason at all, because you are free to kill and this is the country’s most valuable asset. It was the country’s founder who planted this ideal in our heads. While many Pakistanis can now be forgiven for not remembering who the founder was or what were all the things he said, most remember that he stressed this free thing a lot. He said you were free to do this and free to do that and while we have had many, many leaders of various sizes and mentalities – these are metal-chips implanted in those who ride into power in Islamabad and instantly delete reality from your brain – every single leader and leadernee, have ensured the basic principles of freedom remain the cornerstone of the country. A word in passing about why cornerstones are so important in Pakistan. Most important people in the last fifty years and more have seen the country in terms of squares and occupied all four corners of it – some called them corner plots because there was always a plot behind each corner and some called them nothing but still acquired them. Corner plots, being the most popular have thus become the cornerstones of our polity and reason to be. It’s not complicated. Even Mian Sahib understood it and got the hang of it, as did every one else before and after him.

In Pakistan, you can kill your daughter or your daughter in law without much problem, because you are free to kill any one you want. You can kill your wife, your brother, your sister, your mother and also, if you like and if he is around at the same time, your father. It does not matter if you have a reason or not because the State makes sure you do not suffer any inconvenience in the event that you are asked why you killed in the first place. Not that you are expected to give an answer – but should you have to, you have a wide and wonderful choice of reasons, from honour to suspicion to anger and all are perfectly respectable and acceptable reasons. You are free from punishment – God forbid the very thought of punishment is abhorred, and are instead honoured amongst the people for the great act you might have been fortunate enough to perform. There is no question of going to prison or, heaven forbid, going to the gallows, because Pakistan is a free country. In particular, you are asked to kill any one who doesn’t have the same faith as you do and the less faith you have yourself, the more you can kill those who have it. It’s a sublime equation and the houris are always waiting.

In Pakistan, you are free to go wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go. On the roads and lanes of this huge country, you can go left to right, right to left or all over the place, without the least worry. It is not necessary to announce your intentions because every road and every lane belongs to you and you are free to meander on it, sit in the middle, beg at all times of the day or peddle your wares. No one can question you because you are free to do what you please. You can park your vehicle – donkey-cart to bus, any where you want and no one can dare to catch you or fine you – the last would be almost like invoking that wonderful Hudood Ordinance – some people call it Ordnance since it contains nothing but incendiary materials and is highly unstable and inflammable, but that is all liberal-propaganda and the government, quite rightly and quite bravely, ignores the critics year after year. You are free to build any thing you like and you can build any where you like. By that same token, you can demolish any thing you like or don’t like – in the latter case, you can demolish it at twice the speed. You can violate any law you like or any building regulation and the larger your building project, the larger can be your violation.

You can occupy any plot, any house, any office and even any hill or dale, because you are free to occupy any thing you like. You can even occupy Pakistan if you fancy it which may explain why the country remains occupied most of the year by people who normally wouldn’t be able to occupy any country any where with so much ease. The reason of course as one has tediously explained, is that no other country is as free as Pakistan. If you wish to acquire a property inconveniently occupied by someone else, say as Bhopal House in Karachi recently, you simply put two slips of badly written papers and hey presto – you can occupy Bhopal House. If – and this is very rare, you have to de-occupy what you occupied, just ask Aitezaz Ahsan and mumble a five letter word – sorry and that is the end of the matter till a good opportunity arises and for that you do not have to wait long. In a free country opportunities arise as easily as the sun arises every day and roasts this free country, then turns it over, and roasts it again.

In Pakistan, you are free to cheat any one, any where, any time. You can cheat at exams and become popular along with scoring high marks and if you find cheating too tiring, you can always have a good answer paper replaced with your blank one. The system of cheating is officially approved because this is a free country. No one can question you at all and should any one be so foolish, he will no longer be free to talk, walk or function. You can take an examination with all your answers with you, textbooks, referral materials or external help. You can even ask the supervisor to help you with difficult answers because you are free to do as you please.

You can loot, plunder, rob, maim, murder, extort, burn, kill, bomb any one, any thing and still be free. You can do as you please and the things you can do without fear are so many that it would need this entire newspaper to print on – what a pity it can’t be done. We may have basic democracy, people democracy, heavy-mandated democracy, devolutionary democracy or good, old khaki democracy, but the important thing is, we are free.