Shameless

MAY 2000 - Does it surprise any body what happened to five Dutch girls on Sunday after noon n when a mob of sex-starved hooligans molested them in broad daylight ? Reading all the newspaper reports, I was drawn to the fact that while the mob deserves to be hung upside down till they drop dead, it is the spectators who watched with amusement and the indifferent motorists who sped on, that deserve equal if not more condemnation. What they achieved by their inhumanity was give the act, tacit approval and encouragement for the shameful show to go on. Now of course our conscience is activated and there are long statements of shock and indignation with every paper churning out the dutiful editorial. Why is everyone shocked by this ? What happened was not a one off thing. It was not the exception but the norm. We were all at the Lahore canal last Sunday. We are all dead.

The Dutch girls have done the right thing by deciding not to pursue the disgraceful matter any further. What use would this charade have been ? Next they would have been victimized by the police, the touts, the lawyers, the court sharks and all the other riff raff that makes up the police-judicial farce that creaks about in this country. There is no justice in Pakistan. There is only exploitation. Had they gone to court, or the fish markets that we insist on calling courts, every one would have extorted money from them. Ask anyone who has ever suffered a court and you will hear stories that fill you with horror and a loathing of the system. People don’t go to courts for pleasure. Most do under dire circumstances. In the case of the Dutch girls, since this was a ‘foreign’ affair, undoubtedly requests for alcohol too would have soon found their way to the embassy in Islamabad. There is now no limit to the extent to which most of us will go to extort a favour or a bribe obtained by evil influence, blackmail and plain dishonesty. The fact that the girls were dressed in shalwar-kamiz and trousers-shirts made no difference. For all that it mattered they might as well have worn the skimpiest of bikinis and danced on the edge of the canal.

For years, the bathers in the canal have caused problems. Families which have to traverse the canal to go to work or return home have had to suffer the lewd and shameless behaviour that is on display regularly throughout the summer. Since none of the morons who bathe here ever wear a costume, they show up in attire that reveals more than it covers. This, the moral brigades do not find offensive. While the sight of a female ankle sends them into convulsions and giddy paroxysms, naked men prancing about like actors from a B-grade porn film, make no impression. Ask the women who have had the mortification of waiting at traffic lights, even in the relative safety of their cars, and you will understand what a misery this male-canal-bathing can be for any one who is not into gazing longingly at male torsos. Most women avert their eyes from the obscenity that is unfurled by young louts dancing or displaying their wares with half a dozen vulgar actions thrown in for good measure. I am bewildered by the administration’s point of view which condones the bathing since there are no public facilities for swimming ! Stretch that stupid thinking and you will find that any activity can be accepted since certain facilities don’t exist. Why not open a few bordellos along the canal as well, since these facilities don’t exist ? The people of this city, or others for that matter, live out their entire lives with no ‘facilities’ worth the name. If the authorities are so concerned about providing public facilities to the swimmers of Lahore, they might stop building the city’s sixtieth fountain and divert the funds to a swimming pool, with a few hundred hungry Pirhannas thrown in. No, there is absolutely no justification for the canal-swimming galas and rather than wait for the sky to cave in - a favourite Pakistani pastime, this summer farce should end without further discussion. If a couple of hundred louts can’t swim, the country won’t be torn asunder from west to east.

As for the rest of us, those who tut, tut and click their tongues and swear at the way things are going down, or those who are running the pawn shop (the country that is), who are shocked, dismayed and saddened by such incidents, enough is enough. It is shameful that we are so dead inside that nothing can stir us. The mobs that come out in this country are misguided, retarded and brain-damaged ruffians who are prepared to let any monkey lead them anywhere. Some do it for money, food or kicks and most do it because there is nothing else to do any way. Another march, break a few traffic lights, burn a few cars, torch a few banks and trample on the American flag. That’s the sum total of it. The ‘lovers of the Prophet’ in the meantime are out demanding Friday off and rousing passions with bigotry and hate, preaching violence in the name of God and death and destruction to their enemies. An email from across the Atlantic says that there was once a caliph who declared that even if a dog died of hunger on the banks of the Euphrates during his rule, he would be accountable to God for this sin. From that supreme humanism to the barbarity that unfolds around us. This is the essence of the Islamic state as it exists today here. Where are the custodians of our morals, the preachers who unfailingly bombard us with rhetoric and fire and who are stunned into impotent silence the minute human bestiality is reported in the land of the eternally pure ? While the righteous mobs were on the move last week, raising slogans, seven Christian girls were systematically raped by a bunch of revenge-seeking Muslim men. This happened 30 kilometres from Lahore’s Governor House and 34 kilometres from Station Headquarters, but it might as well have been in Lapland. Most papers never carried the news (it doesn’t look good and in any case they were just Christians) and a newsitem from the Bishop of Lahore was given so much space that even a telescope might not have spotted it. That was more or less it. The police, bless their black hearts, stayed firmly rooted to their well-established culture of shamelessness and silence. Seven lives were destroyed in one demented attack. There is no outrage, no remorse. A few clucking sounds might emerge, but by and large, in this land created in the name of Islam, all that is unholy and evil, will simply continue.

Nations which have no conscience don’t deserve to live. It is a fallacy amongst Pakistanis that somehow they are the chosen race, that in the end, God, who only sides with them, will rescue them and annihilate everyone else. The plight of women in this country is now very clear. No one is really safe. Those who break stones on road-sites or those who shop in boutiques. The men, sex-starved, mixed-up, immature and ill mannered use brute force to subjugate women, be they sisters, wives or daughters. Most of this crime doesn’t get reported. The ones that do, lead to nothing. That’s the way of Pakistan as we gingerly look out at the next century. Nothing can change. Nothing will change. That is the truth.