Sunday, 05 June, 2011
The enemy is within the State
Whoever killed Saleem Shahzad it is clear the incident has revealed deep fissures within the Pakistan state
“A
the review
All in all it is a gruesome incident, a reflection upon which suggests, the true enemies of the people lie deep within the State. And thus we must ask for accountability
By Hashim bin Rashid
“I must give you a favour. We have recently arrested a terrorist and have recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a hit list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know,” –Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir, DG ISI media wing to Syed Saleem Shahzad (Excerpt fromShahzad’s email to Human Right’s Watch – to be released upon his death)
The military, in its need for ideology, has produced an internally destructive doctrine, a set of doctrines whose imbibing is moving the military towards self-implosion two decades later operations in South Waziristan, a certain Navy chief had complained about beards and growing radicalisation, and army men were picked up for plotting Musharraf’s assassination. The military, in its need for ideology, has produced an internally destructive doctrine, a set of doctrines whose imbibing is moving the military towards selfimplosion two decades later. And Saleem Shahzad’s gruesome murder, and his parting (perhaps offending) story, should convince us even more that the need for military and intelligence accountability has never been greater. I can recollect that while campaigning for something as simple as civilian oversight of the military budget, we faced an arrogant response from both a number of cadets and officers. Attempt was made to engage them in debate and discussion on their role, but the strength with which they believed in military supremacy and absolute denial of outside scrutiny came as both a shock but also a confirmation.
The hope is, that with each coming crisis, some heads within the military shall turn and cede to the principle of civilian supremacy. If not then as with all oppressed people, we know it will take a struggle, but we can snatch our rights back too. Asma Jehangir has already asked for a ‘return to the barracks’ campaign from civilians. But let us be certain such is not enough. There is a need for accountability. While no one can prove with certainty that Shahzad Saleem was tortured and killed in the custody of our ‘benevolent’ intelligence agencies, there appears sufficient ground to fear a splinter group within seeking to protect its own interests was responsible. Rarely have the agencies catered to national interests in their undermining of civilian governance and subversions of journalistic truth. Being harassed by the agencies remains a Pakistani journalist’s greatest fear, however, secretly it is many a journalists’ dream: it signals nuisance value. From the stand-point of the international press, there is little reason to believe the conspiracy theories being thrown around in Pakistan, especially by our dear federal interior minister Rehman Malik, who chooses to believe Shahzad was killed over ‘personal enmity’. In fact let’s hang onto that statement. It is a stroke of genius. Someone who stood to lose out, personally, if Saleem’s next report came out tortured him and murdered him. Good one, Rehman sahib! I am merely rambling here, obviously punning upon the man with a lovely coiffure and his genius for explanations. However, great an explainer, like always there are no takers for Malik’s genius. Both the international press and domestic press (English, most certainly) has clamped down and withheld no punches. Dawn, in its editorial, put “the onus is on the security agencies to prove they had no role in his murder.” Daily Times went for a full onslaught critiquing the ‘self-inflicted onslaught.’ However, The News, writing a day late, points a finger towards the Islamists suggesting they would not have liked him suggesting Al-Qaeda penetration within the armed forces. TheExpress Tribune editorial, the most distant, calls for an independent commission. The Nation, however, chose to ignore. However, as we know, commissions in Pakistan
Illustrated & Designed by Javeria Mirza
It is hard to remain silent, conservative, prostatus quo, after the discovery of the body of journalist Saleem Shahzad. Saleem’s last words were crafted in a two-part follow-up to the PNS Mehran attack, which he claimed was an inside job in response to the arrests of low-level navy personnel sympathetic to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic militants. Saleem’s death should put to rest ideas of foreign conspiracy. It clears the ground for us to realise that the enemy lies within. That the enemy lies within the State. And the roots of it were lain in the creation of the State, but more specifically in the complex interrelation with the US during Zia’s military regime. Military men themselves have begun to speak openly of this concern. Saleem’s last claim was that the navy had been penetrated. WikiLeaks last week revealed the exair chief was complaining of sabotage within the air force, plots to kill ex-dictator General Musharraf were revealed to have been hatched within the army and the air force. And there appears no solving the issue. During the Musharraf era there was an attempt to purge the military and intelligence agencies of its more Islamist elements. However, it was clear that organisations that had operations under the likes of Masood Shah and Hameed Gul only recently must have been deeply penetrated. Saleem Shahzad was amongst those to claim that a set of elements
(I delibrately avoid calling them officers) left the military and intelligence to join up with their former comrades in different capacities. Others, however, remained within both organisations, proof of which has filtered through statements and spills from within the armed forces. WikiLeaks revealed a (now) former air chief complaining about sabotage of F-16’s to disrupt
2 Fact and fiction in Steinbeck’s travelogue 4 Literary Essay: Analysing the novel
bsolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” –Hunter S Thompson
the review
Fact and fiction in Steinbeck’s travelogue John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley contains enchanting nuggets of wisdom about travel and travel writing strewn casually about
I
n 1960, an ailing, 58-year old John Steinbeck, waning as a novelist, set out for an 11week trip across America in an outfitted pick-up truck with his French poodle Charley. The result was the highly acclaimed classic of American travel writing, Travels with Charley.
Incurable urge Steinbeck confesses to an incurable travel urge. “The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage…..once a bum always a bum.” And so he let himself ease off into the great American night in a rough counter-clockwise loop that takes him and Charley up to Maine, then across the northern states to the Pacific coast, down to California and then back along the southern route. The book does not record an exact diary; instead, it depicts the writer’s thoughts and musings as he drives, interwoven with local descriptions of landscape, speech and people. Every once in a while there is an interaction with a stranger — a farmer in north Michigan, a Shakespearean actor in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, a virulent racist in Louisiana. Interspersed among the conversations and descriptions are the writer’s extended views on subjects as diverse as racial segregation, the giant Californian redwoods and all things Texan (“Texas is a state of mind.
Texas is an obsession.”) There are places, says Steinbeck, “where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing, or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high-colored magical confusion takes permanent hold. Greece is such an area, and those parts of England where King Arthur walked….And surely Texas is such a place.” Charley and his antics, his French-gentleman breeding which makes him believe that “humans are nuts”, his prostatitis and his hilarious encounter with a vet nursing a hangover get ample play in the journey and its touching to see Steinbeck conducting conversations with the dog on matters such as the
External reality is not so external; it depends on whose eye surveys it. Each person brings home a different city, a different journey, a different truth. search for roots. (“He listened but he didn’t reply.”) Charley fortunately “doesn’t belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself.” Particularly enchanting is the wisdom about travel and travel writing that is strewn casually about. Each journey, Steinbeck believes, is like a person; with an individuality and temperament that is impossible to control and bind down with schedules
and reservations. “We do not take a trip,” he says “a trip takes us.” Many trips continue in the mind long after movement in space and time has ceased; others leave us “without warning, or good-by or kiss my foot” while we are still stranded far from home. Steinbeck’s trip ended for him while he was still in Virginia; from then on the “road became a stone ribbon, the hills obstructions, the trees
green blurs, the people simply moving figures with heads but no faces.” Steinbeck confesses he kept few notes about his journey and is surprised to find some scribblings bound on a ketchup bottle with a rubber band. The large macrocosm of the land is the macrocosm of himself; to anybody else it would be different. External reality is not so external; it depends on whose eye surveys it. Each
Half a dozen books on Rashed’s birth
Govt. College University Lahore’s Urdu Department has made a highly productive endeavour in compiling
02 - 03
Sunday, 05 June, 2011
Rashed Baqalam Khud It is a 136-page anthology comprising biographical revelations, interviews and critical views of N. M. Rashed including excerpts from a dialogue relating to Carlo Coppola’s research on his person and art.
By Syed Afsar Sajid
U
rdu Department at the GC University, Lahore has lately carried out a highly productive exercise by publishing six valuable compilations on the person and art of the renowned Urdu poet and litterateur Noon Meem Rashed (1910-75) to commemorate his centennial birth anniversary (1910-2010). The credit of this remarkable venture is shared in bulk by Dr. Saadat Saeed, a noted teacher, critic, poet and scholar of Urdu whereas Muhammad Rafiq and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti have assisted him in two of these publications.
Intikhab-e-Nazm-eRashed This is a selection of Rashed’s nazm from his verse collections titled Mavra, Iran May Ajnabi, La=Insan and GumaN Ka Mumkin. Dr. Saadat Saeed’s preamble to the work serves to inform and enlighten the reader on the salient features of his poetics.
Rashed Aur Siqa(ati Mughayarat The book is a compendium of some well written essays on various aspects of Rashed’s poetry epicentred on his modernism which, as surmised by the author, draws on his ‘cultural alienation’. However, Rashed himself would not concede to this view. In the opening dialogue between Saadat Saeed and Rashed, the latter unequivocally pronounced that no
poet could possibly afford to alienate himself from his roots that lie deep in his native soil.
Naqd-e-Rashed It is an anthology of some illuminating essays on Rashed, the man and poet, by men of letters like Pitras Bukhari, Aghas Abdul Hamid, Ataullah Sajjad, Zia Jalandhari, Safdar Meer, Gilani Kamran, Dr. Wazir Agha, Ijaz Hussain Batalvi, Anis Nagi, Zia Mohiyuddin, Tabassum Kashmiri, Amjad Tufail and Tanvir Asghar. It is a quasi almanac on Rashed, useful to both the common reader as well as the inquisitive literary scholar.
Rashed (‘Ravi ‘ May) Rashed was an old Ravian (192832). He also edited the Urdu section of the college magazine The Ravi in 1930-31. Prior to that as a student of Govt. College, Lyallpur (1926-28), he had edited the college magazine The Beacon. Interestingly, Rashed adopted a number of names – like Rashed Waheedi, Rashed Alipuri, Nazar Muhammad Rashed, Noon Meem Rashed Waheedi and Noon Meem
Naqd-e-Rashed: Compiled by Dr. Saadat Saeed
Rashed – while writing for The Ravi. The book contains Rashed’s prose and verse contributions to the magazine besides some articles on his person and art periodically contributed
Literary Essay
person brings home a different city, a different journey, a different truth. “So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.”
Drastic discrepancies And now, a full 50 years later, along comes a journalist named Bill Steigerwald to spoil the party. A Steinbeck fan, he set out to commemorate the journey by falling the Nobel laureate’s wheel tracks and write a book on how America has changed. Instead, he ended up finding drastic discrepancies in Steinbeck’s account. Using biographies of Steinbeck, letters that he wrote from the road, newspaper articles and the first draft of the book, he contends that Steinbeck was not predominantly alone during the journey but was joined by his wife, that he did not sleep in the camper under the stars too often but in motels and even luxury hotels and that several of the encounters he writes about, including the charming one with the thespian, actually never happened. And now the readers and scholars are divided between those who feel let down by their literary hero for palming off fiction as non-fiction and those who say that it really doesn’t matter that much; after all, all non-fiction contains some fiction (remember Chatwin?) and the book does remain a quirky, entertaining classic. As Steigerwald himself writes: “It doesn’t matter if it’s not the true or full or honest story of Steinbeck’s quixotic road trip. It was never meant to be. It’s a metaphor, a work of art, not a AAA travelogue. Steinbeck himself insisted in “Charley” — a little defensively — that he wasn’t trying to write a travelogue or do real journalism. And he points out more than once that his trip was subjective and uniquely his, and so was its retelling.”
Analysing the novel An insightful literary study that’s also a window into the mind of one of the major writers of our time it, and readers can be categorised as naïve By Jai Arjun Singh
I
n one of the essays that make up The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, Orhan Pamuk mentions that after reading memoirs and conversing with other novelists, he came to realise that “compared to other writers, I put more effort into planning before I put pen to paper… I take somewhat greater care to divide a book into sections and structure it”. This tone of this revelation is not selfcongratulatory; it’s the tone of critical analysis, based on the understanding that there are different approaches to writing, each with strengths and limitations. If Pamuk takes some pride in his meticulousness, there are also times when he appears to express a melancholy envy for authors who are less self-conscious and to whom writing comes more easily. The Nobel laureate’s repeated use of the words “naive” and “sentimental” in this book derives from Friedrich Schiller’s 18 {+t} {+h} century essay “Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung”, which distinguished between two types of poets: the “naive” ones who write spontaneously, almost as if they are being dictated to by an unseen power; and the “sentimental” ones who are painfully self-aware, questioning everything around them, including the artifice of their own writing. Novelists can be similarly classified, Pamuk proposes.
Not a clear-cut divide
But it would be a mistake to think of this divide as a clear-cut one: the creative process is a mysterious thing, in which “deliberate effort” and “natural, unforced talent” constantly overlap with and inform each other. For instance, if you read Pamuk’s own novels, you’ll probably agree that much of his work has a formal, cerebral quality that can have a distancing effect (an early book, the meandering The New Life, is a good example of this). But in the best of his writing — Snow and My Name is Red come immediately to mind — this quality coexists with an easy knack for humour, fluid use of language and a sense that the author succeeded in fully immersing himself in his created world. Of course, a novel hardly exists in isolation; it acquires a new life when readers respond to
and sentimental too. The former are literalminded sorts who always read a text as an autobiography or as disguised chronicle of the author’s experiences, while completely sentimental-reflective readers think that all texts are constructs and fictions anyway. “I must warn you to keep away from [both types of] people, because they are immune to the joys of reading novels,” writes Pamuk, tongue firmly in cheek. But somewhere between these two extremes lies the ideal reader, and as you turn the pages of The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, you begin to think that Pamuk himself must be very close to being one such. On view throughout this book is Orhan Pamuk the reflective writer as well as Orhan Pamuk the enthusiastic reader. His descriptions of the effect that his favourite novels have had on him — “sometimes twilight would pervade and cover everything, the whole universe would become a single emotion and a single style” — are eloquent and moving. He uses great works of literature like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Melville’s Moby Dick to illustrate important aspects of the reading and writing process (everyone, from Homer through Cervantes to Naipaul, is grist to his mill) and reflects on the novelist’s use of the tools available to him – character, plot, time and objects. He also writes — somewhat enigmatically, not always with clarity – about the “secret centre” that a great novel should have, which the reader should – consciously or unconsciously – be seeking.
Down-to-earth side
In such passages, some of Pamuk’s reflections can be arcane, especially if your level of engagement with literature isn’t as intense as his. But a measure of the scope of this book is that it also allows this highbrow writer to show a charmingly down-to-earth side; when, for example, he compares the experience of following a soccer game on radio to transforming a novelist’s words into mental pictures; or when he remarks that a reader like him has no hope of finding any kind of accessible meaning in James Joyce’s notoriously difficult novel Finnegan’s Wake. Speaking of the artistic calling that he almost took up before becoming a full-time writer, Pamuk
is within the State
six publications on eminent poet N.M. Rashed person and art
Bayaz-e-Rashed Ka Mazharyati Muta ‘ala Compiled by Dr. Saadat Saeed
to it by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Prof. Ashfaq Ali Khan, Anis Nagi, Dr. Salim Akhtar, Dr. Wazir Agha, Dr. Khawaja Muhammad Zakariya, Dr. M. Fakhr-ul-Haq Nuri, Prof. Fateh
admits, “I have always felt more childlike and naive when I paint, and more adult and sentimental when I write novels.” It was as if – he says in a very revealing passage – he wrote novels only with his intellect, but produced paintings solely with his talent. However, he also reflects that with age and experience, he may have found “the equilibrium between the naïve novelist and the sentimental novelist within me”. His best novels are certainly a testament to this. This book is an insightful literary study, but even more interestingly it’s a window into the mind of one of the major writers of our time.
The enemy
centenary
Rashed Aur Siqafati Mugha ‘erat By Dr. Saadat Saeed
Title: The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist Author: Orhan Pamuk Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Available at: Readings, Lahore; Price: Rs845
Muhammad Malik, Ziaul Hassan and Shaista Batul.
Bayaz-e-Rashed Ka Mazharvali Muta’ala
Rashed Baqalam Khud Compiled b Dr. Saadat Saeed
The book comprises a selection of Rashed’s hand-written poems (nazm) with an in-depth critical introduction by the compiler Dr. Saadat Saeed.
From Page 1
have a way of either being internally sabotaged or never making it to the hands of the public. But it is interesting, that during the questioning of Rehman Malik by reporters aggrieved over the murder of Shahzad, one asked him, “Why do you fear naming the ISI?” Rehman eventually responded with a ‘security agencies’ protect the country tirade, but for a while appeared jolted by the directness of the question. This was a special moment. An exISI DG was subsequently subjected to a battering on television by Mosharraf Zaidi and Nusrat Javed. The press and the people are waking up. The murder of Saleem Shahzad has served as a reminder for those who value the truth of their voice that it shall be a struggle, but it appears it is a struggle they are ready to pursue. All this has meant that the military and the intelligence agencies are under pressure, and rightly so. But the right kind of pressure has yet to be applied. Under the narrative of, ‘it isharaam to sacrifice the sacred cow,’ a set of individuals has begun to quote anything from Salahuddin Ayubi to narratives of early Muslim Medina to offer insight on the current predicament in Pakistan and why the military needs to be protected. However, this crew must be asked to furnish an analysis of contemporary
Pakistan – and the role of the military and agencies – before they can continue their ramblings. Meanwhile, upon reflection, an ex-SSG Commando was arrested for alleged involvement in the PNS Mehran attack, just before Saleem’s report. If complicity is proven it ties in well with Saleem’s final narrative: the armed forces and intelligence are internally compromised. Even if these organisations are not, and are operating upon a pure, pristine notion of ‘national interest,’ these organizations must now answer to the people. This was a murder too blunt, too crude, too brazen to be digested. Human Rights Watch (HRW) had already claimed Saleem Shahzad was with the ISI, only for his body to turn up. HRW subsequently made public an email by Shahzad reporting on a not so obscure a threat by the ISI director Media Relations. Even if the intelligence agencies did not kill Shahzad, who gave them the right to threaten him (or so many other journalists)? All in all it is a gruesome incident, a reflection upon which suggests, the true enemies of the people lie deep within the State. And thus we must ask for accountability.
Male koel
Secret within the secret
The Soon Valley has many secrets but the one it has kept the best certainly is Kunhuti Bagh
By Salman Rashid
T
he Soon Valley: quiet, secluded glens, thickly wooded with phulai (Acacia modesta) and sanatha (Dodonea viscosa) where the air rings with the call of the koel and the raucous arguments of Indian tree pies; where the lakes, if the season is right, abound with migratory ducks from the frozen marshes of northern Asiatic Tundra; where one can simply lose oneself in a wilderness of hill and forested glen within minutes of wandering away from any village; where clear rills tumble over bleached limestone and where it is still possible to surprise fox cubs frolicking in the thickets. Such is the magic of the Soon Valley, part of the Punjabi highlands of the Salt Range and known to so few. The dilettantes that do know the Soon and feign to write about it will spell it Soan putting the knowing traveller somewhat off course. While the Soan (pronounced Swaan with a nasal ending) is a river that rises in the Murree hills, sweeps past Islamabad and Rawalpindi, skirts the north-western edge of the Soon valley at a respectable distance and dumps itself into the mighty Sindhu River near Makhad town, it has nothing to do with Soon Valley whose name is pronounced exactly as the English word. The Soon Valley has many secrets but the one it has kept the best certainly is Kunhuti Bagh. If you dined with, say the Cabinet Secretary in his home in Islamabad in April or May and the dessert included freshly picked Washington Navel or Spanish Valencia oranges, you could be certain they had not been shipped in from across the oceans. This fruit was the pick of Kunhuti Bagh, making the orchard the only producer of off-season citrus fruit in the entire country. But this lasted
until about ten years ago. Official word on the orchard is virtually non-existent and so there is a tale. Kunhuti was some deputy commissioner who set up this garden for his pleasure and gave it his name, so the uninformed local ‘historian’ will tell you. But district records divulge that it was back in 1926 when a certain Major Whitburn, the District Engineer, carried out a survey to select a site for an orchard in order to experiment with non-local citrus varieties. Two things went in favour of this site, first, the climate. At 700 metres above the sea even its hottest summer is yet mild in comparison to the rest of Punjab. Secondly, a copious stream runs through this wild forest which could easily be harnessed for irrigation. As for the name: a quick run through the list of deputy commissioners of Shahpur district (having since ceded the honour to first Sargodha and then Khushab), there was no official whose name even remotely sounded like Kunhuti. It is a purely local name. Seventy acres were earmarked for the orchard and plantation began in 1933. Before the decade was over, the Kunhuti orchard was yielding first class Valencia and Navel oranges. That was not all, however. There were peach, apricot, pomegranate and mango trees as well that yielded a goodly harvest. Things went well until the partition and then Kunhuti went the same way as everything else we inherited from the Raj: down the tube. Until the end of the 20th century, the orchard was in the keep of the District Council. With steadily fading interest the council kept it trundling along and was making a meagre income from the annual crop. Then, in 2003, the orchard changed hands to become the responsibility of the Agriculture Department. That, according to one official, rang the death knell for Kunhuti. To begin with, the staff was by and by reduced to just two gardeners: for a garden spread over seventy acres these were scarcely adequate. Not surprising then that the plantation begun so ambitiously by well-meaning colonial officials has fallen to less than half of its original area. Even so, the remaining trees are mostly diseased. The acreage abandoned by the forest is
slowly being encroached upon by wild growth and taking the shape of rank forest. Better this than the area being turned into farmland or, worse yet, built up. Back in 1990, the first time ever I visited Kunhuti, there were still the two species of orange trees that the orchard was celebrated for. And if one were to go by the gardeners’ report at that time, the District Council was making money auctioning the crop. Ambitious plans were afoot to utilise a small hill within the orchard and experiment with other species of fruits including cherry. One could see that the masters of the orchard were serious for they had laid out a gravity irrigation system to hock the water of the stream up the slope without the use of electricity. Now, seventeen years later, there are no Valencia or Navel oranges, having all died off. Of the many mango trees just one remains. Though trees of other species are still there, most yield very little fruit because of lack of care. Indeed, the pomegranates seen in late August were all blighted and hung shrivelled to the trees. They only good thing to happen in this once fairy tale garden is the restoration of the old rest house. I do not have a date for its original construction, but it seems to go back to the 1940s. Back in 1990 it had a caved-in roof and I had felt it would soon be pulled down. This time round, the roof was redone, but the interiors of the three rooms were bare. One could at least be thankful for the small mercy of restoration. Sadly there is no plan to reintroduce the lost species that once did so well in the balmy climes of the Soon Valley. The gardeners reflect the state of disinterest of their department for they could not be bothered about going the extra mile to procure Valencia or Navel saplings from a nursery an hour’s bus ride away. All they do is sit about gossiping and collect their salary at the end of the month. As for the Secretaries Agriculture, both provincial and federal, they may not even know Kunhuti exists. Although the charm of sampling rare species of oranges in the dry heat of May is gone, yet the nine kilometre drive northward from Khabeki village by the lake of the same
name in the heart of the Soon Valley is dramatic. The road winds around hills with deep gorges on the side and strangely shaped buttes rising from the valley floor in a landscape that seems utterly devoid of other human presence. Then suddenly, one is confronted with a tree-lined pathway and in the background the off-whitewashed rest house building. Though the fruit trees are nearly all but gone, Kunhuti still is a lovely sylvan retreat where the birds sing with the abandon they know only in a pristine forest and the lovely rill still flows pure and untainted. If for nothing else, one must, once in the lifetime, take the nine kilometre-long road for the birdsong. –Salman Rashid, rated as the best in the country, is a travel writer and photographer who has travelled all around Pakistan and written about his journeys.
Things went well until the partition and then Kunhuti went the same way as everything else we inherited from the Raj: down the tube
Pictures by the Author
Sunday, 05 June, 2011