White Lies

Keeping in touch with the writing on the wall, here is a message written on a rickshaw in Abbottabad: “Please do not blow yours horn, the army is sleeping here.”

An SMS received:

‘What kind of country do we live in? Even Osama bin Laden is not safe here.’

Another SMS received:

‘My son is dying of hunger,

My daughter died in a suicide blast,

Mother is sick but doctors are on strike,

Brother cannot drive his taxi because CNG is unavailable,

Dad is out of business because there is no electricity to run his business.

I am penniless because I am jobless

And you want to open the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case

Can’t you see the issues around you?’

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That the most wanted man Osama bin Laden lived in the neighbourhood, complete with three wives, some kids, one lieutenant and his family (quite a crowd) has put a certain locality in Abbottabad up there on the world screen. We hear the site is drawing neighbours and tourists. Neighbours are taking a fresh peek at the three-storied, poorly constructed house with walls and a gate more suited to a fortress.

Drones of local tourists are there for a photo-op, to put on facebook or twitter: Guards on the site say that visitors are openly wondering who collected the $ 50 million reward and frothing at the mouth. But there is another change that is also the talk of the town and that is that air force jets are regularly patrolling the sky at night, registering their presence with noisy movement. A little late in the day, perhaps.

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