“We’re all mad here”

If Zardari had only said “except one former president” instead of “one former general” amongst Benazir’s murderers is left, he would have been closer to home

It’s Ramzan, during which falls the Night of Power when the Quran descended into the soul of (PBUH) making him the perfect Muslim, a momin. For Muslims, this is the month of renewal, strengthen faith in God, and learn discipline, humility, forbearance, tolerance, moderation and forgiveness, a Divine quality. To bring ‘adl’ or balance in their lives and their societies, do justice and speak the truth and only the truth so help me God. But they should also learn to speak the truth privately and go public with it only if serves the public good. I regret that I have sometimes said things that have been hurtful to others and had nothing and had to do with the public. This hurts families and serves no purpose. The Power of the Pen is God-given thus one should respect it and learn to control it. I regret that I have hurt people sometimes and am gradually learning to acquire those qualities that Islam demands and Ramzan gives a refresher course to.

During her 8^th birthday party last month Zara my granddaughter gave everyone a badge to wear. Mine said: “We’re all mad here”, what the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Lewis Carol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’. I’ve kept it and still wear it sometimes because I’m mad, you’re mad, we’re all mad, the whole world has gone mad.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

“And how do you know that you’re mad?”

“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?” I suppose so, said Alice.

“Well then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

The Cheshire Cat could slowly disappear leaving behind only its broad toothy grin that gleamed in the dark. Reminds one of Asif Zardari, does it not? Some people do call him the Cheshire Cat. After maintaining the pretence of sanity for years he finally cracked up and showed that he’s mad. He barks when he should meow and meows when he should bark, damaging himself, playing into the hands of those whom our mad politicians consider their ‘enemy’ viz. the army, which has historically had its share of madness too.

Few fell for the audacious spin Zardari’s doctors gave his mad statement threatening the army and us with the ‘Sindh card’ and to set Pakistan on fire north to south

Few fell for the audacious spin Zardari’s doctors gave his mad statement threatening the army and us with the ‘Sindh card’ and to set Pakistan on fire north to south. Spin is based on the assumption that people are stupid when they should have assumed that we are all mad, they more than most. Genius can be mad – one Van Gogh comes to mind. But Zardari’s follow up statement at Benazir’s 62^nd birth anniversary turned the spin to into a long hop that hit the spinners for a six.

Said Benazir’s widower in an obvious reference to former President Musharraf that all murderers of Benazir have gone “except one former general.” Only if he had said “except one former president” he would have been closer to the suspected truth, but that’s coming dangerously close to home. Gone is talk of his political savvy. What a pathetic creature he has turned out to be under pressure, outing the truth as the symbolic noose around his corruption and criminality tightens.

I can’t understand. If the army is really serious about accountability and cleansing, why did it let Zardari and family scoot to Dubai? Why do they duck unpleasant but vitally important issues?

For once, the hapless Nawaz Sharif wisely distanced himself from Zardari, or was ‘advised’ to: he telephoned Army chief General Raheel Sharif in Moscow. It might surprise you, but there are some less mad in Nawaz Sharif’s party who also advised caution. So he cancelled his meeting with Zardari agreed to earlier. The political parties that showed up at Zardari’s Iftar party the next day were lukewarm. Seems like he wants to gang up with the MQM and ANP but it looks like that they didn’t go with him the whole hog – not just yet – not least because they know that Zardari’s popularity in rural Sindh is waning as is their own in urban Sindh. A person with such a high stink is a liability, not an asset.

That is not to say that stupidity has departed Nawaz Sharif’s most Kashmiri settler gang entirely. They are also mad like the rest of us. It’s only a matter of degree. Some are madder than others, but mad we all are nevertheless – the world over. So if we are all mad “here”, where is “there” where not a mad person to be found? Sorry. Nowhere.

Now the noose is tightening around the MQM, the leading political party of urban Sindh that represents the Urdu-speaking migrants or Muhajirs from India whose forebears struggled more for Pakistan than the sons and daughters of its soil. They got a raw deal “here”. The Cheshire Cat can also ask them, “You must be mad or you wouldn’t have come here”. But come here they did since the whole world is mad. However, the deal they would have got in India would have been even ‘rawer’ – RAW RAW RAW if you don’t mind the pun. We’ll look at it next week.

Athenian god called Owen Benet-Jones flew down from Mount Olympus and climbed up Mount BBC outside the offices of New Scotland Yard to give the impression that they are also party to his claim and that two as yet unnamed MQM officials have admitted in a recorded statement to the British police and a “senior official” of the government of Pakistan affirms that the party took help, funds, arms and training from India. Nothing new here because it’s something what many in Pakistan have openly suspected for years. However, suspicions, media pronouncements, claims and statements to police do not proof make nor do they make legal court verdicts under due process. But the documentary has sent the MQM into a spin and the noose is obviously tightening around their necks too. Add to this the investigations into the London murder of the MQM’s leader Imran Farooq; the arrest of two prime suspects in the case in Pakistan, their investigation by British police and Altaf Hussain’s goose seems all but cooked. There isn’t the problem of his scooting Altaf Hussain is already in London. The MQM’s leaders must have been mad to start out with the just cause of getting the Muhajirs a fair deal and then becoming a political Mafia, looting, robbing, kidnapping, murder, arson and what have you. There is enough evidence against them to send them to the madhouse forever. But it must be done in a proper court of law under due process. It cannot be done under suspicions or documentaries on any western television channel that claimed in a lunatic frenzy that Saddam Hussain’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when there were none. In a fit of mad ‘poodling’ British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that Saddam could put together a WMD in 45 minutes. They are party to the demented attack on Iraq but they were not contrite about what they have knowingly done. The BBC is party to mass murder. It led to not only led to a war of madness without end, but along with the equally mad war on Afghanistan and what they call war on terrorists who are of their own mad omissions and deliberate commissions, it has all but bankrupted America – mad, mad, mad and madder still. No need for a madhouse when the whole world has become a Global Madhouse.

My fear is that if and when action is taken against the MQM Karachi might go from pre-civil war to full-blown civil war that could spread to the whole of Sindh if Zardari and the ANP jump in. All three are suspected of having links with India. The ANP started life as NAP and was founded on the Red Shirts movement started by Ghaffar Khan known as the ‘Frontier Gandhi’. His grandson now heads it in its latest incarnation as ANP to escape Bhutto’s dictatorship. What a mad, mad mess.

If the army is really serious about accountability and cleansing, why did it let Zardari and family scoot to Dubai? Why do they duck unpleasant but vitally important issues?

So even if the Cheshire Cat said, “You must be or you wouldn’t have come here”, where to go when the whole world is mad, I’m mad, you’re mad, everyone is mad? The difference between people, places and politics is in degrees of madness: some are less mad than others. All are going towards increasing madness at different speeds. My madness tells me not to worry about a future since I am left only with a past, but what about the youth, our children? Not just mine, who are relatively luckier, much luckier, but children of the world’s ghettos, of Thar, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Rohingya of Burma, Sudan, children of the 10 percent (mostly black and coloured) Americans living below the poverty line and in other so called ‘developed countries’ with their much touted ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’… the list is endless. What about child prostitution and pornography flourishing worldwide, child slavery and multiple abuse of humanity…? What about the slavery rampant in Sindh, south Punjab and Balochistan? Why doesn’t CNN take notice of that in its admirable programmes against slavery? Makes one want to puke. Does it not make you want to puke?

Personally, why did I “come” here? Well, I did not “come” here. Like most of you I was born here and this is the earth to which I belong. Anywhere else – and I have been there for long – makes me a fish out of my waters, not feeling at home, always something missing, lesser, incomplete. Answer: go nowhere, make a new, better, kinder place where you belong. If everyone does it we’ll also have a new and better world. This is the vital imperative upon all of us.

Next week I hope to continue in this vein, first about the MQM and then and give you a short list of our madness and the world’s madness.