(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
ISLAMABAD/LAHORE/KARACHI/PESHAWAR/QUETTA – The first ever Pakistani, Mohammed bin Qasim, who sketched the ideological boundaries defining the sovereignty of our state almost a millennia and a half before it was formally created, must be rolling in his grave over recent developments in the region, the nation is quietly sure.
Following The Dependent’s investigative probes into the nation’s collective subconscious, it has been learnt that there is a mass discontentment over what many feel is the Arab world’s betrayal of fellow Arabs in al-Bakistan.
“What would Mohammed bin Qasim be thinking looking at UAE and Bahrain giving highest civilian awards to [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi] like other Arab states,” wondered Shaukat Jamil, a Karachi-based dermatologist, late Friday night.
“He must be rolling in his grave,” replied Saima Qureshi, a Quetta-based teacher, while thinking out loud in her subconscious.
Others consider recent developments, most notably the Arab world’s silence of Kashmir, which is the jugular vein of al-Bakistan, as ‘backstabbing’ of the very foundation of al-Bakistan that Mohammed bin Qasim had laid in Sindh in the year 711 AD.
“The first Pakistan, Mohammed bin Qasim, knew about Arab brotherhood. His pan-Arab, pan-Islamist movement has been stabbed in the back by those now ruling the Arab states,” thought Jameel Hussain, a Peshawar-based businessman.
Some went as far as questioning whether such rulers actually deserved to be called who they claim to be.
“They aren’t true Arabs,” Lahore-based computer engineer Talat Majid concluded.
