Prisoner no. 650

We are the generation of Muslims that grew up fearing our own kind. We pigeonholed all the practicing ones as extremists. We dreamed of fleeing abroad and making our future in the center of learning and knowledge. However, we soon realized our flawed construction of reality. The promising slogans of Peace and Democracy proved to be hollow. Shard by shard, our emotions were hurt by those claiming to be humanists; from Abu Ghuraib prison, Iraq WMDs farce to this never ending phony war of terrorism. Now, the case of Dr. Afiya Siddiqui has once again set us ablaze.

Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani citizen, went to Manchester to graduate in neurobiology. She had been an accomplished student since her early years and got into MIT and Brandeis University through scholarships. Later, she got married with Amjad Khan but the marriage came to a breaking point in 2002, the year she got divorced. In December 2002, she made another trip to US to find a job for her. The US suspects the real purpose was to open a PO Box Office for an alleged al Qaeda operative. In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a chief al Qaeda person was arrested by FBI from Rawalpindi. Around the same time, Afia Siddiqui was catching a flight for Islamabad from Karachi airport from where she was hustled off by the ISI agents along with her three children. Her family was threatened to remain hushed about the matter. However, later ISI denied all the reports about a woman being handed over to FBI by Pakistan.Moazzam Beyg,an ex detainee of Bagram Air Base, wrote a book Enemy Combatant and mentioned the horrifying screams he heard of a lady. This was corroborated by other detainees and Lord Nazeer. The book was read by Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who travelled to Bagram and confirmed about an imprisoned woman known as The Ghost of Bagram jail and Prisoner no. 650. After the hue and cry, she was removed to Guantanamo Bay where she was repeatedly raped and brutally tortured. She was kept in a male facility and there was no privacy for her shower and bathroom. She had lost her sanity. She was charged with the crime of being a courier of diamonds and for shooting an FBI officer in Ghazni.

Throughout this time, her family was kept in dark about her whereabouts. Her mother cried vehemently waiting for the shreds of news about her extraordinary bright daughter. It was Yvonne Ridley who broke the ice and presented the case to the public. Her case was reopened in Feb 2010 and the court passed the verdict against Dr. Afia and gave her life imprisonment.

Rehashing the facts is not my purpose, neither am I trying to plead her innocent. I simply want to share with you what bewilders me. The question arises in me is that even if she is guilty of aiding al Qaeda, should she be yanked away from airport to the gloomy dungeons of Bagram, without any news to her parents? Why should her children be detained and made to suffer? Why aren’t the courts issuing verdict against those officers who subjected her to sexual harassment and physical assaults?

The role of agencies in this quagmire is equally dirty. Pervez Mushurraf, in his book mentioned about earning million dollar bounties for capturing and handing over suspected al-Qaeda persons to the US. I feel indignant at us first. Islam considers women sacred, yet she was treated so atrociously and shamelessly by the Muslims. There had been news about her manhandling and gruesome torture, but nobody flinched.

I see this as blatantly against fundamental human rights. The law says that everyone is Innocent until proven guilty. She might be more heinous than Osama bin Laden in the eyes of US, but does that give them the right and authority to molest her, to abduct her along with her children and torture her? I demand that we should put our foot down and force the government to pass a verdict against this injustice and extremism.

If the case is scanned chronologically then one finds sheer inconsistencies. First, the ISI had been telling the family that she is wanted for mere interrogation, and later she is called as one of the dangerous al Qaeda operatives. Secondly, the FBI report contradicted the blame on her since the finger prints on the bullet does not match her DNA. Moreover, the site where she allegedly shot the police shows no signs of bullets. Amjad Khan, who had been in the forerun in alleging Afia of being an aide of al Qaeda, said all the news reports about her are false. He says her son had been killed and her lawyer says that Afia’s identity had been stolen.

I am not taking any side, but a comparison needs to be drawn. Ridley, a UK journalist was held by Taliban for ten days but she wasn’t hurt a tad. So much so, that after her release she embraced Islam. What about the civilized and humanitarian claims of the US? Is Mukhtara Mai the only Pakistani woman worthy of their humanly consideration? I don’t know what torture is like, but we can see a glimpse of it in the picture of Dr. Afia from Guantanamo Bay. Her face has withered. Her radiant smile of her graduation day seems of a totally different person. It shows not only the physical pain, but also the mental scars.

I am not here trying to awaken anyone because all of this should have scrambled us to action a lot before. It’s too big a loss for us to just sit and whine about it. Allah SWT says in Surah Nisa “And what is wrong with you that you do not fight in the Way of Allah and for those ill-treated and oppressed among men, women and children?”We are a nation which boasted about woman’s honor. We are a nation of Muhammad bin Qasim, who flocked to Sindh on the plea of a woman and liberated her.

The Holy Woman

How many of us have heard of Holy Woman? It evokes an image of a nun, clad in black robe and scarf. Well, it’s not that! Holy woman or Shahzadi Ibadat, as in Urdu, is a woman created by the feudal lord who is married off to Quran or more exactly to the land in case there is no male heir, or if the men of the family do not want to marry off their daughters. I can sense surging anger already!

In her extremely stirring and exquisitely written book, Qaisra Shiraz weaves a plot where a drop dead dame is forcefully turned into a Shazadi Ibadat. The story starts with Sikander, a business tycoon from Karachi falling in love at the first sight with Zarri Bano, who has been rejecting many suitors in search of Mr. Right. However, Sikander is a guy who finally sweeps her off the feet. Soon, she gets engaged experiencing a new kind of love spell cast by Sikander. Period.

The tragedy starts when Jafar, Zarri Bano’s brother dies, and her father finds alleged reason to not let Zarri, a feminist, modern and well educated damsel from marrying. Crying bitter tears and not believing she was being brought in the lap of a tyrant, she was forced into doing something she had fought against all her life. She had pitied and crusaded for those oppressed girls but little did she know that once she herself will have to surrender under the pressure of her father, his izzat and Siraj Din’s love for the mere acres of land.

Shahzadi Ibadat is devoted to a life of worship and religious preaching. As the whole concept of Shazadi Ibadat unfolded, it seemed brutal, inhuman and downright ironic. Though outwardly, one gains respect, but the inner remains shattered, desiring human love. It shows man’s absurd sense of proprietary. He cannot allow another man’s gaze to set upon his daughter. It shows that though our society has outwardly made progress, women are still mere puppets, their strings in the hands of man who can pull and drop it on their whims. Their happiness and sadness are manipulated by their ideas. Qaisra showed how male can twist the logic by connecting the most natural and noble of things and feelings with innuendos and degraded remarks to blackmail and stop woman from going against their way.

One also questions the logic behind making her a Shazadi Ibadat, in which case she is forbidden to marry thus cannot bequeath the property to a legal heir. Her father said that the next heir, according to the tradition will be her sister’s child, then one questions why not allow Zarri to marry who might as well have passed down the property to her own son? Qaisra showed in the end that pulped down by whatever circumstances, human nature is indomitable. It retains its essence, as in the end Habib realizes the havoc he has played with his daughter’s life. Zarri Bano, though alienated from human feelings in the end assents to marry Sikander.

Another story that goes parallel with Zarri Bano’s is Chaudhrani Kaniz who plays the role of a tyrant mother. It is a typical plot where the Chaudhrani is against her son’s wish of marrying washer woman’s daughter, Firdaus. In a typical hyper theatrical style, he flits away from his house and Kaniz has no other picking but to yield to her son’s desire. It gets very humorous too, when both, soaked in their pride, spewed abuses at each other. In the end, she admits defeat and makes Firdaus her daughter in law.

At one point, it seemed the book has been unrealistically weaved into tragedy and melodrama. One almost starts crying at the heartlessness of parents when Ruby marries Sikander. At that point, the reader is teeming with hopelessness and disappointment. I would have loved the read more if Qaisra had not martyred Ruby and Habib, and instead showed that Zarri or her mother stood up against the injustice and gave the ‘happy’ ending to their lives. This way the story would have been a powerful lesson and an example for the entire women who have surrendered to their kismet, carved by their male bigots and their nonsensical traditions.

The language and flow of Qaisra is flowery as well as captivating. She has an intellectual conversational style. The dialogues are passionate, which makes the book an easy read and a page turner. It seems Qaisra deliberately and very astutely crafted a story intermingled with a fine humor and intense tragedy that makes reader cruise swiftly through the chapters.

Stupid White Men

Who doesn’t know about Michael Moore, the guy from Michigan where another rebel activist Rosa Parks dwells?
Recently, my editor flung his all time famous book Stupid White Men at me. Guess what, it was no less than a fun reading it. His piercing humor makes you rolling with laughter. The book caused hullabaloo around America. Though initially, the publishers advised to pulp the books printed. It was considered too dangerous and homeland-threatening. However, soon the book went up to No.1 New York Times Bestseller and thanks to Penguin, they published the paper back version too.

Mike leashes out against the White men. He is indignant at a variety of things; the Corporate America, the commercialization of education system, the black racists, the pretentious hoodwinking democrats and stings at the male sexist. The first chapter relates to the Bush sham of rigging the elections. According to him, the democrat supporters were put behind the bars in large numbers and polls counting were not even started when Bush was declared the President by the Fox news. Other channels followed suit. This must have sent chill down the Republican’s spine especially when he questions Bush about his education and discloses his family felonies.

Kill Whitey was super humorous. He recounts all his unpleasant experiences in life and says that a strange but an unmistakable pattern emerges in which every cruel act has a Caucasian face attached to it. With his biting satire, he recalled that all the dangerous things, be it H-bomb, Holocaust, PVC, PBC all have whitey in it. He also explained the response he got from his documentary Roger&Me in which he showed a woman clubbing a rabbit to sell off the meat. The video was R-rated because it was considered too violent. Teachers called him up and told they have to omit that part because it is too violent for children. Everyone shed tears for the cute little bunny. However, just two minutes later in the same video is a scene of black man being shot by a police officer. But strange, nobody feels against this cruelty. This seems familiar to us as well where we have also accepted the suffering of poor as usual, like in America where people think killing or imprisonment of a black guy is a standard operating procedure.

The People’s Prayer is a good and vicious prank to make the high ups think of what goes on actually with the people who are at the receiving end of the idiotic laws their government legislated. He prays to God that every member of the House of Representatives be condemned to a life of flipping burgers and dodging bill collectors. He pleads sincerely that may Jack Welch swim the Hudson he has polluted. Once they are in the same mess the other people are languishing in, will they realize the suffering and correct it. So all say, Amen!

The chapter on Democrats is outstanding. It must be painful to all those who foolishly stick their hopes at those liberals. He strikes at Bill Clinton-Al Gore duo at this time, though he says son-of-a-Bush is still worse. Okay, but Bush followed most of the policies coined by Clinton. The arsenic seeping in drinking water streams by the industries started in his time, but he kept the public in dark about it. So, whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans, it’s the same thing forced down your throat. The government doesn’t listen to people; they only nod at the financially powerful people who brought them to power.

However, only carping about the crooked ways is not Mike’s strategy. At the end of each chapter, he calls people to counteraction, with few stupid as well as radical and workable ideas. For all those who want to learn about the similar crooked governments with the high ups having the same devil-may-care attitude as ours, read it, and let’s put some of his ideas to practice in our extreme scenario! Peace!

Ground Zero IIU Blast

On 20th October, we all felt a lurking danger! To lighten up our moods, the three of us whirled out through various corridors of the campus to the café. It was our sanctuary in IIU where we could sit for like five hours in a go on the same bench, discussing everything under the sun. Buying a scrumptious plate of Biryani, one of the reasons that pulled us to university, we indulged in never ending tattles on celebrities, updating each other on latest secrets of friends, sometimes discussing hard core politics, being disgruntled at society, telling family stories and sharing our anger at why are we not doing anything against killings in Waziristan. Later, we took a round to the shopping area and tested and bought kajals and lipsticks.

The café had such an air that the first step in it, brought you up! Girls laughed in raging decibels, hand slapping, and sometimes, the extra-bubbly ones had water fight running around the café which lifted our spirits and we could not help laughing at the whole scene. But, who knew about the doom it was waiting? Who knew, instead of laughing and energizing ourselves, we will cry and weep here? Who knew it will brutally drown some of the smiling faces forever in the clouds of smoke?

The headlines said Blast at IIU which blurred everything. It seemed the world is falling apart. How desperately I prayed it was some sort of a cruel joke? There was a flood of calls from all over the world asking if we are safe. And I wondered about those parents who received the call informing them about the death of their beloved child who they saw off in the morning! Some must have been in too hurry to say good-bye!

There was turmoil in the university. According to the news sources, the first blast occurred at the entrance of the cafeteria at 3:07. The guard Shaukat Bhatti obstructed him from going in, who was shot by the bomber. Then, Pervaiz Masi stopped him, at which the bomber blew himself up. Sabahat of Computer Science told me there were around 300 girls in the cafeteria. Media department 1st semester were having their welcome party. She was sitting at the side wall of the café. She said she felt a strong jolt, and suddenly, it was all dark and the obnoxious smell of explosives saturated their lungs. Some of the girls fainted whereas others were screaming. Rod pierced through one of the girl. Few sighed their last breaths and bled to death. In the midst of this mayhem, there was another blast at Shariah block after 5 minutes. She told me guys from the male campus fled to the café to help the girls. One of the guys asked her to resuscitate the injured girl, but before she could reach, she expired.

And as I sat safe in my home, I wondered about those girls who saw their closest friends dying, the friends who must have thought living together till the end, seeing each other married, making fun of their spouses and babies…But, line got cut in the middle….

One of my classmates Iram lost her best friend, Sidra of BS Mathematics on that day. She has become a legend. She topped the Pindi board. Now, Iram sits reminiscing about her. Her jokes are echoing in her ear. Then she gets startled remembering her face in the coffin, cold and serene, bringing her back to cold reality. She mournfully tells me how she loved wearing colorful, vibrant scarves. She told me that her parents forbade her to go to university due to the threats but she insisted that without education, people have no value.

Some of the major injuries were suffered by BS English 5th semester; since the whole class was almost there. Maria Azam, one of my friends, had been worried about her neighbor and friend Tayyaba, who was also in BS English 5th semester. She was in PAEC and lost the battle of life on 27th Oct. She told me that she was very religious and recently did a course from AL-Huda. She loved the university. I could not help laughing at her guts. She told me that once the group of friends was going somewhere when a thief snatched the bag from one of them. She ran after the thief and got the bag! I saw her innocent face and could not reconcile to the fact that she is no more in this world. I was awed by the life in her. She excelled in all her roles. Her mother considered her the backbone of the house because she kept everything in order.

Amna Batool, though I did not know her personally, but I sometimes saw her on the bus. Last time, I saw her at PIMS and she was beyond recognition. Even today, I can’t believe that such a smiling and intelligent face was the same person lying in ICU.

Countless tears, countless memories, countless wounds, countless thoughts….why did we have to go through that doomsday? What was the sin of those innocent students? How come life became so uncertain, so insignificant, squeezing out of our hands like sand? I wonder if we will ever be able to erase those horrific memories, those cries….but the story doesn’t end here. It is just one of the episodes. The series started when, we don’t know. We don’t know who is behind all this? We have just been forcefully made the actors….the fuel for this war! I wonder if we will ever be able to sleep peacefully after this trauma when a single odd thing reruns the whole scene again. It is ravaging us from inside.

But then I envisage that pair of green eyes, filled with fear, of the child sitting in shattered home at Waziristan, who is muted with the horror of the hovering drone out to kill his family. How long had they been living in this permanent fear? Why did we not ever raise a cry then, when the fire was engulfing our brothers in Northern Areas?

And now the fire has come to our doorstep. We plan to hide in our homes. But, for how long can we shut up ourselves? For how long will we just sit and watch these counts of dead bodies? Our enemies are preparing the hell for us, they are invading our home, but we remain quiet! This silence is Our sin. This is Our tyranny.

This is the price that we are paying for keeping silence at the brutalities in Palestine, and giving our soil to kill our Afghan brothers? This was our first mistake that is plunging us deeper into the abyss. Our Prophet SAW said that Muslims are like parts of the same body. Isn’t it time that all the Muslim countries unite and face the enemy? It is time that we cut off all NATO supplies going through our country, because they are here not to help, but to only destroy us. Remember, by keeping this silence, it is just the handful of years that we are buying, eventually they will turn against us too.

For how long will we feed ourselves on the foreign aid package, the ridiculous Rs.650 a year per person? Is this the price we have set for each other? For how long will we just switch sides between Taliban and Black Water? When will we, the gullible ones, start questioning everything that West wants us to believe? When will we consciously seek the truth and stand up for it? But, do we really care?? Speak Today, or there is no Tomorrow!

Pity The Nation!

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
Eats a bread it does not harvest,
And drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

By Khalil Jibran

Life Goes On!

Life goes on….so the cliché goes. It is a reality. To those who cling to the past and the memories of the beloved, it is a subtle advice that….Life Should go on!! I remember every time I read this stolid cliché; there was an uneasiness in me. I could not help being agitated by the indifference of this statement. It seemed blatantly dismissive of the people who hold my world. The very people who give meaning to my life, who share the experiences of my life, who hold my hand in times of need, who encourage me to think ahead in life.

And now when I recall this, I want to scream…life CANNOT go on…It SHOULD not!!…I do not want to think of taking one step without them…How can it go on without those very people your life is hinging on? What do you do with the void that stares at you? What do you do with those memories that cloud your today? Those fears that loom up again and again? Those symphonies that you composed for them? Alas, where do you put those words that you wished to share with them?

Perhaps, life has to go on, but the paper of our life is blotted forever. It forever floats from the images, echoes and scents of the past that add hues to our present. We go through poignant nostalgic phases, which detach us from our surroundings. We search those faces in the crowds. We feel a shade on us when the sun is scorching. We feel them smiling at us in our happiness. We tell them the tales of our heart in our loneliness. We cry and laugh in their presence. Because, they live in us forever and ever!

Curfewed Night

As a child in mid-nineties to 2000, I remember seeing images on PTV 9o’clock news from Kashmir. Daily, it showed statistics of people martyred and procession of funerals. Though, Srinagar was the name only heard on TV, the images of aggrieved mothers thumping their foreheads, wailing over the corpses of their men remains etched in the mind. The hatred of Indian Army still fills the deepest recesses of heart.

Yet again, I see the glimpses of Kashmir in the form of a memoir ‘Curfewed Night’ by Basharat Peer. How I wished it had been about the scraggy icy peaks of majestic Himalayas meandering through it the flamboyant stream, exquisite saffron fields, latticed huts and poplar lined highways. On the contrary, it evoked military convoys, red snow, mine blasts, night curfews and violent militancy. It tells the heart wrenching tales of shattered youth and the tragic gallantry. ‘The poet lied that Kashmir is Paradise’.

Peer is raised in Kashmir. He introduces the impressive profile of his family. His mother and grandfather work in school and his father is a civil engineer. Kashmiris are a people who have put a premium on girl’s education. The family lives happily sending time in much cherished library, and Peer honing his English. However, when the dispute kindled and there appeared the maze of check posts and the gun totting soldiers skirmishing with the militants, their lives turned a new leaf. Fear and paranoia took hold, afflicting the whole population. He narrates to us different incidents of massacres by Indian Army during protests and funerals. This provoked the series of attacks by the liberation armies such as JKLF and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen to avenge the attack by the military. Thus in the skirmish between the Army and the Militants, the innocent people suffered.

He tells the tales of youth crossing the border, to train for militancy. Returning they fought the Army, firing grenades and exploding mines. Interestingly, charmed by their heroism, Peer also garnished the dream of joining SLF which thankfully was discovered by his parents and revoked. The militants were seen as heroes, whom people wanted to see and embracing them, touching their Kalashnikovs in awe. Tariq is one such guy who is a superb athlete, but joined militancy keeping his family in dark about it. His father is grief-struck, because becoming a militant is only next to being killed or worst maimed and tortured for life in notorious cells.

One feels the surging anger and hatred at the brutality of Indian Army. Scores of innocent civilians are killed everyday in the pretext of hunting down militants. One such incident was of Mubeena, the bride who was shot and gang-raped on the day of her wedding and many of her family members were gunned down. Similarly, villages were burnt down, mosques and shrines were destroyed. Hundreds of years of history were razed to ground in a day. The incidents about torture cells send goose pimples all over you. Papa-2 is one of the heinous cells where the captured militants are interrogated. It is infamous for its methods of torturing the prisoners that left such indelible disorders both physically and psychologically making them vulnerable for life.

The BSF practices notorious acts of dictatorial and oppressive regimes. Thousands are displaced by the military and the police. They raid the house and take the men away as suspected militants, never to be returned. Their families mourn; their wives are half widowed waiting for their news if they are alive or dead. Parveena’s speech impaired son was taken away. Hers is an inspirational as well as heartbreaking example. She is a ‘crusader’ who is fighting cases for the disappeared people. But, those disappeared remain lost forever. In compensation, the government offered her the pittance of one lakh rupee, but she loathed it as selling her son. It is now known that the displaced people are killed and cremated in mass graves.

One thing that really struck me was that in this violent militancy pitted against state oppression, the combat only worked to the detriment of the people. Though, the militants are seen as liberating them, ironically, they also spurred and at times directly killed those whom they claim to be liberating. There was an attempt by the militants on the life of Peer’s own parents and his uncle. The local people had to obey them submissively, lest they install a mine on their way home. Thus, forced subjection is from both sides. It was also surprising to know that the militants also switched sides becoming the part of Indian Army and spotting the potential as well as suspected militants. Moreover, it was very heart breaking to know of Shafi who had been tortured in Papa-2 who is verging on blindness. He laments about the chief of JKLF whose lives are stark contrast with those who are actually sacrificing their lives and languishing in torture cells. He talks about the demoralized leadership, shielded by the bodyguards, riding white Ambassador cars looking like mirror images of their ideological rivals in the state.

One thing that I came to appreciate is its style of narration free from any polemics against Indian Army. It does not indulge in any rhetoric against Pakistan or India; the conflict between the two actually which is devastating Kashmir. Rather, he tells the tale of people. He takes us deep down into the quandary showing all sides; of the individuals marred by military and of the youth lost by militancy, of the shrines dilapidated by the ruthlessness of one and the forts demolished by the fanaticism of the other. However, what grieves you is not only the brutality of Indian Army because that would persist, them being our enemies. What we need to see is what our people are doing in the garb of Islam and liberation movement?

The question that persists is of Identity, of Kashmiris free will and self respect. The writer humorously tells that Cricket Match, which evokes most passion in India and Pakistan, serves as a test of their affiliation and will. They never cheered for India. If India played against Pakistan, they cheered for Pakistan, and if it was Sri Lanka against India, they prayed for Sri Lanka. Lately, there had been elections in Kashmir, the writer says the army forced the people to choose ballot over bullet.

The vignettes of a journalist are the lives of people he is reporting on. Peer became journalist against his father’s dream of making him a civil serviceman. His industriousness and unflinching professionalism is an inspiration to all the budding journalists. He yearned to tell the world about Kashmir, both about its beautiful vale and the dilemma of its people. He trudged onto danger zones and plunged himself into dangers to reveal to the world the depths of its misery, the shadows of death and loss and yet the feats of fortitudes and resilience in the lives of Kashmiris. He ends the book showing the bus crossing the bridge between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar. Perhaps, we need a stronger bridge!