By Ayaz Amir
The emperor without his clothes; Government of the Mandate made to look foolish, in full view of a bemused and disbelieving nation; a lone gunslinger, with wife and children, at the centre of it all; and the government’s talk champion, undisputed in his field, Nisar Ali Khan, otherwise holding forth on everything from foreign policy to the state of the nation, missing from the scene of this heady performance. Not only not to be seen but, amazingly, not even to be heard.
This drama – for once the word drama not out of place – goes on and on, for more than five hours…the setting, Jinnah Avenue in Islamabad but the audience, prime-time audience too, the entire nation, the government’s role throughout outstripping the bounds of the serious and becoming wild comedy.
And if this wasn’t hilarious enough, into the TV frames walks Zamurrad Khan, patting the kids and, using this as a feint, lunging at the gunman, Sikander. Shots are heard and it’s all over. From the government’s point of view not only is this the wrong end to the drama, this is rubbing it in, because Zamurrad’s pedigree is all wrong. He, the St George to the rescue, instant hero hailed as a hero across the nation, is from the hated, discredited, not-to-be-mentioned PPP. If a script had to go wrong it couldn’t get more wrong than this. This is adding insult to injury.
Stunned into silence…all quiet on the PML-N front. But if most PML-N leading figures have not been able to bring themselves to say a good word about Zamurrad they have had the decency to remain quiet. Not so the party’s Admiration Wing, the media qawwals with soaring voices who sing Mian Nawaz Sharif’s praises day and night. Foam on their lips, wild anger in their eyes: how dare Zamurrad, and by extension the PPP, steal the honours of this comic evening?
There’s almost a campaign afoot to malign Zamurrad. He was being stupid and foolhardy and it could all have gone horribly wrong. The gunman could have opened fire, blood would have flowed, and then who would have been responsible for the consequences? It’s hard to figure out what’s more funny, the drama as it unfolded, showing the best of our officialdom in a coma, or this wild-eyed reaction.
It could have gone so horribly wrong. Ah, so true, as in every act of daring – a lone act like Zamurrad’s or something reckless on the battlefield – there is always the danger of things going wrong. But does anyone have to tell the qawwals that this is what risk-taking means? You take your chances. You know that your head might hit the rocks, that the chances of success are slight and the margin of error great. And yet the brave soul, the intrepid soul, the foolhardy soul who if he had any sense would stick to his bed or his armchair, takes his chance, plunging into the swirling waters.
Have the qawwals never heard of Danton? At the height of the French Revolution, in the midst of internal turmoil and external invasion (the Austrian army was attacking from the east), what was Danton’s prescription to save the situation? “…il nous faut de l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace” – “We need audacity, and yet more audacity, and always audacity.”
Much on similar lines Marshal Foch’s famous battle-cry in the First World War: “My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.”
Let not the musicians forget that fortune favours the brave. Did fair lady ever warm to a timorous man? You can’t get a lady onto the dance floor, forget about anything more spectacular, without some pluck and daring…a smile on your lips, a slightly rakish manner. Horses don’t care for nervous riders. Women have never cared for cowards or narrators of cautionary tales (one reason for my less than stellar success in this sphere).
Yes, Zamurrad’s folly could have triggered a minor massacre. But then Tariq bin Ziyad could have been defeated before the Rock of Gibraltar and, having set fire to his boats himself, never an action more foolhardy, how would he have escaped? Hannibal crossing the Alps, the Mongols riding so far away from home, Babur venturing into unknown India …(examples from history which are legion), foolhardy moves that could easily have gone wrong. And then who would have been responsible for the consequences?
The Islamabad pantomime should have been allowed to go on. Zamurrad had no business trying to put on the stunt he did. But he pulled it off, at great personal risk to himself. Of the crowd gathered there he alone proved to be the man of the moment. That is what matters. The rest is irrelevant. And he was lucky, not a small matter. Napoleon, other things apart, wanted his generals to be lucky.
Of course there will be more attempts to belittle Zamurrad. The PML-N has always been good at this sort of a thing. And the interior minister, with his gift for manoeuvre, will keep trying to obfuscate the issue. But the more he does so, the more he hurls threats at police officials for allowing Zamurrad to get near the gunman (and more on the same lines), the more attention will he draw to the comic performance of his own departments that eventful evening.
But he is his own best judge and will do what he thinks is best. As close Nawaz Sharif adviser in 1998 he was instrumental in gifting Musharraf to the nation as army chief. He hasn’t apologised for that. He won’t apologise for this latest fiasco. Expect him instead to keep painting Zamurrad as the chief villain of this piece. Reminiscent of Goebbels really: keep repeating a thing, however outrageous, and people will come to believe it. Only problem in this case is that the nation was witness to this farce… in real time too. So the scope for revisionism, or exaggeration, becomes a bit limited.
But think of the larger canvas. The PPP down and out, to the extent that no one ready to take its name in polite company; and the PML-N on the summit of things, expected to perform the unlikeliest of miracles. Now this shot-in-the-arm for the PPP; and for the PML-N a downsizer, revealing both party and emperor in their naked glory…all because of a character from Hafizabad called Sikander. Strange are the ways of Providence.
Of the qawwals and their choreographers we need to put some questions. At this juncture of our history, Pakistan beset with as many perils as France was during its revolutionary period, turmoil within and the enemy not only at the gates but spread all over, does the country need more Nisar Ali Khans and Imran Khans, going round and round in circles, unable to give things their proper name, prophets of caution and dithering, or do we need some foolhardy souls as role models, who can come forward, holding their lives in their hands – role models like the winsome Malala Yousafzai or the overweight Zamurrad Khan?
Our hearts should go out to Nawaz Sharif. He’s always had a transparent face, quick to show joy and depression. These days he looks so confused. And counsellors with a gift of the gab, always ready with silver-tongued answers, don’t help matters. He would have made a passable prime minister for ordinary times. If only these were ordinary times.
But let us not lose heart and let us pray for some pale reflection of a Danton – we won’t get the real article – to teach a nation not too familiar with audacity the virtues of audacity. So here’s to Malala, and here’s to Zamurrad Khan, and in the desert of our desires may there be more like them.
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