Spectator's Journal/Warming Up for Ramadan
Anant, Victor
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL WARMING UP FOR RAMADAN by Victor Anant KARACHI, Pakistan--Apart from Islam and its regional sword-bearer, President General Zia uI-Haq, the news is always about a few areas...
...and the grim possibility that the gathering warclouds might turn into nuclear mushrooms...
...It is becoming more irrelevant, as the country warms up for the fasting month of Ramadan, whether President Zia threatens elections before the Americans threaten to cut off (token, of course) aid...
...In the awesome intimacy of thousands of homes, friends, masters, and enemies are all watching VCR cassettes, pirated versions of Miss Bhutto's television performances, with the interviewer edited out for reasons of both economy and "hard-sell...
...A houseboy of mine who now works in "Woods and Caves," a local English-eatery, says he is being pressured by other waiters to join the forged-dollar gang...
...It's business as before, and the alliance of forces that control Pakistan remains the mullah, the merchant, and the militia...
...There is nothing which can be done openly which isn't more safely done underground...
...It will be a VCR election, when it comes, and Miss Bhutto is VCRQueen...
...rape, abduction, and other such exploits in rural areas...
...As State-controlled TV defeats itself with "overkill," this is how the opposition will gain dramatic advantage, emerging Houdini-like around the country...
...They took even the local barber with them," he says...
...While a local industrialist has been able to persuade Agrico, one of the largest American agriculture corporations, to set up a fertilizer factory here which will provide three-fourths of Pakistani requirements, importers of fertilizers are spiking their guns...
...I have been promised an eyewitness trip to the Valley of Swat, and the poppy-fields in the hills, and introductions to the growing band of foreign "settlers": and, while the Burma-Laos-Thailand Golden Triangle for drugs takes a diplomatic break, London street-prices of heroin are further strengthening AngloPakistani friendships...
...And one of the domestic drivers 1 talk to, Mefooz, from "Azad" (or Pakistan-held) Kashmir, tells me that from his hometown, Mirpur, everyone has set up some kind of shop or other in England...
...And if you go to Mirpur today," he adds, "you will see big British cars, Chevrolet and Buick and Mercedes, standing outside two and three-story British bungalows...
...The censors have shown greater leniency recently to columnists who write deadly serious "funnies" and poetry, and cartoons and news reports that show Uncle Sam at his worst...
...One Pakistani importer of heavy machinery under aidprograms categorized as "agricultural," told me that they tell the Japanese manufacturers what the price will be...
...and that perennial crop of stories rebutting stories rebutting stories emanating from India about such friendly-neighbor activities as subversion, massing troops across the border, and arms purchases...
...And yet, not until the night of the party, with its promise of a 25-minute edited cassette of Aziz Kurtha's television interviews with opposition Pakistanis, did I realize how urbanely confident, optimistic, things are: Pakistan is a horde of self-administering fiefdoms, each with its inviolable code of honor, dynastic, competitive, but never breaking the cohesiveness of its constituencies...
...Parallel Government" works...
...THE AMERICAN SPFCTATOR JULY 1984 45...
...When Miss Bhutto was asked by her British interviewer whether she had any last "message" for Pakistan, she rose with rhetoric, appropriately aware that she would be seen back in the VCR-decked homes...
...The only organized opposition is the People's Party, which has just recognized Begum Bhutto and Miss Bhutto as the leaders of the party, even in absentia...
...That's pragmatic...
...Indeed, Britain remains the epicenter of Pakistani politics-in-exile: Banned novelist Salman Rushdie's family lives here...
...No one will be able to tell which candidate represents which party...
...We dictate our prices to them, after we have got the contract...
...Through the homely smell of raw onions and kebab, or biryani rice, she can be seen exuding a sulphurous charisma of youth, persecution, and endurance...
...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL WARMING UP FOR RAMADAN by Victor Anant KARACHI, Pakistan--Apart from Islam and its regional sword-bearer, President General Zia uI-Haq, the news is always about a few areas of social skirmishes: seizure of heroin and other drugs, of VCRs and other prized consumer durables...
...The spectrum of what Foreign Minister of India, Krishna Menon, once described to me as "parallel government," the burgeoning area of underground activities, is the real-life domain of poor and rich alike...
...It's only the area of underground activity that has both expanded and become modernized: for example, the fact that heroin has taken the place of the traditional export, hashish...
...Even in the flourishing underground trade of VCR cassettes, American porn has the edge over Indian films, and "Dallas" commands more private viewing than, say, smuggled denunciations of the military regime by political groups in exile in Britain...
...For the last 37 years, it is the freebooters with their will to govern (not rule) whom I have seen keeping this unruly subcontinent going...
...While Pakistan is dry, the bottles in which fridgecooled water is brought to the dining table is always one with a Scotch whiskey cap...
...Every kind of Green Card marriage and visa to work abroad can be arranged more efficiently and quickly outside officialdom...
...Aziz Kurtha, who interviewed Miss Benazir Bhutto, daughter of former ruler Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, on a British commercial TV program for the Asian minority in England, is a local boy made good...
...as for more dangerous forms of naive lawbreaking, the newspapers report towns like Shahiwal where "smacks," or what is locally known as White King, can be bought freely...
...While the politicians will boycott the elections and go underground, what could happen is that the President will succeed in legitimizing the underground chiefs...
...Victor A nant has written for the London Spectator and other publications...
Vol. 17 • July 1984 • No. 7
