My fifteen hours in hell

 Published in Dawn Magazine on March 8, 1998

AFTER A MONTH  in the Holy Land you feel that you should now grow a beard. So, although it makes you look ten years older, you stick to it. The beard, plus a tasbih (rosary) in your hand and a grim expression on your face, soon has people regarding you as a wise man and scholar. 

One day, after a late wedding dinner, you ask a friend to drop you at a short distance from your place, as you think a ten-minute walk will do you a world of good. 

After a couple of minutes, a police van appears and they ask you to come with them. You tell them you live a couple of streets away, but they won't budge. 

So you climb into the van, and when you get to the police station, you find it full of other bearded men. It turns out that two foreigners (citizens of a neighbouring country) had been shot that evening, and so the cops had decided to arrest everyone who remotely looked like a fundamentalist. You try to talk to the cops, but no on pays you any attention. You are locked up with the others.     

You spend 15 hours in the stinking black hole before you spot someone you know, a visitor outside the cell. By sign language, for the noise is deafening, you tell him to contact your folks. An hour later a couple of nephews arrive. You seem them distribute money liberally among the cops, and you are allowed to go. You ask them how much they had to dole out for your freedom, but they don't tell you. Later, when you find out, you almost have a heart attack. 

The next day you rush to a barber and have all your facial hair removed. You resolve never to grow a beard again even if it means that you'll fry in hell. Now that you've been to a place worse than hell, you are confident that spending an eternity in the real thing won't be such an ordeal. 

By Shakir Lakhani

Revenge is sweet

Published in Dawn Magazine on July 18, 1999

I HEARD about it when I was in Saudi Arabia, and I have every reason to believe that the story is true. 

Returning home in the dead of night, a foreign executive ran over a young Bedouin and left him bleeding on the ground. He figured that since no one else had seen the accident, no one would guess that he had done it. Little did he know that the locals had their own highly organized network of intelligence agents. Someone in the neighbourhood whose job it was to note such things reported his late arrival, and while he was still in bed the next morning, the police came over and arrested him.

The trial was short and swift. He admitted his guilt and agreed to pay the victim's mother whatever the Qazi decided. But she was firm. "I have not slept a wink since my son's body was brought to me," she said, "and I shall not rest until his killer dies the same horrible death that my boy did." The Qazi urged her to forgive and forget, but to no avail. Finally they told him to be ready to die. 

The next morning he was taken to a courtyard and told to walk toward the centre. He hadn't yet reached the spot when a jeep hit him from behind. As he lay writhing on the ground, the jeep ran over him a couple of times. It took a few minutes for him to die, and all the while the old woman watched him contentedly. When he stopped breathing, she smiled and said, "Now I can sleep in peace."

By Shakir Lakhani

Failed state

Published in The Friday Times on March 24-30, 2006 

Sir, 

NAB has closed its investigation into the sugar scam following threats by those involved of a further price hike. It seems that criminals are highly influential in this land of the pure. They can flour the law with impunity, and they can enter parliament, where they impose taxes without paying taxes themselves. Do we need any more proof that Pakistan is a failed state?

Shakir Lakhani, 

Karachi

Clifton Crisis

Published in Daily Times on October 12, 2006

Sir, Block 9 of Clifton used to be calm, peaceful place until someone in the government came up with the "bright" idea of constructing an under pass there. This project is designed to provide permanent employment to may people and also, of course, ease traffic. Before the recent rains, authorities filled storm water drains with the mud that was removed from under the road to make the underpass. The contractor saved a huge amount that would have been incurred in removing this mud to another location. Everyone can well imagine what happened to the area when the rains came and the drainage system was blocked. When the government wanted to find out why Clifton Road had been turned into a giant swimming pool, they discovered that the storm water drains had been filled with mud and so they dug up most of the service road which runs parallel to the underpass, this was a way to help the rain water find the way to the sea once again. But before they could line the trench with concrete, the rains ended and for more than a month the people who live or work in Block 9 have been at great risk. No one has thought of doing something about the kilometre long trench, which any incoming car can fall into. Knowing how things are done in this country, you can be sure that the ditch and the trench will remain as an albatross around our necks for a very long time. 

Shakir Lakhani 

Karachi

Gas out

 Published in The Friday Times on April 18-24, 2008

Sir, 

I had been wondering why the gas pressure in my home had suddenly decreased until I read that some people had installed gas generators to be used during the frequent power outages which are turning the people of Karachi into nervous wrecks. I had always thought that using Sui gas for this purpose was illegal, unless special permission had been acquired beforehand. However, instead of penalising those who are indulging in this blatantly illegal activity, the Southern Sui Gas company has come up with an NRO of its own. It has decided to "regularise" what is unlawful by charging Rs. 1,200 per kva from those who are breezily violating the law. This translates into a one-time payment of 6,000 for a 5 kva generator, the most commonly used variety. But again, those who choose not to deposit this amount can still go scot-free. How will the SSGC know who is using gas generators unless the users themselves inform the company? 

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Plagiarist Purge

 Published in The Friday Times on March 14-20, 2008

Sir,

It was good to hear that Punjab University finally took action against the plagiarists, but merely sending them into early retirement was not enough. Some kind of financial penalty together with appropriate measures to ensure that the guilty ones do not get employed in other colleges or universities would have been more suitable. There is nothing now which can prevent these felons taking up teaching and influencing young minds again. Were they let off lightly because of their links to a religious party which has made the university a hostage for many years now?

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

'Whose soul left the world?'

 The basic flaw in Mr. M.N.Huda's reasoning (Dawn, Aug 6) in his apparent assumption that nothing would be discernible in a man who has lost his soul and received another man's soul. If the souls were really switched, as he asserts, Dr. Blaiberg should logically have emerged from the operation a completely different person, with the mind, memory and personality of the donor of his new heart. But this did not happen, as anyone can verify by reading Dr. Blaiberg's "To the last heart-beat.

I remember two novels based on this theme, which Mr. Huda would do well to go through. They are Edgar Wallace's "Captain Of Souls" and "The Little Nugget" by P.G. Wodehouse.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

All in a word

 Publshed in The Friday Times in 2009

 Sir,

There is a tendency among Pakistani Muslims to misspell the name of the famous writer Kahlil Gibran as Khalil Gibran. For those who don't know, Kahlil Gibran was a Mamronite Christian from Lebanon. He settled in the US and eventually died there. The 'g' in his name is pronounced as 'g' in the word 'gate'. Most Arabs pronounce the 'g' correctly, with the exception of Saudis who pronounce it as 'j'. The meaning of the word 'kahlil' is 'field'.

Shakir Lakhani 

Trump will make sure there's no peace in the world

It's evident now that Trump is a greedy, vicious slob who does whatever Netanyahu tells him to do. Every time there's a chance that a peace deal with Iran will be reached, he gets a call from the Zionist killer, and he backs out. I doubt that Trump will honor any peace agreement with Iran (if ever there is one).

Despite the ceasefire declared last month, Trump continues to attack Iran. After two bombings of Bandar Abbas, supposedly to defend attacks from Iran, he expects us to believe that he wants a peace deal. His latest threat is to finish off Oman (if the latter agrees with Iran to impose a toll on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. This should be enough for him to be declared a war criminal by the UN.

The most convincing proof that he's a Zionist agent came when he demanded that all Muslim nations join the Abraham Accords, meaning that they should recognize the genocide committing apartheid state. He doesn't know that Muslims hate Israel for its killing of Palestinians.

Then there's the wealth he's accumulating by manipulating the markets. Everytime he bombs or threatens Iran, the stock market declines and he and his cronies buy cheap shares. Then he announces that a peace treaty with Iran is imminent, the market goes up and he sells his shares. The man is 80, so why does he want so much? 

Why so many honor killings on Pakistan?

It happens so many times that I'm no longer surprised when a girl elopes with a boy from another tribe and both are killed a few days later. The police, who are remarkably inefficient normally, are easily able to locate and arrest the runaway couple.

In the latest case, the girl's family burnt all the houses in the village where the boy lived. The father of the girl claimed that she is only 14 years old, and the marriage should be declared illegal. The girl says she's 20, but the irony here is that most girls in the rural areas are married off as soon as they attain puberty (which happens at the age of 12 or 13).

I remember a woman with three daughters whose husband was a drug addict. She used to work for a neighbor of mine and asked her employer to help her in getting a divorce (the employer was a female lawyer). The husband got the notice from the court, and he immediately came over with ten armed men. I was struck by the fact that he didn't want his wife to return, he demanded that she surrender her three daughters to him (whom he could sell to support his drug habit).

I've wondered many times if the men of this country will ever learn to treat women as humans, but I doubt if this will happen in my lifetime.