Reporting Pakistan

by Meena Menon

  On the last day of our stay I didn’t go for a walk and when I came down for coffee, I found the policeman standing there. He looked miffed and said, ‘Aaj mai aapke liye jaldi aya tha, aur aap aye hi nahi (I came here early for you today and you didn’t turn up).’ I found this really funny and told him that it served him right for being so rude to me all the time. Journalist Yogesh Naik from Mumbai Mirror said let’s take a picture, but the policeman rebuffed him and said, ‘I don’t pose with women.’

  Striding on the road one morning with a shawl thrown over my shoulders, I met two women in flowing burqas who watched me come up to them with amazement. ‘Mashallah,’ they said, ‘you are a woman’, and dissolved into a giggling fit. I, too, joined the laugh riot I had unwittingly provoked, but there was nothing more eventful during my walks other than that for the week I was there. The city, however, was reporting murders and robbery with regular intensity, and it was shocking that a young woman was killed in daylight because she refused to give up her car keys. Much later I reported on an attack on a Sufi shrine in this locality.

  My eyes searched for the foreign element in Karachi. After all, we needed a visa and there was endless waiting before we could get here. The more I saw, the more it reminded me of home. I took pictures from the bus we travelled in, of people, of the streets, women sitting outside a closed shop, men on scooters, an old Fiat, and in Ibrahim Hydari, donkey carts, children and the huge boats with fishermen repairing nets. Unlike Islamabad, men didn’t always wear the salwar kameez there and the women were casually dressed. Some parts of Karachi reminded me of the old city in Mumbai. It looked and felt like a city of migrants and there was a mishmash of communities and localities, each with its own peculiarities. Compared to the cleanly laid-out, artificially organized capital city, Karachi was haphazard and intriguing in a sense. We squeezed in a quick visit to the Holy Trinity church, with its triple-stained glass panels and wooden pews, consecrated in 1855, and its memorials to soldiers killed in the First World War, and where Jinnah attended a service. Two days after Partition, ‘the Anglican archdeacon had arranged for a special service of prayer and thanksgiving in Holy Trinity Church, the Anglican Cathedral in Karachi. The archdeacon had also composed a special prayer, in which the Quaid was mentioned. When Jinnah heard of this, he asked that he might be allowed to attend the service, in State.’6 Since it was a whistle-stop tour we couldn’t see much really, but we paid a visit to the cottage industry showroom to buy souvenirs. It was a cavernous, dark and dingy place, and everything was dusty. The salespersons showed a marked reluctance, not because we were Indian—they didn’t know that—but they seemed to be lethargic as a rule. So we took out the things we wanted to buy, like Harappan seals, terracotta statues, tiles and beautiful earthen bowls from Sindh (though they were chipped, we bought them). They didn’t have too many of any item and we bought up the one or two remaining pieces. Along with the mounting Ajrakh shawls, we were gifted an agate chess set in a velvet box which weighed a ton. I was among those who had to pay excess baggage on our return, even though the kind woman at the PIA counter said she was giving me a concession. Pakistan’s Oxford University Press had a lot of books on which they gave me a discount and that had added to the luggage.

  Before the influx after Partition, Karachi was different. Piloo Mody writes: ‘When I visited Pakistan in 1959 and 1960 I found Karachi—which by all accounts had grown abnormally in the last decade and had become unmanageable—very clean and orderly, almost like a European city.’7

  With thousands of Mohajirs and over 150 temples, some of them endangered by development, and churches, Karachi has a multicultural dimension. People proudly told us that women drove cars and at that time the art scene was dominated by women who ran the city’s top six galleries. I briefly met the writer Husain Naqvi thanks to the writer and journalist Naresh Fernandes (part of the Mumbai Press Club delegation) who took me along with him to his house and later for an art exhibition. On display was a mix of sculptures and the installations were bold and evocative of the times—bullets were part of the theme and the uncertainty of life in general. So apt for a city like Karachi.

  Over the years, from a liberal cosmopolitan city, Karachi has been under attack from extremist elements that are threatening co-education schools and Sufi mosques, and creating an atmosphere of fear and terror. People being robbed at gunpoint of their cars and mobile phones is not uncommon, and as Ghazi Salahuddin, a senior journalist, whom we met on that trip, wrote in the News, ‘Pakistanis are hostage to a society that is infested with religious extremists on the one side and with violent crime on the other. We all feel extremely vulnerable. The breakdown in law and order is more serious a threat to our survival than any conspiracies in a political context.’

  Unlike Islamabad, the pavements were crowded with people and lined with small markets. Everything seemed to be cheaper than in India. In fact, some shopkeepers gave us concessions because we were Indian. Women were everywhere in scarves, while a few wore burqas. As we drove through the posh Clifton and Defence colony areas, much as in the rest of the subcontinent, I realized the huge divide between the lives of ordinary people and the secure, guarded lives in elite housing localities. We drove past 70, Clifton, the famous house of the Bhuttos, and some of us wondered if we could go inside. I did meet Fatima Bhutto in Mumbai before she had become a famous writer, but I cannot claim any real acquaintance.

  Murtaza Razvi was our self-appointed friend and guide. We ran into him while visiting the Avari Hotel and he took it upon himself to chaperone us around the city in the breaks between our official functions, and also entertain some of us at his home. Murtaza was a senior journalist with the Dawn newspaper. He was outspoken about the growing terrorism in the country and the intolerance. He had a column, and became rather unpopular for calling Imran Khan the poster boy of the Taliban, and often joked that every country needs an army but in Pakistan it is the army which needs a country. We were amazed by his open denouncement of what was going wrong. He told us that he couldn’t enter his daughters’ school without the round blue-and-yellow sticker on his car. The school was heavily guarded and fenced with barbed wire and it insisted on identity cards for parents. Co-education schools are under threat in the city, like Sufi mosques. Razvi was energetic, friendly and acerbic, and when I heard of his death in bizarre circumstances a couple of years after I met him, I thought of his charming wife, Sherezade, and their three lovely daughters and wondered what they would do without him. One more person I met on that trip, Masood Hamid, also of Dawn, and a frequent visitor to India, also died in strange circumstances in 2015.

  Avari Hotel is quite an institution in Karachi, and then the only place where we got some decent coffee. Its owner, Dinshaw Avari, took us to the top of the seventeenth floor to give us an aerial view of the city. Over a disused racecourse, and an empty swimming pool, the city shimmered in the hazy afternoon sunlight up to the distant hills and the orderly slum of Orangi beyond. Dinshaw’s parents had won the gold in Enterprise class sailing in the 1982 Asian Games for Pakistan, and his brother Xerxes had represented the country in sailing. The Avaris are part of a small Parsi community in Karachi which has lost much of its cosmopolitan flavour over the years. Like the Goans, many of them have migrated to Canada and other places. It was a pity that Naresh Fernandes couldn’t carry a couple of bottles of feni (liquor brewed from cashew, a speciality of Goa) for his relations in Karachi who were justifiably heartbroken that he had to leave them behind. It was probably their only chance to have a taste of that much-loved yet forbidden spirit!

  A visit to Karachi cannot be complete without visiting the home of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain at ‘Nine Zero’, and as we entered the narrow house in a crowded locality, there were scores of people around us, all supporters shouting slogans. Before that, under a large tent we had been treated to snacks as we waited to hear a live broadcast from London of the exiled leader. We were given bag loads of material on him and all of us were
made to wear Sindhi caps and shawls, again. The MQM calls itself a secular party with considerable middle-class support. At Nine Zero we climbed narrow staircases to see a most impressive media room where a number of TV sets had been arranged, all showing different channels. News was monitored round-the-clock by the efficient media managers of the party. The MQM is often accused of being supported by RAW, and once some Indian-made weapons were said to have been recovered from a police raid on one of their offices in Lyari. In fact, right from the hijacking of an Indian Fokker aircraft called Ganga, in January 1971, to the Bangladesh war, the unrest in Balochistan and violence in Karachi or the Taliban bombings, there is little that does not seem to have a RAW hand in Pakistan.

  A day trip to Hyderabad

  As we approached Hyderabad city, a few hours’ drive from Karachi, we crossed the Indus and there were the usual stretches of plastic garbage that you see in any Indian city. The crowded streets too were very similar. Large posters of Benazir Bhutto were everywhere looking down at you, smiling benignly at times, and there was Katrina Kaif flashing her teeth for a soft-drink advertisement. At the entrance of the Hyderabad Press Club was displayed a large panel with a quote from Jinnah on the condition of the press in India in a speech from 1918, especially significant in the light of diminishing press freedom. We had the usual affectionate exchanges, and the business meeting showed a keenness for trade between the two countries. The hospitality was crushing and all the women were gifted with boxes of bangles and shawls. A retired Supreme Court lawyer was our host, and a singer whose name I forget, but whose golden voice I remember, entertained us all evening, with the finale being ‘Damadam Mast Qalander’, which she sang even better than the famous Runa Laila. There was much dancing and singing that evening, though while returning, the news of a bomb blast in Karachi did suppress the merriment a bit. While sectarianism was gaining ground, Farheem Mogal, then a member of the Sindh provincial assembly, told us of the liberal Sufi traditions of Sindh and protest marches against the killing of three Hindus in a riot.

  A part of the day trip to Hyderabad was a boat ride on the Indus, and for many of us it was the first time we set our eyes on the river. The serene waters and the barrage gilded by the setting sun formed a backdrop to fishermen in colourfully painted boats casting their nets around. While returning, we saw a bus with people sitting on top, and two women in creamy, billowing skirts, shirts and dupattas got off and walked into the sunset.

  The city has the wonderful Hasrat Mohani library, a tasteful brick building set in green lawns with elegant interiors full of books in high-ceilinged halls, formerly Holmstead Hall reconstructed at a cost of PKR 26 million in 2008. The crowded locality where L.K. Advani, former deputy prime minister and BJP leader was born, was another stop in Hyderabad, and the area had some remnants of the colonial-style buildings of the past rubbing shoulders with ugly modern construction.

  Social life, undercover restaurants and Kabul

  I usually woke up early, having slept only after midnight, and then walked or—if it was too cold—read all the newspapers and magazines. The first thing even before I had coffee would be to put on the TV and the computer, and quickly scan for any breaking news. I made it a point to walk or work out, and briefly joined yoga-cum-Pilates (my teacher used to call it ‘yogilates’!) classes. Work kept me busy all day, filing three or four stories into the evening, and then reading or watching films if I wasn’t going out. It was hectic and there was very little time to relax except when we were doing the hiking trails or watching films. I also tried to do what we call special stories or op-eds which took up a lot of time.

  I used to see my next-door neighbour driving in an old, red Toyota. She would say hello and was friendly but we didn’t get around to visiting each other. She used to think I was a diplomat since I appeared on TV sometimes. On the other side I didn’t see too many people. Behind the house lived some young men who played cricket, and often the ball was hit inside my compound and they would pester Sajida for it. On my walks, I mostly saw security guards who spent their lives guarding huge bungalows from tiny concrete cubbyholes built outside the gate.

  Islamabad is a friendly city and doing stories was not too difficult since most people were forthcoming. I had already been warned about my appearance by my friends at home. Clothes were important and make-up. A friend had advised me to ‘dress well’, as otherwise I would appear shabby in comparison with the elegant Pakistanis. I was gifted dupattas and kurtas so that I would not be a disappointment, and I thought I got along fine till a make-up man in a TV station scolded me for my simplicity! In Mumbai, casual dressing was the norm for journalists and that was also one of the reasons I liked my profession, but here I was vastly out of sync with the prevailing mode. I refused to be made-up before a TV talk show, and the make-up man was aghast that I didn’t even wear lipstick. He insisted on some light powdering, and proceeded to give me a short lecture on how I should be conducting myself. He said such simplicity would do me no good and people wouldn’t take me seriously if I didn’t up my glamour quotient! By then, I had a fair idea of my shortcomings, and worse was to come. Friends in Islamabad were often surprised that I didn’t use make-up. Appearances clearly mattered even if you were a journalist.

  I was advised against celebrating festivals in an obvious manner. Since I didn’t do that back home, this wasn’t difficult. Unlike in India with its noisy festivals, the only sound of crackers I heard was during Diwali celebrations within the high walls of the Indian high commission. I read reports in the papers of muted celebrations for Indian festivals. When Bakri Id approached, again I was warned by friends against going out, saying that there would be blood on the streets. I could hear the goats bleating in the houses around me and TV shows were full of programmes on Qurbani, and there was a particularly awkward episode where the TV anchor spoke of how they tried to kill a camel and it bolted and they had to stick a knife into it or some such thing. While I didn’t see anything as gory, the street outside my house was wet after washing off—I’m guessing, blood. I woke up on Id morning to hear a dull thudding sound, like that of wood being cut. I looked out and between the bushes I could see my neighbour’s garden where the carcass of a stretched-out goat was being chopped. I didn’t look out after that. Everything was closed for a few days and people outside their gate would clamour for meat.

  While I didn’t get any top-secret information (quite damaging for the spy I was thought to be), I could walk around, buy the things I wanted, I could get fresh farm produce and meet nice people. Social life in Islamabad is full of diplomatic dinners and get-togethers and they mostly end early at 9.30 p.m., except once when a visiting Indian dignitary refused to be sent off at that rather early hour. Parties are the norm and from day one we were invited to dinner. A friend invited me to a party and when I said I didn’t know anyone, he said you will, once you get there. It was a birthday celebration of a senior politician who treated me like his long-lost daughter. The friend had said he would come and pick me up around 9 p.m. and I had to be ready to leave in a flash. Leaving home was not easy; I had to lock so many doors, plus the gate, and it was too cold to wait outside, so I was on tenterhooks when his call came. I rushed out to find the small lane leading up to my house jam-packed with jeeps and huge cars, blinding me with their bright headlights. Carloads of gun-toting security personnel were behind a black, sleek vehicle, and I heard a sharp voice asking me to jump in quickly while I locked the gate. In the darkness, I couldn’t see this important personage who was escorting me and I had to wait till I reached the party to find out. The evening was full of Punjabi poetry and songs, Scotch and excellent food, and very male. For a while I was the only woman around. The friend who had invited me forgot about me and left the party. It was very late and thankfully, a kind politician whom I knew, wondering why I was standing outside, quite lost, dropped me home

  Journalist and now TV anchor, Amir Mateen, was my closest neighbour and he would often call me up to meet many of his friends—
newspaper editors, human rights activists and politicians—who were friendly and off guard, and almost all of them were clued into the happenings in my newspaper and my country. We would have long conversations lasting till late in the evening and if the mood and occasion dictated, there would be music. Amir’s man Friday, a shy but charming young man called Adnan, would ply us with food and snacks, while his dog would bark all the time as it was confined to a small area in the compound. Keen to showcase his Punjabi culture, he once invited me for a relative’s wedding he was hosting, complete with all-night singing.

  Amir played my guide in the National Assembly and often he would pick me up and drop me back when I didn’t have a driver. He would tell me about all the politicians and I would read his column the next day in the News. He wrote as if he were talking to you, so it was engaging and quite funny at times. The first time, we were seated in the long press gallery—and later always in the same place—he pointed to the ornate ceiling and joked that the calligraphy was verses from the Koran, in case I thought it was graffiti. I spluttered in anger, saying I knew that much and he guffawed. He was really helpful while I learnt the ropes about covering both the Parliament and Senate, and who was who. We spent long hours in the canteen waiting for sessions to start and that was where we met more politicians and journalists. If the celebrated Geo TV anchor and journalist who had interviewed Osama bin Laden, Hamid Mir sat with us, there would be a crowd of people who wanted photographs with him—he seemed to have a huge following. A few of us went for movies together, or met for small parties or lunch, and the Centaurus mall was walking distance from where I lived. Coffee at the Kohsar Market—Islamabad’s equivalent of Delhi’s Khan Market—was a regular ritual, but sometimes we had to leave in a hurry due to filing stories and deadlines. Asmatullah Niazi from Pakistan TV (the state channel which is in English) was most helpful with almost anything. Many other friends too were part of my life in the city and at times we hung out together. Having a car and driver, and the short distances made things so easy as the available public transport in the city was not a great way of commuting.