Reporting Pakistan

by Meena Menon

  I felt they really didn’t want Indian correspondents unless we stayed within some harmless plugs or press release writing limits. The officer hadn’t read the whole article except for the part where Qadeer denies he is a RAW agent as is popularly believed. All the portions which they found unwholesome were highlighted in bright yellow and thrust under my nose. The dialogue went on these lines: ‘Is this what you came here to write?’ He accused me of fudging the entire interview and he kept asking me for my notes or recording. I was quite alarmed and hid my notes after I went home. My integrity was in question and the official was crude and nasty. I told him when I was invited to cover the Mohenjo Daro festival, his office didn’t respond to my request to go there and that all my requests to travel and write on art and culture were met with radio silence. In Islamabad what art and culture I could write on had already been covered by me. I had by then interviewed Abida Parveen, and written a detailed feature on Haroon the creator of the immensely popular cartoon series Burka Avenger. He then asked me whether I had written on Kashmir and if I supported the Kashmiri movement, and so on. He said it would be difficult to process my visa extension if I did stories like this which was a deliberate attempt to malign the country. He raked up every unpleasant thing he could and it went on in this vein for some time. His subordinate officer whom we usually dealt with later said that Balochistan was an extremely sensitive issue and it usually upset the government no end. It’s a paranoia not restricted to Indians, and Carlotta Gall from the New York Times was punched in the face and her computer, notebooks and cellphone were taken away in Quetta in 2006.1

  With the baggage of India’s role in East Pakistan, Pakistan constantly harped on India ‘destabilizing’ Balochistan by funding and supporting the insurgents. Indian journalists were seen as RAW agents, and so this article on ‘Mama Baloch’ was a no-no. I had gone for a talk given by the author Ayesha Jalal at the Quaid-i-Azam University where she warned the audience about treating the Baloch issue the way matters in East Pakistan were dealt with. She said, ‘The lessons of 1971 centred on secession versus power sharing . . . You cannot accuse people who want a share of power at the centre as secessionist or treasonable and by doing so we will go the 1971 way. Power sharing has eluded us over and over again.’

  It’s a signal warning that is going unheeded; yet, all that matters is whether India and its agents (journalists included) are trying to destabilize Balochistan or infiltrate the TTP.

  Some of my Pakistani friends also privately wondered why I had written it and said there was no need for the paper to have highlighted it. I was quite puzzled by this attitude. Correspondents before me had gone to Quetta and written about issues there and there have been phone calls in protest. But they had not been expelled. I knew then, more or less, that it would be difficult to report from this country with all these dos and don’ts. I also told this official that I had written so many positive stories on the country, and how come they were not highlighted in yellow and shoved under my nose? I didn’t tell him I knew for a fact that one of my stories was similarly highlighted but in appreciation, and that he had not called me in to praise me then! I realized it was only the so-called ‘unpopular’ or critical stuff that stayed with them and with most people I knew. However, on this count, even Pakistani journalists were not spared. I spoke to journalists who admitted that the security agencies had asked them not to cover the long march or give publicity to Qadeer.

  I really had no intention of courting trouble, nor was it an attempt to destabilize Pakistan, but few believed me. I got a lot of emails appreciating the interview, including from Balochis, which made me feel a little better. Here was a man who marched over 3000 kilometres to draw attention to a serious crisis; it was a great story and I felt it had to be written. Qadeer met the UN and EU officials and demanded NATO intervention to resolve the problem, which was rather brazen. I told the official it was an interview, and I was only reporting it. Nowhere had I said Balochistan must be made an independent state. He couldn’t understand or was obtuse about the entire issue. The grilling ended badly; he was a state-of-the-art people shredder.

  Epilogue

  An Inky Farewell

  To enter Faisal Mosque you have to deposit everything you have—mobiles, handbags, cameras, shoes. I had always meant to go inside, but since it was so close to home, I left it for later. I didn’t think my visit would happen soon. Both Snehesh, the Press Trust of India’s correspondent in Islamabad, and I were having dinner at a friend’s when we got the calls. It was a little after 9 p.m. when our usual point man at the external publicity office phoned me first to say that my visa was not going to be extended and I would have to leave in a week. The formal letter would be delivered to my house the next day. He didn’t give me a reason. Soon, Snehesh too got the same call. I had expected this sooner or later but when it finally happened, I was annoyed. There was a furious discussion on why this had happened and Snehesh and I listed out our thoughts. My Baloch story was dragged in and other things, and my friends, who were shocked—one of them knew this was to be—tried to commiserate. We rationalized that even nine months in Islamabad wasn’t so bad and joked that even a week was a long time in Pakistan.

  The kind friend took us out for ice cream; it was the first time we had been out so late on the street. Later we drove to Faisal Mosque, empty of the multitudes and lit by the stars. There was no one in sight. The broad marble steps were chilly under my feet and we climbed up to a massive hall. It was a memorably inky farewell to our nine-month sojourn in the capital. The white minarets glowed in the darkness and the mosque, built on the lines of a spaceship, looked beautiful for once.

  The expected letter didn’t come the next day though news had spread of our expulsion. There was much speculation about what had happened and the blame game had begun. After a few days when the letter still hadn’t come, I spoke to the then head of external publicity, Imran Gardezi, a genial sort of a man. He told me to start packing and said the letter would be delivered shortly. I asked him about future correspondents, since that was the main worry. He said yes, they would be welcome. He agreed to give me a week to leave and I asked permission to leave via Karachi for Mumbai. The rule book says you can only go back the way you came and I didn’t see any point in going to New Delhi and the longer route for me via the Wagah border.

  Almost everyone I knew back in India was relieved that I was coming back. My friends in Islamabad said I was going back home and it was not such a big deal to be expelled. The visa was not renewed after January 2014, but suddenly the machinery woke up with great alacrity to give us a few days legitimacy in May to return. In a way, I was so glad I wouldn’t have to fill more forms for a visa renewal or visit that dank office with its smelly corridors. The external publicity office had its faults but its staff were again nice—tea, biscuits and sympathy were on offer. But they were also puppets doing a job.

  With little time left, I went up to visit the Pakistan Monument, located on a little rise above the city. It was Musharraf’s idea to showcase the country in a pinkish tableau—a huge lotus with four petals and carvings symbolizing the distinctive provinces of the country. There was a garden of sorts around it and a museum. You could see a lot of the city from the top and the view was worth it. There is nothing that had any history in the capital and the monument perhaps sought to fill that lacuna in a way. But still it was too modern for me. The museums charged extra for foreigners and I paid it, though once at Lok Virsa, the man at the counter was surprised since he thought I was a Pakistani. I told him I was an Indian and he shrugged as if it meant the same thing.

  I also made a quick trip to the Bari Imam mausoleum which was under repair. I would often pass the mosque with its shining green domes. Small boys stood outside the barricade selling bright blue plastic bags and there was a row of sweet vendors with orange laddoos. Inside, there was a separate area for women to enter and soon I was besieged with them asking me where I was from. There were the usual smiles of welcome and I can
’t say it didn’t make me feel good, especially since I had less than a week left in the capital. As much of the mosque was under repair, I was allowed to enter briefly into the main hall which was a mess of scaffolding, cans of paint and bamboos propped up everywhere.

  In the last few days, more than earlier, the spooks harassed all those who met me and asked for their identity cards. Some of them shouted right back and once outside a restaurant, the traffic was held up thanks to my host refusing to part with his identity card. I was really proud of my friends—they stood up for me and were brave enough to take me out for dinner and meet me despite all this.

  I had just paid another year’s rent when the news came and I had to call my landlord who was equally taken aback. The packers were efficient and soon the house felt cavernous, emptied of most furniture. My editor asked me to sell everything, including the car, three days before I left on 18 May 2014, and I managed with a day remaining. I found that it was easier than I thought to sell almost anything there. From morning, strangers would wander through the house asking me the price of things and soon I got quite fed up. I had already sold the fridge but a woman who was related to someone’s driver came and created a scene and said if she didn’t have that fridge, her children would die of thirst that summer. I caved in and gave it to her. She had even brought the money along. My neighbour complained that I hadn’t informed her and she would have bought stuff. Anyway, there was a helpful young man at China Market who inspected everything and we decided on a price. We had driven past this flea market kind of place once and since I had no help to do things, my husband suggested I find someone there. He was enterprising and even got someone to buy my car. The buyer was in a big hurry to change the Indian-tainted number plate which began with 27, so I was without a vehicle when I needed it the most.

  The spooks stationed outside my house in a last bid to harass people who were going in and out even stopped Sajida while she went off with a tempo-load of stuff. One of my friends came to pick me up for our farewell party and she still remembers that scene of the vehicle full of furniture and knick-knacks, leaving with Sajida sitting in the front—the drama was lost on me then, I was too busy clearing stuff. Beard would be pompously scribbling notes about everyone who came out of the house and when I looked out, he would duck into the trees. I did manage, though, to take my second picture of the man. He finally had something to do and found all this very satisfying. He had a permanent sneer, and looked quite triumphant questioning people who came to my house and, I suspect, writing down the vehicle numbers.

  The tempo driver wanted the cold drinks in my fridge and some bed sheets which I let him have. He said his children would be thrilled and the prospect delighted me. I joked that if I wasn’t careful, they would have taken me away and found some use for it. I had to leave a few things behind which I was using till the last minute and all I could carry was a suitcase. A little before I had to leave for the airport my suitcase key broke and I had to take a cab to find a Samsonite duplicate which I finally found in a market after searching in many places. I later found out that the spooks hiding behind a tree near my house had told the driver to charge me the earth since I was an Indian. The key didn’t work and it was finally my broken one which opened the lock minutes before I had to leave. As if that wasn’t enough, the airport security made me open the bags to check on some suspicious object which surfaced in the X-ray—it was an umbrella. The cab I hired to take me to the airport was also told to overcharge me, but he said he couldn’t since it was metered. He knew I was an Indian being sent away. It was the spooks’ last stand—to be vicious and unkind, for no reason really other than that I was an Indian. They even followed me to the money changer which they hadn’t done before. In that small room I found Beard sitting on the only wooden bench, trying to hide behind a newspaper.

  Their pettiness was in contrast to the taxi driver—he asked me not to be put off by these men and this government, and that I should have good feelings about Pakistan, as it had nice people like him! I laughed and said I believed that. So, that’s how I left the Land of the Pure, with a comfortable overnight stay in Karachi where no one hounded me—at least, I didn’t see anyone breathing down my neck. The airport was welcoming and the officials let me out to change my money even after I had passed the security check area. One of them looked at my visa stamp and his eyebrows went up in admonition. ‘It’s your last day here, madam,’ he said. If only he knew, I sighed to myself. I bought some fridge stickers with my remaining Pakistani money, including one of Faisal Mosque, before I boarded the short flight home.

  There was much outrage that two Indian journalists were sent back suddenly from Pakistan and I got many calls from people wanting to do stories even before I left. We were in the news for all the wrong reasons. Briefly, I became a minor celebrity of sorts after returning from Islamabad with the tag of ‘expelled Indian correspondent’, and to my embarrassment, many people congratulated me for being thrown out of Pakistan, so much for that warm feeling and ‘Aman ki Asha’. I was on a TV show where the anchor loudly proclaimed I was the expelled journalist from Pakistan. To my embarrassment that became a tag line to introduce me—oh, she was thrown out of Pakistan! My landlord in New Delhi said he was proud of me; I had not realized that to be thrown out of Islamabad would be a badge of honour. For a while I became some kind of an expert on Pakistan and made some TV appearances. Thankfully, this has died down, though I was called on by a TV channel to comment on Sabeen Mahmud’s tragic killing in 2015.

  The sudden decision to send us back was disruptive to say the least and I wanted to put it behind me. My new job as the environment correspondent in New Delhi kept me busy enough. Many people asked me how it was to live in Islamabad and said that I should write about it. That is one of the reasons for this book. I didn’t think it was the Baloch article that got me expelled—it could have been just about anything. We were caught in the crosshairs of official antipathy to Indians and some cheap brinkmanship, and I understood then that democratic forces could only protest, they had no real voice anywhere. Later, I read about the trial and execution of Bhutto with great interest. It showed how the state could completely fabricate a case against none other than a former prime minister and have him executed in the dead of night. It was as if he had never lived or led the country. The trauma that his family was put through and his own treatment as a prisoner spoke volumes about the institutions in Pakistan.

  Even in Islamabad, friends had asked me what I had done to be expelled and I really didn’t have any answer because I didn’t know the reason. So, after both Snehesh and I were asked to leave by 18 May 2014, both sides had no journalists from each other’s countries. It was also made out as if future correspondents to replace us would be waved in to the country post-haste. Of course, the Pakistan authorities while accusing us of spying and unfriendly activities had every right to do exactly that.

  I should have expected some stories in the Pakistani press about how we were expelled for carrying out ‘unfriendly activities’ apart from ‘activities incompatible with our professional mandate’ which was utter nonsense. Whatever these activities were remained undefined, and some reports in the Indian press also made out that we were spies or something on those lines—the basis for this was that we were close to Indian diplomats! To think we had refused—because it was unprofessional—the request from an Indian official to let them know what stories we were filing every day or send copies of stories to them! Apart from these canards planted in the media that we were spies, we had nothing in writing to explain the sudden end to the posting.

  Journalists are a critical force; they are not public relations managers; and being posted in another country gives you an opportunity to assess the situation through a magnifying lens and write presciently. That cannot be construed as spying or unfriendly activity. The press in Pakistan has been highly critical of the situation too and they have suffered for that, but some were quick to publish stories which insinuated we were in the wrong.
Privately, many people expressed shock and dismay but I didn’t see any violent protests in the media there over our expulsion. It wasn’t an important issue in the midst of so much blood and terror.

  A lot of unnecessary energy has been wasted in the subcontinent by the two countries, and journalists have sometimes been at the receiving end. Before I left for Islamabad, one of the Pakistan high commission officials had told me, ‘You have to go with an open mind.’ I did, but I was dealing with closed minds out there and that became evident when my visa was not renewed and I was given a week to return. I agree that worse could have happened and one must be grateful for small mercies.

  Everyone from the Committee to Protect Journalists, to the press clubs of Mumbai and Delhi, and various organizations both in Pakistan and India, and the Indian ministry of external affairs protested and issued statements, and even if these didn’t have any effect, at least they stood up for us. Except for a network of which I was a founder member and in which I had invested a lot of energy—the Network of Women in Media—which didn’t think it was important to raise a protest or even issue a statement in my support.

  After Declan Walsh was expelled from Pakistan, the New York Times had kept up pressure to reinstate him, and even after the house of its correspondent was searched in Islamabad in 2016, they had protested. My paper was more worried about sending another person, and later after I returned, the then editor, Malini Parthasarathy, didn’t allow me to write about a blasphemy issue I had tracked, saying that it was articles like this that had got me out of there. I realized for the first time that I had wasted time trying to file different stories; maybe if I had stuck to press releases, life would have been smoother. However, The Hindu did publish almost all of my articles while I was there and Parthasarathy even encouraged me to write a farewell piece after I returned.