The tragic stories of Pakistan and the Bhutto family are difficult to separate — they have been a struggle for people’s empowerment and egalitarianism against a ruthless elitism espoused by a cold military establishment. The struggle has been marked by violence, death and political humiliation although not political annihilation. Sadly the tragedy that marks deeply both the Bhuttos and Pakistan is anywhere but at its end. Indeed one year after Benazir was killed in the streets of Rawalpindi, the tragedy of Pakistan has grown more ominous and the latest blood sacrifice by the Bhutto family still does not seem to suffice as the price for the troubled soul of Pakistan.

Bhutto senior had his struggles in his own time and so had his sons in theirs; each going down fighting. But the political demons that Benazir fought in the last three decades epitomize Pakistan’s fortunes and offered some of the best political moments this country has had, and in her death, the worst. A young girl (much like her own son Bilawal at this point in time although he has yet to experience any of her rough and tumble), she learned the ropes of political fights in public limelight through trial and error beginning with the unlikely leadership of a young and tattered albeit spirited party and staunchly confronting perhaps the wiliest dictator that Pakistan’s chequered polity has boasted — General Zia. Two of her three decades in politics were eaten away fighting military dictators (the second being General Musharraf), mostly from exile, and one decade against their protégés.

One year after her death, Benazir matches her name — peerless in the times that she operated as a politician and leader of people, her shadow looming larger than life. So much has been lost — by her Pakistan as by her party and her family that all three still struggle to cope with her tragic physical end after all these long months that seem to have passed in slow motion. It is useless to argue who bears the bigger loss, her family, party or country as the fates of all seem so inextricably intertwined. But by the sheer numbers involved, Pakistan as a nation continues to bear the brunt of a shock assassination that robbed it of a major political evolutionary landmark and victory over oligarchic, obscurantist and elitist forces. She lost a three-decade personal and public battle on the verge of a victory she had fashioned against incredible odds of a ruthless and unrelenting military establishment and international support it espoused on the back of America’s military interests in the region.

Betraying Benazir

If one year after she led her party to a sensational victory at the hustings, after 12 years in the political wilderness, is a benchmark of gain and loss, her blood sacrifice has been in vain: General Musharraf’s brutish distortions in the constitution remain, his hybrid and unrepresentative presidential system sustains itself, a mangled and patently paternalistic judiciary remains on the bench thanks to her own party, and the country slides deeper into a failing statecraft thanks to her party’s inexcusable failure to honour the watershed Charter of Democracy she signed with Nawaz Sharif and his equally politically astute Pakistan Muslim League-N. In short, even as she infused new life to her dying party and resuscitated its fortunes, the Pakistan People’s Party has rewarded her legacy by failing it spectacularly.

One way to gauge the loss that Benazir’s assassination represents for Pakistan and her party (the loss to her children and family being incalculable) is to surmise what would have happened if on Dec 27, 2007 she had survived somehow. It is easy to believe the Pakistan People’s Party would have more or less emerged with the same size of representation in the National Assembly and the four provincial legislatures. It is also easy to believe what would have happened next. She would have done what the only thing Asif Zardari did that she would have done: invited Sharif and his PML-N into the ruling coalition. Thereafter only she would have done what her widower and party have supremely failed to do: a super-fast constitutional amendment bill co-tabled in the parliament with PML-N, incorporating the Charter of Democracy clauses to restore parliamentary sovereignty. With the unpopular ban on third-time executive service removed, Benazir would have been supported by PML-N as the prime minister and her PPP would have made Sharif president so both could safeguard and strengthen democracy.

Status quo ante

It’s hard to believe she would have done otherwise, the lengths she had gone to drafting and signing the Charter of Democracy with Sharif in exile. The charter epitomised a concerted effort by the country’s two biggest and most popular parties to help the country leapfrog from a political consciousness steeped in the 1980s to a new national vision of representative democracy and empowered, informed and engaged citizenry focused on development and progress through a higher collective political effort. The charter promises a free and independent judiciary with all future judges appointed through an independent bipartisan commission. The shameless mishmash that goes in the name of today’s judiciary means nothing has changed and no less than Benazir’s party has betrayed her own pledge. The charter promises full sovereignty to the parliament by putting the chief executive at the centre of governance — a shift from Musharraf’s 1999 coup that returned Pakistan to the damaging presidential superiority with the head of state and the army chief being the same person. The PPP has ‘honoured’ Benazir’s visionary legacy by changing Musharraf with Zardari with all the unconstitutional political regalia intact. Bhutto’s death has meant only a change of faces, not a change of system that her struggle represented. This is an incalculable loss for the people and state of Pakistan.

If the post-Benazir Pakistan finds itself wracked with violence, discontent (an incredible 88 percent people have no hope for a better future — would this be the case with Benazir still being alive?) and in dire straits on both its flanks and borders, it’s not hard to believe a much higher political intellect and acumen driving Pakistan’s foreign policy with her in charge than what is on offer from the troika of Zardari, Gilani and Kayani. Benazir understood that the challenge for Pakistan is to act its size and importance and that is possible only by strengthening the rotting institutions and adding political-democratic muscle to its military might; to, paradoxically, divest the country of its military might the violence that is at the root of the country’s intolerance and misguided focus on supra-national aspirations institutionalised by an establishment that has not only managed to ensure that the country’s democratic aspirations do not get translated beyond holding of elections. Benazir’s murder most foul is a stark manifestation of this.

A different Pakistan

Today’s Pakistan will have been calmer were Benazir not killed for she understood that Pakistan’s real clout does not emanate from its nuclear prowess — indeed the opposite is true: the world is worried to death of Pakistan’s ‘Islamic’ bomb — or its size, but from developing democracy beyond elections to good governance and a conscious effort on socio-economic development and injecting more durability of the institutions and the economy; in gently but firmly letting go of the misplaced jihadi thinking of the state and to transform the state from a suicidal entity to a stable polity.

Today’s Pakistan increasingly thinks itself a great power without behaving like one. Benazir understood that and so does Sharif. That’s the one lesson they seemed to have learnt, managing not just to forgive each other for their transgressions against each other in the 1990s but to actually go ahead and document their desire to pool their political goodwill and majority national support into the Charter of Democracy, which is nothing short of a new compact, a conscious effort to not just undo the mistakes of the past but to encapsulate progressive ideals that aim to look to the future.

Benazir would have been on the bull’s eye with India’s changing attitude toward Pakistan — its foreign policy no longer focused exclusively on Pakistan’s external actions — and how to thwart them. She understood New Delhi is today more concerned with what happens inside Pakistan and how to help Indians and Pakistanis both feel more secure, stable and prosperous. While India shares America’s concerns about terrorism, it also shares an interest in Pakistan’s well-being. Had she been alive, she would have boarded a plane to New Delhi to prevent the Indian venom that has surprised the post-Benazir Pakistan. Her persona would have reflected the reality of Pakistan. With her daughters in tow in New Delhi, she would have ensured six decades of animosity continued toward an end despite Mumbai.

Espousing politics, not militancy

It is also Pakistan’s irreparable loss that she isn’t alive to tackle the Afghanistan issue where American designs to scale up their presence and operations can only mean more trouble for Pakistan. She understood that the chief effect of allied military operations in Afghanistan so far has been not to defeat radical Islamists but to push them across the Pakistani border. As a result, as she had been rightly pointing out, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilisation of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications. Today, and for the foreseeable future, many in the world today believe, no country poses a greater potential threat to US national security than does Pakistan’s safe havens. But Benazir was right in pointing out that to risk the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan will be a terrible mistake.

Benazir was also right in arguing that the proper US priority for Afghanistan should not be to escalate tensions but to change course and that the war in Afghanistan (like the Iraq War) is unlikely to be won militarily. Who better than a political animal like Benazir to believe it can be settled — however imperfectly — only through politics. Al-Qaeda and their foot soldiers, the Taliban, or sections of Pakistani establishment, which earns $80m a month in coalition logistical support funds alone, do not want the US to bail out.

This is probably partly the reason Benazir was killed — because she advocated a political solution to the Afghan problem, realising that America’s real political objective in Afghanistan is actually quite modest: to ensure that al-Qaeda can’t use it as a safe haven for launching attacks against the West. Accomplishing that won’t require creating a modern, cohesive nation-state. She understood that US officials tend to assume that power in Afghanistan ought to be exercised from Kabul. She had been pointing out that real influence in Afghanistan has traditionally rested with tribal leaders and warlords. Rather than challenge that tradition, Washington should work with it.

While this is also the traditional posture of the Pakistani establishment, Benazir’s absence means there is no political leader in Pakistan with the right clout and prowess to do this hard sell with the US on Islamabad’s behalf. In the meanwhile, Pakistan has bled and actually lost territory. That is the loss to Pakistan with Benazir’s assassination.

Is the party over?

As for her party — the loss with her assassination is just as big as Pakistan’s, perhaps. It’s hard to see the PPP now ever getting enough seats to form a future government at the centre thanks to its unexplainable unwillingness to keep its election-time and post-victory pledges (that are even signed by its leaders) despite having both the numbers in parliament and support from most political forces, including opposition, to keep those promises and honour the trust of millions of voters who came out under the threat of violence and death to vote for those promises.

With mostly unelected and third-tier leaders at the helm and some of its most popular leaders insensibly kept outside parliament, the PPP in power does not seem to be the party Benazir led to power and so gallantly laid down her life for. Can the PPP calculate the loss to its future fortunes by its strange tribute of not honouring the ideals of probably Pakistan’s most courageous politician ever (warts and all); someone who knew she was under attack but was willing to lay down her life to gift Pakistan the implementation of the Charter of Democracy. Benazir was tragically assassinated but her party is committing political suicide. Benazir — and Pakistan — deserve better.

Day and night are weaved into each other in such a way that in the middle of the day we often think about night; and in our dreams our days both from the forgotten past and improbable future are revisited. There are many means to imagine and approach the night during waking hours. One of the easiest and most common ways is to reconstruct our dreams. Whatever we dream is always recollected — or according to Jorge Luis Borges, fabricated like a piece of fiction —when we try to remember or narrate our dreams.

Dreams can be seen as a different version of reality that is perceived and experienced in our sleep. Most of us dream but don’t have any measure to check whether what is recounted as dream in the morning after is what took place during the night. The recollection or memory of dream can be completely different from the actual dream.

The concept of night is treated in a similarly unrealistic manner. What we do during the night is not clearly recorded because of low visibility — both physical and mental. It is the personal, private and peculiar experience of night that we project as a universal notion. More than that, it is associated with feelings and atmosphere for a majority of the people.

For a person who is 0working in an urban environment and in an industrial society (even in a Western town), the approaching hours of night often prefigure some odd sentiments usually associated with sadness and nostalgia. One can trace the reasons for this feeling in the prehistoric past of human kind, when men lived in caves and foresaw the latent danger of animals (one wonders if the similarity between animosity and animal is rooted in that archaic memory) and the uncertainty as the light of the day faded. Yet the night has also fascinated the mankind, especially the makers of images and fabricators of fables, because with the shift of light, the reality is altered, often alluding to its supernatural aspects and inviting imaginative descriptions and fantastical interpretations.

So for the visual artists, particularly the painters, night holds a unique importance. Even when they try to depict it naturally, they cannot render it realistically; and they need to rely on their imagination for an effective portrayal. It is difficult to see objects, people and places at night and draw them simultaneously. One needs to detach the visual experience of night from the pictorial presentation which has to be executed in the day light or even if at night, in the artificial light (a condition that may not be preferred by several artists).

This dichotomy, distance and dislocation in time — of the subject and its depiction — seems to be the main issue for the artists in the ‘Nocturnal Song’, a group show curated by Aasim Akhter that is being held from Dec 15-31, 2008, at Alhamra Art Gallery in Lahore. The exhibition, subtitled as ‘Interpretations on the Theme of Night’ includes works by Shireen Kamran, Mehr Afroz, Noorjehan Bilgrami and Ali Kazim. The works of these painters range from figurative substance to pure abstract surfaces, but the display appears a means to find a harmony among the participants, who work independently in their studios situated in Lahore, Karachi and Canada.

Thus, it is interesting to view the large scale canvases of Kamran next to the meticulously drawn characters of Kazim; likewise the vivid paintings of Afroz along with the monochromatic pieces of Noorjehan Bilgrami. The artists present diversity in terms of their choice of imagery, technique, scale and painterly sensitivities.

Perhaps one connecting element among these individuals is their selection into the ‘Nocturnal Song’ besides their attempts to keep the theme of night. Understandably, all four have approached it separately. Shireen has created compositions with primarily black and grey patches — indicating the darkness one experiences with dusk till dawn. Similarly Noorjehan draws the nocturnal landscape, with sand dunes, leaves and flat areas in geometric shapes coated with layers of varying shades of blues and greys. Mehr Afroz paints the grey and bluish canvases with images that remind of night. Ali Kazim outlines the faces and torsos of men either in sleep or back of their heads turned towards the viewer/painter.

Although each artist has tried to denote the concept of night in an innovative scheme, employing his/her private visual vocabulary, one finds a difference of approach. Some have interpreted the theme of night in a literal sense, while others have treated it as a point of departure, to produce a personal vision. Comparatively speaking, Ali’s prints and paintings are more illustrative in their format and content. Sleepy individuals, with eyes closed and resting on ground or pillows, or insects installed on their heads shown against a dark background, seem to fulfil the theme in an apparent way. Likewise, Noorjehan’s canvases with scenes of night, mountains and moon, reveal an attempt to justify the concept.

On the other hand, Shireen and Mehr appear to be keen on attaining a balance between their usual work habits and the idea for the present exhibition. Kamran has composed non-figurative paintings with most of the areas covered in dark shades (her means of suggesting the nocturnal song) whereas Afroz has concentrated on the night-time activities, such as praying like a penitent. The introduction of nails, pins and words written like a mantra, on the rug-like sections allude to the way night is spent by some, not in the realm of imagination, but an occasion to remember the word of God, while regretting one’ sins.

Even with these variations in image, technique and approach, the show fails to represent the best works by this group of our established and serious artists. However, it is not a reflection on the curator. It depends on how successfully the artist tackles the given theme. Usually this kind of exercise produces works which look like rehashed version of one’s older stuff, or end up being literal interpretations of the subject.

Be Saya Log, an adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre’s Men Without Shadows was one of the better productions to have been staged by the Government College University Dramatic Club (GCUDC) in recent years. This is not the first time that Men Without Shadows has been staged by the same dramatic club at the same venue. About thirty years ago the play was staged and received many an accolade for its production.

Since Government College Dramatic Club, now rechristened Government College University Dramatic Club, has a history that goes back more than a hundred years, it is not at all surprising that some of the plays have been staged many times over. A few plays have been favourites with the club, barring Shakespeare, who was a rage especially during the colonial period, like the Lawyer, The Matchmaker, An Inspector Calls and Arsenic and Old Lace which have been staged over and over again. Apparently there is nothing wrong if a play is staged many a time by the same society or club at intermittent intervals because it gives the director and the production team an opportunity to focus on yet another interpretation of the text that has the potential to yield itself to many layers of it.

The most significant aspect of this production was that it was an Urdu adaptation. It has been observed that translation or an adaptation from one language to another robs the play of something that is unique and essential. Urdu as a language has its own ambience and at times the adaptation becomes a victim to verbosity, sentimentalism and hyperbole that Urdu language can be susceptible to. This does not imply that the language has some inherent inadequacy or shortcoming, it only means that theatre in Urdu has developed in a certain manner with its own set of themes and characters and has a stylised dramatic access to the interiority of feelings, but an alien environment’s set of emotions and themes do pose a challenge to the language and its exponents. The language due to its past has a greater ability to be impressive as a dramatic narrative than in drama.

In this adaptation, mercifully, the sentimentalism and hyperbolic baggage of Urdu theatricality, it seems, was consciously eliminated and it was no wonder that the play retained its poignancy right through. As it is, the play is one of the greatest ever written and the impossible situation that the characters found themselves forced them to ask significant questions. The grimness of the situation just did not afford the momentum to sag and the tension to lessen. The play, two and a half hour of it, was a relentless build up of unbearable tension that drove the action of the play to its logical end.

From the brochure it appeared that the Urdu adaptation was a team effort in which Farhan Ebadat, Madeeha Gul, Moosa Abbas, Danyal Talat and Rizwan Mehdi took part. It could have been that the adaptation was the result of a joint effort which went through a process of evolution, editing and improving the text as the rehearsals went by. The rehearsals are a good opportunity to develop the text and it can be done if it is an adaptation by those staging the play, as in this case, or if the writer himself is present at the rehearsals of the maiden performance. Obviously with the play that has been written and staged earlier the director has to use other methods to make the text more malleable.

In this particular production, the names of the captives had been changed to local names while the locale had deliberately been left unnamed and unidentified. The play that Sartre wrote was located in wartime France but in this production the unspecified locale was a reminder that war-like situation existed all over, the ordinary citizens forced into situations where he or she had to re-examine and reassess his life. The unspecified locale also made the play seem more relevant to the times that we live in. The group of actors who played the roles of captives was particularly impressive. Fahad Ahmed, Madiha Gul, Usman Mumtaz, Faizan Ahmed, Mohsin Manzoor and Shahiq Ahmed sustained the pace and did not let the level of tension drop.

Farhan Ebadat has been in charge of the dramatic club for sometime now and it appears that he has been able to collect a team of dedicated youngsters who may pursue theatre and drama beyond the cloistered environment of an academic institution. Some of the names now have a familiar ring to them because they have been appearing on stage. He was assisted in his directorial effort by Madeeha Gul, who also played a role. She has also been acting in plays by the club in the past.

Some persons have become institutions like Mistry Jan who executed the making of the sets. His father was doing the same thing thirty forty years ago as his father likewise sixty or seventy years ago. Probably the ancestry goes further into history and the patent of Mistry Jan has been around as long as the GCUDC itself.

For the past few years the GCU has also taken the initiative of inviting plays from colleges and universities from across the border, particularly in the Indian Punjab and Delhi. It exposed the audiences to the college theatre in India and the exchange proved to be beneficial for everyone involved. Hopefully the exchange programme will continue for regularity ensures improvement of quality.

Dear All,

This time last year, we were stunned, still reeling from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Numb grief had us glued to the TV news, desperate for more information, more pictures and some sort of comfort.

It was a really very sad day — not just for Pakistan but for the politics of the whole region and the mindset of its peoples. And it brought into focus yet again how very close we always are to violence and danger.

Last month we saw how quick and manic the descent into chaos can be and how we have to resist being overcome by events.

India’s instant conviction that the Mumbai attacks were carried out by militants from Pakistan was followed by outrage from the Pakistani populace who went into a state of aggressive denial. Apparently most Pakistanis believe that there are no terrorist training camps in Pakistan and that there is no such thing as state-sponsored militants.

A few angry statements and a series of unfortunate statements and bizarre (often surreal) incidents later we were at the very brink of war: national anthems and milli naghmas played ad nauseum on national television and the populace making all sorts of gung ho pro army, anti India statements...

The government and the army may have succeeded in exercising some sort of restraint and somehow keeping the peace, but it remains a precarious situation. What is disturbing is how rapidly the mood of the countries changed, and consequently how delighted the hawkish rightist elements in both states must be.

Who has benefited from recent events? Mainly the military and hawkish elements in both countries as events seem to validate their raison d’être. In both countries the war mongering climate and tension has generated an upsurge in public support for these groups.

Some people might even say the governments in both countries have benefited, as these events have served to distract attention from all the other problems they have been trying to sort out. But whoever has really benefited, one thing is certain: in a collective sense we are all now losers. We have been thrown into whirlpool of distrust and anger, insecurity and national indignation.

As the war of words continues and armies stay on high alert, we all become more suspicious, belligerent and intolerant. This in itself is a tragedy: all the work that has been done for track two diplomacy, confidence building, etc. will suffer. And eventually the rhetoric of violence and aggression that we use will filter down into our actions.

I know it is not very fashionable for Pakistanis to express admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, but I do admire the sentiment of his words that "An eye for an eye will leave us all blind". Hatred will tear us apart. It is the legacy of the Zia years that the seeds of hatred (cross border, sectarian, ethnic) and patronage of groups encouraged to hate and fight sown then are bearing bitter fruit now. We need to have a vision for the future. And, of course, a lot of common sense.

Best Wishes for the New Year. Let’s all pray for peace and compassion, and common sense.

Umber Khairi