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review By Rizwan Akhtar When I heard about the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I was unconsciously reminded of the preamble of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, which perhaps is the most strident and nostalgic summation of the human history as the narrator narrates: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Zia Mohyeddin column
review By I. A. Rehman Inam Aziz’s
reportage on his life in journalism, published some years ago in Urdu and now
available in This is the story of a man who occupied a prominent place in national journalism for several decades. He won recognition not only as a successful journalist in both the print and the electronic media but also for his professional competence and courageous opposition to dictatorship. Inam Aziz, journalism in Pakistan and the state of Pakistan grew up together. His account offers us fairly accurate insights into the circumstances in which the three of them were brought up. Like the Pakistan state and its Press, Inam Aziz accepted the challenges of his profession without a formal training and learnt his craft on his own. He could do so because as a child of the times that gave shape to India’s aspirations for freedom he was driven by a spirit of curiosity and enterprise. We see this drive at work as a young Inam joins a march to Mr Jinnah’s house in a crowd that wants to question him, finds his way to watch a football match without a ticket and this by the Quaid’s side, and which enables him to walk into offices of newspapers and order a job for himself. It was this spirit that helped him survive the ordeal of the camp at Delhi’s Purana Qila and the train journey to Pakistan in September 1947. It was perhaps his experience of the mad dance of death in the partition days that steeled Inam Aziz’s attachment to democracy and enabled him to reject General Zia’s covertures. One can also see in this slim volume of memoirs the modest beginnings of the Pakistan Press, at least of the Urdu dailies, and the ways of the Pakistan state in its formative years. Such anecdotal recollection of the past often lacks the precision of narration and a logical nexus between cause and effect. Besides, Inam Aziz sees things, and usually sees them quite clearly, but apparently has no time to observe what he sees. For example he is full of praise for Imroze but does not pause to describe its qualities. However, anecdotes have a charm of their own. Sometimes they reveal the essence of events and the most relevant characteristics of the actors involved. A couple of incidents narrated by Inam Aziz make this clear. The events of the evening before the Martial Law of 1958 was imposed, for instance. A visitor tells Inam in his office that mischief seems to be afoot. The troops are out. Inam does not believe the army is going to lake over. He accompanies the visitor to the Radio Pakistan building and the telegraph office. The troops are out all right and in strength. He tries Mujib who does not know anything. The President House is being cordoned off by troops. Convinced that a big story is about to break, Inam goes to the office of the Principal Information Officer, Col. Majid Malik. He arrives there while Iskander Mirza’s statement about proclamation of Martial Law is being typed. While handing over a copy to Inam Aziz, Col Majid Malik says, “what has happened is not good. It is now in the hands of God.” It is doubtful if Col Majid Malik knew how correct he was or that the curse that had befallen Pakistan could not be lifted by puffing at the cigarette he borrowed from Inam (Malik did not have his own tobacco as he had given up smoking.) Another Inam adventure in Majid Malik’s company is worth recalling. After imposing Martial Law Iskander Mirza decides to install a cabinet of ministers. Inam must have photographs of the new ministers. So he goes to Col Malik and together they go to the Prime Minister house. The place is like an army camp. The PIO and the senior journalist are put on the mat by a Brigadier – not even allowed to speak to one another. Col Malik wants to know if he is under arrest. “For the time being, that is what you should think,” the Brigadier declares. Soon they learn that Mirza has been ousted. Back at his office Inam is told Col Malik is waiting outside and wants Inam and Mir Khalilur Rehman (editor / proprietor of his paper) to join him. The idea is to go to the Clifton to relieve mental tension caused by the realisation that the army has decided to take direct control of the country. Inam Aziz does not say this but no sensitive Pakistani was a normal person after that. Now an incident from the Ziaul Haq chapter. After overthrowing the Bhutto government Ziaul Haq launches a PR campaign and invites Inam Aziz, editor of Millat, London, to see the rivers of milk and honey he has caused to flow in Pakistan. Inam joins the list of people who are told by Zia of his pledge to hold elections. A date for the new assembly’s inaugural session is given – 28 October 1977. Hospitality is generous and Zia is more keen to discuss the affairs of Inam’s paper than Pakistan’s plight but the latter does not take the bait. After some time one of Zia’s ministers visits Inam Aziz’s office in London and offers to solve all his financial problems by buying out the paper and its editor. Inam Aziz declines. Nothing more needs to be said about the abomination that dictatorship is and how it smothers the conscience of weaklings, nor about the grandeur of journalists who have the guts to stand up to it. Stop Press: A Life in Journalism By Inam Aziz Translated from Urdu by Khalid Hasan Oxford University Press 2008 Pages: 170 Price: Rs 395
In his novels, Solzhenitsyn (December 1918-August 2008) re-created the gruesome realities of the camps and the narratives often unflinchingly portray the sordid image of a beleaguered individual, stripped of personal identity By Rizwan Akhtar When I heard about
the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I was unconsciously reminded of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn had also the equitable share of both. He had written The Gulag Archipelago, in which gulag is a metaphor for forced labour and confinement. In theory it is an ameliorative penal system. In political and social critiques, it is a space of exile that eventually becomes a death ground. In reality it is an intolerably human place. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has all the reasons to write about the horrors of the gulag because for more than eight years he lived through the most despicable and lacerating life of the labour settlement. The kind of keenness and realism with which Solzhenitsyn writes about the horrors of the labour camps almost gives the impression of a great myth taking a shape, the one which can be paired and compared with the Auschwitz. In his novels, Solzhenitsyn re-created the gruesome realties of the camps and the narratives often unflinchingly portray the sordid image of a beleaguered individual, stripped of personal identity. Solzhenitsyn’s personal and literary story of exile and relocation is stereotypically Russian. He wrote long narratives focusing upon the predicament and wretchedness of the Russian people who were struggling to cope with the inhuman agencies of oppression. The horrors of a feudalistic and socially derelict society find their ways in his tales laden with moral and metaphysical questions. The time he went into exile was a crucial time in the history of Europe. It was a time capitalised by the cold war strategies and the western world showed a rigid disapproval of the Soviet Union and its policies. ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ was published in 1962 and it was a monumental book in many ways because it was the time when anti-Stalin sentiments were gradually evolving into a form of political dissent. Solzhenitsyn defined and questioned the mechanisations and logic of the existence of labour camps in his writings. Instead of dumping and disposing the insignificant inhabitants of the camps, he used their stories to weave the reality of human resilience in the face of difficult times. The following is an excerpt from his novella: “He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul — today, maybe, they haven’t snitched any.” Although it is a novel that revolves around the life of an individual but through single characters, usually all Russian novelists depict the conscience of the country. The lonesome, morally struggling, down-to-earth protagonists acquire a legendary status in the minds of the readers. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol also create single individuals thrown into situations, coping and resisting the despotic polity and individual-based insular humanity of the selfish credit-seekers who are perennially indifferent to the basic human instincts. Like Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn was also conscious of the fact that Russian history is worth owning and it is incumbent upon its intellectuals to create a timely courage among the underprivileged so that they are able to say ‘no’ to the yoke of slavery and all forms of bondage. Like Chekhov, he was alert to this fact that one’s duty to one’s place is always most demanding and a morally unavoidable pressure. The spectres of identity hover above a writer’s life whether he lives in a willing or unwilling state of exile. The First Circle and Cancer Ward (1968) are acerbic symbolic stories of the Soviet system which adheres to institutional worship and blindfolded ideology. Following is an excerpt from Cancer Ward which highlights the forces of detrimental morality composed of hackneyed tales of guilt and sin. “On top of everything, the cancer wing was Number 13. Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov had never been and could never be a superstitious person, but his heart sank when they wrote ‘Wing 13’ on his admission card. They should have had the ingenuity to assign number 13 to some kind of prosthetic or intestinal department.” Cancer is used as an allegory of the Soviet system which will not hold its ground and will capitulate like one is smitten by a terminal disease. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that an intellectual understanding of the ideology is not something a politician is always capable of. Writers can become guides. The difference between the hubris of a writer and that of a politician is that the latter is creative and the former is destructive. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but he refused to attend the award ceremony in Stockholm for fear of not being allowed back home. Such was the strength and the vulnerability of his creative and social self. Roman Acquisition of the 16th century forced Galileo to recant from his scientific claims. Ostensibly deterred by an insular Church, Galileo eventually smuggled out his discoveries and it was a tactical move, meant to safeguard the light of rationality. On a much similar pattern Solzhenitsyn was successful in getting his work published in the West. This would have been easily frittered, had he not shown courage mingled with an impending sense of caution which enabled him to hide his work from the authorities. Hounded by the one time notorious KGB, he always anticipated the worst reprisal. In 1974 he was stripped of his nationality because the oppression-obsessed Kremlin could not give him a fair trial and partly succumbed to his soaring literary reputation at home and abroad. His life is both miraculous and full of pity. Like T. S .Eliot and W. B. Yeats, he saw the survival of the Western society in the revival of Christendom. Living in exile in US (Vermont), he vociferously condemned the materialist Western values. In 1994 the Russian Government restored his citizenship which was but a tasteless denouement of an otherwise harrowing drama. From the inimitable experiences of gulag to the cancer radiation treatment, Last week he was buried in a rather solemn monastery in Moscow. Alexander Solzhenitsyn dipped and re-emerged from the pool of life with conviction and style. Like the Egyptian writer Najeeb Mahfouz, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was never fluent in English. His was a living gulag and an essentially Russian type. “Abba is also not well” Can you put your right hand on your heart and tell me that you have never been given a list of things to bring back when you embark on a journey to the West? If you can, I shall initiate a campaign to have you weighed in gold. In the early days of my marriage my wife felt that the main purpose of my visits abroad ought to be to go shopping for her and her family. The list I was given ranged from diapers (extra absorbent) to dental floss (glazed). I firmly put my foot down. She then thought of a new method. Knowing that I travel light she would prevail upon me to carry a suitcase containing clothes belonging to a friend who desperately needed them (surely I could do that much for her, she would plead in her most charming manner), and I could please bring back her bag which her friend would hand over to me. The list was obviously inside the letter which accompanied the suitcase. I fetched and carried for my wife on a few occasions until, fortunately for me, a bag I was bringing back for her, delivered to me in Manchester, went missing on my arrival in Karachi. I filled all sorts of forms to reclaim the bag; I filed claims for damages but nothing came of it. My wife was convinced that I had planned the whole thing deliberately. We did receive the bag in a dilapidated condition twelve days later. I was not compensated for the damage; instead, I got a letter from the airline saying that they would consider upgrading me when I next travel with them This infuriated my wife no end. She thought it was exceedingly unfair that while she had received a damaged bag with a few things missing, I was going to get the benefit of an upgraded ticket. The result of this misadventure was that I was spared the responsibility of fetching and carrying for her. You would have thought that I am a much relieved man. Nothing of the sort. This is what happens now. Let us say I am in Columbus Ohio, I receive a phone call from a lady who introduces herself as my wife’s friend. (It is uncanny, but my wife has a friend in every city I visit in America). She informs me that according to my wife’s instruction she has been able to acquire two pairs of long-sleeved, pink, 100 percent cotton pyjamas for my daughter, “and a few other bits and bobs: you know girlie things”. The packet would be delivered to me before I leave Columbus. Can I say, no, I cannot carry this packet? The result is that by the time I leave New York to take a flight back home I have nine parcels varying in size and weight. I now have to buy another case to accommodate the carefully packed and gift-wrapped parcels delivered to me. Throughout the journey I keep my fingers crossed that the case does not go astray. I can see that there is no way out for me unless I say no to all the invitations I receive from abroad. But for all those who want goodies from abroad my advice is that they should follow the imaginative method adopted by a lady called Bano. Here is an email that my nephew, who keeps me amused, sent me yesterday. God knows how he got hold of it. I m sending mom’s body it was her wish to be buried in Karachi. Under Amma’s body are 12 cans of cheese, 10 packs of chocolates & 8 packs of badam. Amma is wearing a pair of Reebok shoes for Kasim bhai. There are two pairs of shoes for Jubaida & Jarina. Amma is wearing six t-shirts. Large 1 is for Sattar Bhai, others are for the small boys. 2 new jeans Amma is wearing are for Sanam Baji’s kids in Islamabad. Swiss watch on Amma’s left wrist is for Johra Bhai. Amma is wearing a necklace, earings and ring, for Kulsum aunty and if anything more is needed tell me now, since Abba is also not well and the doctors have given him 4 months. Bano New York, USA. ******** It isn’t always that you see the greatest tennis in a Wimbledon final, but the men’s final in 2008, certainly did. The quality of tennis in the contest between Federer and Nadal was breathtaking. And why is it that everyone felt sorry for Federer? If must be something to do with Nadal’s image. We think of him as a snarling, street-smart bully, bent upon crushing his opponent, but any one who saw and heard him at the award winning ceremony, would agree with me that underneath all that animal ferocity lurks a sweet-natured boy. A curious aspect of high-powered tennis is that all players – men and women – stare closely at their rackets, after losing a point, as if they were counting the holes? Sometimes they check the strings to make sure nothing is stuck in them. The satirist, Miles Kington, was once asked if there was a reason why a tennis player stares so intently at his racket. Kington whose astute eye is quick to discern a comical scenario in every human activity assumed a grave tone. “Well”, he said, “this is strictly confidential you understand, but nowadays the modern player is in touch with his coach the whole time, and although you are not meant to communicate directly during a match, most of them do. And the easiest way in which a coach can show a player what he is doing wrong is in slow-motion video playback.” He went on to inform the questioner that most of these modern metal wonder rackets could receive a fairly good picture and that was what the player studied so thoughtfully as he strolled back to the service line. The coach could talk to the player through earphones. The questioner was puzzled “But the player doesn’t wear earphones?” he said. “Not obviously so, no,” Kington said, “But you may have noticed the phenomenal recent increase in the wearing of big caps on court. They’re got tiny receivers in their caps.” The questioner turned away in disbelief, but Kington had now warmed up to the subject. Players, he revealed, had developed an ingenious method of communicating back to the coach. There were various codes a player used to convey messages. “Bouncing balls before a serve is one – the apparently random number of bounces means different things to a coach; the other is the way a player blows on his hands – two blows left hand one blow right hand means ‘What’s wrong with my backhand’, whereas three blows on the right hand might mean ‘Where shall I serve this one to’?” Baloney. Certainly, but can you produce better baloney? |
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English – thanks to the translator-publisher combination of Khalid Hasan
and Ameena Saiyid – is an important addition to the chronicles of life in
Pakistan.
preamble of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, which perhaps is
the most strident and nostalgic summation of the human history as the
narrator narrates: