The Yemen Today website has finally been updated and upgraded and you can find both the articles I’ve contributed here.

One
and
Two.

I will continue to contribute so you can keep checking every month (or me being me will probably link it for you here every month).

Leave a comment and feel free to critique as you please.

Bollywood seems to go through seasons. And fads. There were seasons of movies being all about unfaithful wives and marital disruption (Murder, Jism, Ajnabee, etc) and then there were seasons of loving your parents (Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum, Baghbaan) and then there is the evergreen season of romantic comedies being ripped off from popular American movies (Partner = Hitch, Dostana = I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, Dil Bole Hadippa = She’s the Man).

And so Bollywood fans end up watching movies for the songs and the eye candy. The pretty girls and the pretty dresses and the terribly goodlooking heroes and the breathtakingly beautiful Swiss Alps in the background in that romantic number where the girl is waving her anchal in the air of her deep blood red sari that looks oh-so-perfect in her perfectly curled hair. The hero runs to her from afar and kisses her neck and she closes her eyes as if this is the first time she’s ever been touched and never mind if the same kiss-on-the-neck has been done to the same girl in the same movie in seven different other films – probably wearing the same-colored sari.

In all fairness, Bollywood has its own magic. People in Pakistan are just as obsessed with Bollywood as Indians. And why shouldn’t we be? It’s almost the same language, the same cultural backgrounds, the same kind of dhik-dhika-dhik-dhish music we’re so fond of. So to say that Bollywood is as absurd as it is crazy – is irrelevant. Bollywood is blessed with the rare and precious lucky charm that makes people go crazy over it – even if it manages to regularly produce songs like this.

We settled down after dinner yesterday to watch “Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani” expecting the same Bollywood craziness and expecting the same musical saga that was dotted with a storyline. I wasn’t expecting an Oscar-worthy performance from the talentless and tall Katrina Kaif whose only jump to high-grossing movies is her ‘milky milky cheeks and silky silky hair’ and I wasn’t expecting a completely baseless story that boasted a title as curious as “AJAB” prem ki “GHAZAB” kahani.

Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor’s pretty looks put together can’t manage to save the film from being a dull, hopeless bore. The only redeeming factors are Ranbir’s stutter which seem as realistic as they seem heart-rending in the face of an over-disciplinarian of a father. Katrina’s stutters, may I add, are irritating and make you want to stuff a parrot down her throat.

The film revolves around a clueless Kaif who goes by the name of Jenny – an adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Pinto. Ranbir, aka Prem, is a happy go lucky guy who is the president of “Happy Club” (which is as ridiculous as the name suggests) which comprises a group of unemployed young men (read schmucks) whose job in the ‘club’ is to make people ‘happy’.

After the meet-cute between Jenny and Prem, the film follows another hour of no plot, no story, no sense of happening until Prem decides to confess his love to Jenny and Jenny’s parents decide to wed her to their family friend (read film idiot slash villain) Tony.

A series of ridiculous events follow and from one weird situation to another, Jenny continues to be completely blind to Prem’s obvious and besotted heart’s desire – even when the poor guy gives her daalmoong pakoray with podeena chutney and her boyfriend (yes, she refuses to marry Tony because another impossibly rich guy is in love with her – for someone with no brains and milky cheeks, she’s spot on lucky) gives her a diamond necklace (that looks like a dog collar). And promises her a Ferrari.

God forbid if we remain under the realms of reality when it comes to dialogs.

Ranbir Kapoor is an impressive performer. He’s cute, he’s acceptable as a stutterer and if it weren’t for his stereotypical roles he’s been taking (playing the boy who learns his lesson in all his movies – Bachna Ae Haseenon, Wake Up Sid and now Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani) I’d say this guy is the next Aamir Khan.

But then again. Aamir Khan is also following the ’season’ suit. Always playing the free-spirited college dude (for a 40-year-old actor) can get a little monotonous (I’m still looking forward to 3 Idiots though).

So if you want to settle down with a nice Ranbir Kapoor comedy – wait for the next one he does. Maybe it’ll be better than this one.

But if you have no expectations from Katrina Kaif, if you’ve already become a die-hard Ranbir fan and can forgive 3 hours of no twists and turns in a movie, watch APKGK.

Just know that it isn’t ajab and it isn’t ghazab.

As if Taliban and three hundred million refugees weren’t enough.

Talat Hussain has been one of the finest television hosts I have seen in a long time. And I don’t count Hamid Mir to be a fine television host. He can write all he wants in Jang but he acts like a buffoon in Capital Talk. He can barely get his participants to give him a straight answer and he’s almost always trying to get his own two cents in at the end of the program which I think, he hopes will shape the public opinion.

And while other television anchors follow a similar suit and even educated telly anchors seem to be losing their ground in front of crazy politicians (a part of me feels sorry for them) and while Dawn News TV anchors seem to be malnutritioned most of the time – watching Talat Hussain is always a pleasure. He maybe a little biased sometimes on certain issues but overall, he’s focused, together and mostly worth listening to.

Last night on Live with Talat on Aaj, he talked about something I haven’t heard any news anchor talk about in a while. And the amount of information he had in that one program was enough to make me write a post about it and look at B with frightened eyes, “Shit, this is serious.”

And I normally don’t do that after watching a television program.

Or any current affairs show – unless they’re talking about the latest act of terrorism in the country.

Talat Hussain’s show last night was about the condition at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He was standing in Bajaur with all the brown-gray hills in the background, talking in his usual straightforward manner about this politically fucked up piece of land in Pakistan – which is now under attack from Afghanistan’s forces. Militants are residing in these border areas and continue to attack on Pakistani forces – very recently a military helicopter. These militants have had base camps on the very Afghan border and Hussain continued to narrate many other instances where the uncontrolled, unmonitored border continued to harm the Pakistani army that was fighting its own war along with the United States’.

Now according to the Times Online, Pakistan has ‘complained’ to the US that the strategy in Afghanistan is allowing militants to cross its border more easily harming its campaign against militants. It doesn’t sound like a complaint as much as a weep for help. Considering the troubled and volatile country that Afghanistan is, a loss of control of its border harms no one but its already struggling neighbor Pakistan. And now we’re surrounded by people ready to kill us on every side.

Do I hear a hell yeah from China too?

And all the little fishies going ‘whoop whoop’ in the Arabian Sea too?

We have to be at the unluckiest geographical position right now to be fighting this war.

The tag as put forth by Specs.

1. Shah Rukh Khan, Atif Aslam and Himesh Reshammiya.
   I’ve written about them before and I really think it’s a waste of time to talk about them again.
2. Democracy.
   Yes, we get it. It worked wonders for America. It probably will do great for a lot of other countries like Canada and Britain and Australia too. But for the likes of Pakistan, we’re still halfway in trying to get kids to school without contracting hepatitis and more than half of our most prominent leaders are still in the limelight for corruption charges. You want to give us democracy? Give us some brains first. And some sugar.
3. The all-or-none principle.
   I’ve seen women trying to have careers because that’s what makes them “feel good” about themselves. So they decide not to get married, and regret that decision at a point when it is too late. When their biological clocks are already whimpering and when, in the Pakistani society, they outlive their shelf life. Sad and pathetic, yes, but that’s how it goes. On the other hand I see women making marriage a point of their lives and refuse to involve in anything that involves independence and intelligence. They sit and talk about Star Plus soaps and masalas and Mrs. XYZ’s tushy which increased dramatically since she had that fourth kid.
   Both these extremes are silly. You can’t have it all on either side, if that’s what these people are afraid of. Marriage and settling down with kids come with compromises, just like careers. You can’t be a supermom and a super-CEO all at the same time. And you’ll end up realizing you didn’t spend time enjoying the ride. Finding a balanced middle is such a phobia for some people.
4. Sushi and caviar.
   Raw fish? Fish eggs? No thank you. Even if I did like seafood (which I do not) I’d stick to the stuff you can cook without puking.
5. Blog stats.
   See that sitemeter widget on the right? Don’t be fooled. More than 100 people land on this blog everyday looking for something I’ve never talked about on this blog. Or in my life. Ever.
   Blogging for stats is a different story however and also quite over-rated. I’ve read so many nice, interesting, involving blogs that barely have any visitors or comments at all.
6. Farmville.
   I. Don’t. Play. Leave. Me. Alone.
   What’s with all this madness about cherries and cows suddenly? Is this a social response to how virtual things are getting nowadays?
7. Twilight series and Megan Fox.
   Seriously. Twilight has disturbing themes. The guy wants to suck her blood and she thinks dying for someone you love (you’re only freaking sixteen!) is a great way to go. Then she has a thing for werewolves. Is it really not alarming to us what a strange role model this girl is setting for tweens all over the world? And Megan Fox is not pretty. Plenty of women in Hollywood can pose in sexy sultry ways and I don’t get what’s so special about her.

I could go on and on.

Angelina Jolie (her lips seem exaggerated, not sexy), Twitter (I don’t like the name and I often don’t get the point of it), Sheesha (just light a cigarette if you want to look that cool – the thing makes me nauseous), having the perfect body for women (Queen Latifah and Oprah are working hard against the current there), blond hair (too Barbie) and living abroad (it ain’t fun in the Middle East where women are second rate citizens and it ain’t fun in the European-Atlantic belt where you keep looking for halaal food and your kids are taught sex education in grade 3).

But of course. I won’t.

Part 3 of this.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what a mess the world is right now.

We may not want to call it a world war because of negative associations with the term itself – but that’s what it’s pretty much turned into.

People like me who didn’t know who or what Taliban were, began to get familiar with the phrase post-9/11. Before that we were all oblivious to many subtle references in our Pakistan Studies books that told us the litany of problematic relations we had had with Afghanistan. And thanks to the jazbaati people that we are, the moment we found out that America’s sending troops to Afghanistan, we felt all the love for the Muslim Ummah. All the love that the Muslim Ummah never really feels for us or anyone else, interestingly.

I remember my Pakistan Studies teacher in 12th grade. Mrs. Farah Affan was one of those incredibly passionate, incredibly beautiful, incredibly everything people who could get even the backbenchers shake away their sleep and pay attention to her words. She narrated everything with such personal tones that one felt that she was right there when Amrita Preetam was writing those verses after many women in Punjab were massacred. One felt she stood shaking her beautiful Pathan head when Muslim refugees were turned away from the Afghan border. One could see her presence at the Allahbad address. She never underplayed anything.

So when the Twin Towers fell, the Pakistan Studies class was abuzz with a debate on whether it was right of militant Islamic groups to send their people to fight the Amreeki troops or was it right to let the Amreeki forces use our airspace. As always, she listend quietly to all the opinions before giving her fifteen-minute verdict that made us all feel like morons. So she took her time before girls claimed Osama bin Laden was a hero of Islam and hardly anyone remembered the Pak-Afghan lecture she had delivered just a few days ago.

I sat particularly silent in that class (highly unlike me) to see what she had to say. A part of me was leaning toward the Jiey Islam (Long Live Islam) argument because who-would-protect-our-identity-if-we-didn’t kept springing to mind. But a part of me felt uneasy at the loss of lives of innocent American civilians who were just at work that day. Just an ordinary day at work or an ordinary flight – that happened to end their lives.

Mrs. Affan finally silenced the 70-odd noisy girls, a bunch of whom had taken the opportunity of a loud debate to discuss what they’d wear at the upcoming college mela. She held up her glittering manicured hand and we all turned to look at her with our expectant eyes. She gave her famous dramatic pause and began speaking in her soft but decisive voice.

Emotional people, she called us.

Irrational, forgetful, emotional people.

Forgetting that Pakistan absorbed 5 million refugees from Afghanistan when one of the sole nations to oppose the Pakistani nationhood before the United Nations was Afghanistan. Forgetting the Durand Line. Forgetting the basic principles of national sovereignty. Forgetting history. Forgetting the power the United States has. Forgetting the present. Forgetting to think about the future.

Irrational, illogical, emotional people.

She went on for another ten minutes. She stared at us directly in the eye wanting to know what good would come out of sending 16-year-olds from seminaries, completely untrained in military combat to an already war-torn country where one of the most powerful nations in the world was getting ready to bomb everything that was even remotely related to bin Laden.

Needless to say none of us had anything to offer after that. Some of us continued on, “But what about Islam” track and some of us fell into a small five minute (we were Pre-Med students, we couldn’t afford any more than that at the time) ponder break about what good would it do, really, when everyone else was saving their behinds and we were busy worrying about fighting a lost war with Afghanistan.

Recently someone non-Pakistani asked me if people in Pakistan still held sympathy for the Taliban. Whether they believed that the Taliban were fighting a noble war against the American forces.

I picked up the same soundbites during Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Pakistan about ‘trust deficits’ and ‘establishing solid relations’ with Pakistan because despite the fact that Americans were fighting warmongering druglords who attacked their civilian workplace, the Pakistani nation seemed to have more sense of belonging with the druglords instead of the drone attacks that were killing the extremists.

You can see where the trouble is.

Most people – like me – see what they see on sound bites and news snippets and get to believe them. Then there is this whole Pakistani problem we have – which can be explained within two lines:

Khanjar chalay kisi pe taraptay hain hum Ameer!
Saaray jahan ka dard humaray jigar mai hai.
The dagger can kill any one, Ameer
It is I who feels the world’s pain.

So it doesn’t matter if it’s Afghanistan or Palestine or Kashmir. We have to have a view on it. Which is okay, views are harmless and subject to change. But then we also have to act on it. Let’s forget about how our own children are dying of malaria and diptheria and hepatitis – let’s go save some Afghan toddlers from the American troops! Forget about how we need to educate and form the youth to help build our own country which already suffers from a lack of infrastructure and adequate education at primary level – let’s send them to fight a “Holy War”! Forget about how every country in the world looks out for themselves – let’s try to love the Taliban at the expense of being annihilated into the Stone Age (to quote our ex-President).

This jazba e Islam that we suddenly get a booster shot of is enough to make us do stupid, stupid, stupid things and I don’t know if we’re ever going to learn just how stupider we seem to be getting every day.

The Taliban, now, are our latest sympathy streak. Does this mean we have sympathy for anything wearing a turban or a burqa? We think these people are fighting a Holy War when in fact they are exploiting a situation for the simple ruse of power. Politics in the global world never comes down to honest intention and emotion – but everyday honest and emotional people like me conveniently seem to forget that.

At least – until we see innocent people being blasted all over the place across the country.

Until we see schools and homes and offices destroyed and young commanding officers being slaughtered by these fighters of Allah and channels show bodies strewn everywhere in the latest suicide blast in Peshawar.

Until we read back in history and see that in all the messes between the Durand Line and Pakhtoonistan and the Soviet War and the Afghan civil war … Pakistan and Afghanistan were never really friends anyway. And we realize that the Afghan friendship has caused us more trouble than an enmity with India.

Drugs, klashnikov and now Taliban. With neighbors like these, who needs to sit and watch reality tv?

Not that we’re completely guileless in creating the Taliban. We needed them to smoothen the rough ends that we had been harboring with Afghanistan – and the Taliban regime was the one time we actually were what you could call … friends.

But like all friends, our turban-wearing, women-killing, suicidal pals decided to spin a googly and here we are. Our civilians scared out of their wits and a government completely incapable of handling the mess that is this war on terror.

And this is how it happened.

1979 - Soviets invade Afghanistan. Zia’s sense of Islamic brotherhood is offended.

1981 – Zia regime accepts Reagan’s offer of 3.2 billion dollars in economic and military aid. CIA is now feeding the ISI to help train the “Mujahideens” (NOT Taliban and NOT a potatoh, potaatoh difference).

1984 – the aid in convert programmes balloon from $60 million annually to $400 million. The bulk of this aid is gone to Gulbadin Hikmetyar, leader of Hezb e Islami – the leader of the most organized Afghan resistance parties. The Saudis also join in on the funding.

1986 – Gorbachev called the Afghan conflict a ‘bleeding wound’. He withdraws his armies 2 years later.

1987 – While Islamabad holds talks with Moscow over removal of troops, Afghans bomb border villages of Pakistan are killed. Most of them are Afghan refugees. In retaliation, Pak Air Force shoots down an Afghan transport plane. These result in massive bomb explosions in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Zia blames Kabul and Moscow.

1988 – Ojiri Camp incident. Zia calls it sabotage. 100 dead with 11 injured. Geneva Accords also signed in the same year.

1989 – Benazir Bhutto sanctions a military campaign to capture Jalalabad – which was a military disaster.

1991 – Interim government headed by Mojadedi forms in Afghanistan under Pakistan’s guard.

1992 – A war-torn country refuses to bring peace to its people. Gulbadin Hikmetyar refuses to share power with Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Masood. Civil war breaks out. Pushtuns in the south, Uzbeks, Tajiks in the north and Shi’a Hazaras in the centre battle.

1994 – Pakistan Embassy in Kabul is attacked due to Pakistan’s accusation of calling Rabbani’s election as President as illegal. Pakistani commandos hijacked a school bus. Kabul began strengthening ties with New Delhi.

Enter Taliban.

Rising from the Pushtu-speaking area of Kandahar, the Taliban were products of religious seminaries in Afghanistan. They were steeped in a puritanical interpretation of Islam and were affiliated with the Devbandi movements in both countries.

In the same time period, Islamabad saw in Taliban an opportunity to hold control over an unruly lot known as the Mujahideen. Islamabad was also concerned with the Mujahideen-backed regime of Rabbani establishing close ties with New Delhi.

By the end of 1994 – the Taliban had taken over Kandahar and Herat.

1995 – Taliban seize Jalalabad and Kabul. Interior Ministry head Naseerullah Babar and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto welcome this development with open arms.

1997 - Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government further cements Pakistani alliance to Taliban. Diplomatic recognition is given by Pakistan, Saudia Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Iran calls this a ‘great disaster’.

1998 – Taliban refuse to share power with the Northern Alliance – raising the unrest in the region. In order to gain power, Taliban establish close ties with Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden marries one of his daughters to Mullah Muhammad Omar’s son and sends several hundred Arab-Afghans to participate in Taliban military campaigns in the north.

February 1998 – Bin Laden issues a manifesto. He calls it the “International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders”. He denounces the US and condemned it for blockade of Iraq and called to ‘kill Americans and their allies – civilians and military’. It also went on to call support from every Muslim who could do it in any country in order to ‘liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim’.

August 1998 – US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed. Washington strikes bin Laden’s hideouts in Afghanistan, failing to harm bin Laden.

November 1998 – Manhattan Federal Court issues an idictment against bin Laden. CIA announces $5 million bounty for information to the arrest of bin Laden.

1999 – Nawaz government is overthrown. UN imposes aviation and financial sanctions against Taliban regime.

2000 – Taliban capture Takhar province. Pakistani government is asked for assurance that they hadn not been involved in the fall of Taloqan.

2001 – Attacks on the Twin Towers. President Musharraf informed Washington that it would allow the United States to use Pakistani airspace, logistical support and military intelligence against the Taliban. President Musharraf states to give ‘top priority to the defence of Pakistan’ and ‘defence of other countries comes later’.

—-

The Taliban are a brute force of a people who barely have had the chance to live in a peaceful country for decades. And you have what you get. Thanks to the mass poppy production that ends up as illegal sale of drugs everywhere, the illiteracy and the refusal to let innovation and modernity set foot in their country, the Afghan land continues to be the graveyard of empires.

Pakistan on the other hand has more hope. It has more chance of surviving the curse that is Taliban since the bearded mullah is not exactly the role model we look up to. Neither do we face the swift disappearance of civilization as we know it.

What we do face is a strange ignorance of facts and a flair for the dramatic. What we do experience is a mixture of feelings that make us say and do stupid things – like support Al-Qaeda and consider bin Laden a hero. What we can’t understand is that all these attacks that occur now on almost every day basis in Pakistan, are a result of a movement that was supposed to do nothing but provide us with a geostrategic benefit. A benefit that obviously has backfired right in our faces.

Right now the millions who were rendered helpless and homeless, the thousands who faced a loss of their loved ones and the hundreds of innocent civilians who try to scrape through life every day with fear surrounding them in the lands of Waziristan owe it to us to get some brains and see the light of day and understand that the future of Pakistan won’t improve by thinking along Zia-esque lines.

The Taliban are as opportunist as we were when we created them – there is nothing Islamic about them and there is nothing humane about their modes of combat. Their retaliation to a military offensive is to consume lives of innocent women and children out to buy groceries and Eid clothes. Their humanity is to brainwash fourteen year olds into thinking they are fighting a good cause when they strap bomb jackets to their chests and go collide with someone’s battered old car. Their politics are as decrepit as they are uncivilized. Their influence on Pakistan is an act of terror and a cause of national concern. Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan’s spokesman Azam Tariq claims that,

“the militia had started a ‘guerrilla war’ in Waziristan and would attack cities to prove ‘we can fight for years’.”

I don’t know if people still want to call it a holy war or a crusade or a freedom struggle. All I know is that it isn’t noble when innocent civilians are getting killed. It isn’t war if you’re attacking Meena Bazaar and it isn’t fighting against evil when the greatest evil is creating by your own hands.

Articles that helped:

• Dr. Rifaat Hussain’s article on Afpak Relations.
• Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi’s article on Afpak Relations.
• Context of Soviet Invasion in Afghanistan by Paul Andrews.
• Dawn.com’s article on the various attacks on Pakistan by Taliban.

Part 2 of this.

When Khuda Ke Liye was released, a lot of drawing rooms and classrooms sprung into the ‘music is halaal or haraam?’ debate. Lot of people had a lot of opinions, as always, but the greatest words of wisdom came from my then-19-year-old brother, Ali.

“There are a lot of things forbidden in Islam. Lies, bribery, cheating, killing, murder, rape, adultery, etc. Music sure may be one of them; but to spend all this time banning music and not caring about the bigger evils that actually turn society into shit – is a waste of time.”

Who would’ve known his words actually made more sense than he thought. Check these fatwas out for more information. (1 and 2)

What’s weird is that Ali had it absolutely right. And I hadn’t been able to put the same idea into words since forever. The same idea that had been burning in my subconscious after witnessing 20-plus years of living with a fairly strict Devbandi dadhiyaal (paternal family). They had been banning music right left and centre calling it the source of all evils and telling me again and again that the reason no angel ever descended in my house was because I had a tv and a very shamefully large collection of music in my pc that blasted from the room pretty much all the time.

When he said that, it hit me that most of the Muslim world seemed to be obssessed with evils that were remotely or weakly discussed in the Shariah whereas the major problems that plagued the Muslims didn’t seem to fancy our sense of wrecking havoc every which way.

Music is one of the most powerful departments of art. The origins are as old as any other art forms. The Greek scholar Apollodorus notes that,

“The Nile after having overflowed the whole country of Egypt, when it returned within its natural bounds, left on the shore a great number of dead animals of various kinds, and, among the rest, a tortoise, the flesh of which being dried and wasted by teh sun, nothing was left within the shell but nerves and cartilages, which braced and contracted by desiccation, were rendered sonorous. Mercury (also known as Hermes Trismegistus in the ancient Greek and Egyptian history – the god of writing and magic in their respective cultures), walking along the banks of the river, chanced to strike his food agains the shell of the tortoise, was pleased with the sound it produced, and upon reflection, conceived the idea of a lyre, which instrument he afterwards constructed in the form of a tortoise, stringing it with dried sinews of dead animals.”

Music itself however, is much more basic than the use of instruments – something which radical Islamists seem to lay all the emphasis on. In essence, music is even found in the very way Qa’aris recite the Quran. For example, if any of you have heard Qari Abu Bakr Shatri or Qari Sudais recite Surah Rahman – you’d know what I mean. They are without a doubt one of the most beautiful pieces you’ll ever hear. There are no drums or violins involved. There is no lyre or guitar. There is simply rhythm - the basis of all that can be called music.

In its very basic meaning – rhythm is what makes music become music. There is hardly anything attractive about random pots and pans clanging together – or random instruments, better yet. What makes strings and drums and echoes sound like music is the sense of rhythm they bring to those instruments.

The point being that music is not only an important aspect in the evolution of mankind from savage to civilized, its also something that can’t be denied presence. From planetary motion to how Chris Martin sings – it is omnipresent.

What I hate about our culture is how one on hand they teach you despise music while on the other they’ve got sufism and Vital Signs and Nazia Hassan in your history. On one hand you’ve got Geo celebrating Ramadan and the spirit of Islam and on the other Aamir Liaquat is ripping off popular songs to turn them into Nashheeds or Naats. On one hand our weddings begin with the Holy Name of Allah and on the other they spring up into dancing fests – which in my case, my Devbandi Dadhiyal stayed far far away from. There really isn’t much of a stability in our heads when it comes to music. Most people who come towards Islam reject it because somewhere somehow we thought it was the root to everything evil and modern Islamists even go as far to say that music creates madness.

How many tapes has Zardari been privy to?

It’s unavoidable, it’s what it is. Music. Absolutely unavoidable. Unless Muslims want to go live under a hole, there is no way we can step away from this natural system of things. That’s why there are now even weirder questions for fatwas such as should ringtones be banned on cellular phones etc.

To me, music has always been one of those escapes that could make me think of other things except what was driving me nuts. When Ali learnt to play the guitar, we would spend the last hours of the day sitting in front of the pc where he would find the tabs to some song he could reasonably be good at and I would sing to his broken tunes.

Our first songs together was “With or Without You” by U2 and then “Sweet Child o Mine” by Guns and Roses and we kept repeating these until our non-lovers-of-Western-Music parents knew the words to it too. We even began writing our songs and playing them for fun – and fantasized about becoming a great big rock band. That was until I got pissed off at Ali for spending over 20k on a guitar instead of spending it on something much more worthwhile.

That’s when I realized I could never be a part of a rock band. 

There are songs I can listen to for hours. Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall. Life in Technicolor by Coldplay. Sweet Child o Mine by Guns and Roses. City of Blinding Lights by U2. Your Love Keeps Liftin Me Higher by Jackson 5. Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia (though that gets me depressed). Aik Alif by Noori as played in Coke Studio (I do wish Ali Noor hadn’t attempted at that high note). I also have weird fascinations. Like the Gummy Bear song and Mussarrat Nazeer’s Chitta Kukkar Baneray Tay. The latter mainly because it reminds me of my childhood and how that was the only song I knew that I could sing at weddings. And the fact that the lyrics are just too cute for words.

I cannot listen to Dream Theatre though I do love Joe Satriani. Bubblegum pop is really not my thing and to me Shakira is kind of that grotesque statue you can’t stop staring at. I love alternative rock and I think Pakistanis are great at producing great music – if only they’d stop worrying about making money and moving to India after just one hit. Which is a pointless thing to say but I said it anyway because I can.

There’s plenty more I can talk about – how music springs life into any event or how it makes a dull movie seem interesting or how musicians have been able to become UN ambassadors and humanitarians and talk about every social change that comes through in their societies with the help of their songs (Pink Floyd, Scorpions, U2, etc). But I’m only going to say that the world without music is as impossible to imagine as is a world without colors or seasonal changes or the sea or trees. It’s as natural as anything else in the universe.

And I know the debate over the music-is-halal-or-haram will continue to thrive as I hum the Gummy Bear song and Barelvis will continue to love their milaads while Devbandis will continue to bash anything remotely rhythmical. I know that the next big band in Pakistan won’t wait more than 2 months of success to move to India and sell its biggest song to an Imran Hashmi movie and I know that Ali and I will never get that rock band together.

But music still made our day when we were fighting wars and it uplifted spirits when we won matches and it never stopped giving hope and messages of peace and harmony to millions who were searching for it. It is there at every celebration, at every occasion that needs a voice, it’s there at times we don’t want to talk to anyone but stare out into space and get that me time.

And it sure as hell made that final university farewell interesting because all everyone wanted to do was sit and chat with each other post-dinner.

Music, I know, sure is a lifeline.

Part 1: Literature.

Peter loves Jane. Jane loves Peter. And they all loved a dog – whose name I can’t recall.

That was the first encounter I had with books. Two pre-pubescents painted charmingly across 20 odd pages with that orangey dog and their attempts to make ice cream at home or the theme parks or whatever. It’s been a while since I saw those.

Following that were more goofy children books. I especially loved the illustrated Urdu poetry ones with Ibn e Insha’s genius all filled with colorful depictions of the ongoing happenings (and I really wish I could write in Noori Nastaaliq on this blog right now):

“Mai dorta hi dorta, jangal se basti mai gaya,
Basti mai theen do bibiyan, dono bari hi mehrbaan,
Ik se mujhe roti mili, ik se mujhe paani mila.
Roti toh daali pait mai, paani ko dala khait mai.
Aur khait ne jo ghaas di, bakri ko maine bakhsh di.
Bakri se le ker doodh jo, maine diya ik shakhs ko,
Woh tha lakarhaara koi, aflaas ka mara koi.
(is ke baad kia hai mujhe yaad nahee, us ko kaheen se khatti dahi mill jati hai)
Khatta dahi, khatta dahi, meri kahani jhoot thi.
Kioon jhoot thi, jee wah wah, sacha hai sab qissa mera!
Mai dorta hi dorta, jangal se basti mai gaya!”

Loosely translated:
I ran and ran, from the woods to the village,
Where I met two women, both were kind,
One gave me bread, one gave me water.
I ate the bread, and gave the water to the nearby field.
The field gave me grass, I gave it to a goat.
The goat gave me milk and I gave it to a man.
The man was a woodsman and he was very poor.
(and something after this that I can’t remember that leads on to the kid finding bitter yoghurt)
Bitter yoghurt, bitter yoghurt, my story was a lie!
Hah, it was no lie! It was all the truth!
I ran and ran, from the woods to the village.

I don’t know what my childhood would’ve been like or the kind of person I’d have been if I hadn’t had books to save me from all those disasters that prevailed in my childish world back then. I don’t want to sound anti-modernist but I feel glad that I had dozens of books, not television channels, to help me escape into a world I could call decidedly my own. I’m a proud dork when it comes to books. I can read anything and everything. Even those crazy directory papers they wrap paan with.

Most of us grew up reading European-American literature and only a slight handful of Urdu writers that were included in our syllabi. To us, even as we grew older, literature meant Wordsworth’s poems and Shakespeare’s plays and Archie and Jughead’s Double Digest. A very small part of it could belong to Ghalib, Meer and Saudah. Many girls in my graduate Urdu class couldn’t get what “Rekhta” meant and I still see/meet many people who proudly claim that they can’t count to 100 in Urdu and they still speak their native language in an American accent. Even though they are thoroughbred Pakistanis.

Literature, to a nation, serves the purpose of awakening the soul of its people. And it’s not just about ‘back then’ when Iqbal was writing his famous poetry to ‘reawaken the Muslims’ of the Indian subcontinent. From the moment literature was born, from the very first cave drawings and heiroglyphics of a primitive homo sapien, the written word (or symbol) has told Man his story, has framed man into his respective place in time. Literature breathes in man what nothing else can: the power to analyze.

A nation that rejects literature rejects freedom of speech. A people that deny the power of the written word are a people who will probably win a war of bullets and bombs – but will ultimately fail against the longevity of existence. They will not learn how to create an artist, they will not learn how to produce peacemakers, they will not understand what a miracle it is to hear a child produce his first words. Their soul will ultimately erode and their identities will be lost.

Pakistani literature has had little time to develop, like most of the other institutions we’ve had in the country. Subcontinental writers are often meshed together. Ghalib is often treated as an Indian asset, instead of a Pakistani one and I guess that’s neither here nor there. He died before he could write painful sonnets on the great divide of the subcontinent. Which goes true in most of the great names that the golden age of Urdu produced (Rekhta’s that).

What are thoroughly Pakistani authors remain shadowed in a country still struggling with mass illiteracy and now terrorist attacks from all over the place. Plus there’s Geo. Who has time to read books when you can watch a sexy scandal on television?

Maybe we have grown older, wiser, more cynical. Our lives busier, our heads fuller. Maybe we don’t have time for books because what took us 1 day to read now takes half a paragraph to get in a book review. Or get adapted into a play or a movie.

Or maybe the need is still there. The written word is still as powerful as it was before and we’re ignoring it. Maybe not everything is an evolutionary imperative and maybe there are things we were meant to be but couldn’t attempt at being because we were too busy snickering at Meera. Maybe the Pakistani generation has exactly what it deserves right now. Maybe Meera is who we really are. A brainless twit with no idea who she is. Or what she’s doing.

Makes eerie sense. She probably hasn’t read a single book in her life either. Then again, opening a book shop in Heera Mandi isn’t exactly a great business venture.

Without literature, without literacy, we perch ourselves at as much of a threat of being made a global laughingstock (which you kinda have to admit we are) as Meera already happens to be on national television.

I know I’m going to have a hard time prying my own kids away from their Playstations and I know Peter and Jane books might not be there but other goofy books are abundant as well and I know loving literature in the modern world is an archaic concept, an outdated market.

But they’re going to get a library filled with all kinds of books anyway.

I know people talk about fulfilling basic rights such as food, water and sanitation over literacy being priorities in a country like ours and I know we’ve got more ghost schools than we can manage and I know Zardari’s president.

But I will continue believing that this nation can be so much better if we all began to read and write.

It gives me hope, if nothing else.

Or my own show at least.

My television experience has been painful mostly. I hated the people I had to work with, I despised the tomfoolery that producers indulged in and the whole media culture that spawns big-headed jerks we like to call ‘celebrities’.

My first television program was when there was only PTV around. I was about 13 maybe. And a friend of my father thought I talked a lot.

A lot. And even though the man was nothing short of a genius himself, I really didn’t think it took brains to figure that out.

And he thought he should put it to use. He put me in a kids magazine show with lots of puzzles and tweeny songs PTV fondly thought kids loved. I did a couple of more shows after that, co-hosting and playing the part of the little cute girl in the frock with short hair and big eyes (in all fairness, I wasn’t cute, just a kid in a frock PTV fondly thought was the mass image for little girls). And I kept getting to do silly kids programs – and then I went on a break. Because I was 16 and in my day, 16 was not the age for television and vice versa.

Television barely had anything for teenagers mainly because television was only PTV, NTM and ZeeTV if you had a dish antennae. Or SPTV with those goofy spider-style antennae that seemed to be made out of leftover utensil steel.

So once I grew out of that I began getting offers to do dull plays (that Dad wouldn’t let me do) and slightly moronic singing shows with kids (remember Hadiqa Kiyani and Sohail Rana?) and a music teacher. That show ran for a year or so and I still meet people telling me they remember me from that time. My face hasn’t really timewarped into adulthood and I quickly change the subject. I’ve even had my kindergarte/montessori teachers spot me and tell me, ‘You went to Casa Dei Bambini didn’t you?’

Post cable television, post-Geo and post all that is now all and sundry in the name of media, I reclused. People who were assistant producers in Pakistan Television (and being an assistant producer in PTV meant picking up leftover scripts after the recording is done and making sure the noisy nosy kids get food during breaks) began directing their own shows. The market was suddenly huge and PTV’s way of doing things suddenly became obsolete.

There was no way you could spend two days of rehearsing the script or arriving at the studio at 8 in the morning – even before the lighting guys got there – with all the competition and 24-hour-transmission cycle. Cable channels were on the air, all the time, all the while. They had to keep it snappy, they had to create stuff all the time and if they slacked on quality some time or the other it was okay because the guy sitting on top was too busy taking calls from advertisers and the ones overseeing the recordings/transmissions were rejects from PTV or NTM.

There was no way you could speak stuff without telling your producer first. Censorship was a big deal and so was clothing. There were people who would tell you your face is meshing into the background or your words were slurring and fumbling and if you had an accent like Saima Mohsin, you weren’t allowed to speak Urdu. If you had an attitude, you could shove it up your ass because PTV was the king.

Good or bad, cable dethroned PTV like Louis the Fourteenth and fed everything else – including the standard, the method, the environment – to the guillotine. Cable changed television forever and from one khabarnama at nine we went to news on the hour. From one stellar-star-cast drama a week that ended after 23 episodes, we went to multi-starrer, multi-month-running plays that didn’t rely on studio sets and old furniture. They were shot in beautiful countries with beautiful girls and 00900-786-01 kept flashing at the bottom.

PTV lay old and forgotten, like a half-dead retired court jester alive only because the King had to have an official jester.

Where the King really got his laughs from was the free-lance pranksters who did it funnier, kinkier and faster.

While this meant great business opportunities for stakeholders, job opportunities for fresh graduates of media studies and a significant change of taste and sensibilities for the public – the bombardment of channels provided an erratic graph of quality and quantity. Shitty programs went on air with girls who twisted their lips and hips and said stuff in those video magazine shows that made me want to shoot myself.

Television made celebrities out of idiots like Aamir Liaquat Hussain (who is a total retard and a moron and anyone who has the patience to listen to him and call on his show is three times less the brain he does) and celebrated evangelism for truth. It dealt carelessly with aspects such as responsibility in journalism and made a mockery out of creativity and a million out of PT  Barnum’s quote.

And suckers kept lapping it up.

Yesterday I saw “Rahat” cooking pineapple pancakes. And people called on her show to tell her that she had ’saved’ them from eating out of the house and thus they were saving money and they just couldn’t thank her enough.

Every caller started from,

“Haye, aap humain itni achi lagti hain na!”
(Oh, we think you are so great!)

And even though I tried the pancakes myself despite her idiotic recipe-giving out method (“a little butter, a little flour” – what the fuck is little? You’re giving out a recipe, not taking part in an old ladies’ discussion!) I did that after double checking from an online source. That woman was far too annoying to be taken without doubt.

Do NOT take Rahat's recipe for it.

I can’t understand callers like that. When Amir Liaquat Hussain was wearing a maroon embroidered organza thingamajig that flowed down to his shoulders, people called into his show and said,

“Aamir Bhai, aap bohat hi khoobsoorat lagg rahay hain!”
Brother Aamir, you look ‘beautiful’.

Which clinches it.

I should have my own tv channel. I’ll call it MinervaTV and I won’t take any advertisers to bust my chops and tell me I need to show their stupid ads to pay for my airtime.

As for how I’ll find the money to invest this, well. What if some millionaire (who hasn’t gone bankrupt yet) happens to read this blog and thinks I might have something here?

I’ll show stuff to prove that people are stupid and will keep getting more and more stupid if they kept watching these things and liking them.

To prove that television isn’t about merit or truth or objectivity. I guess it never was.

It’s more about who can get where and talent doesn’t always have to be a major portion of the deal.

I’ll make cooking shows the way they’re SUPPOSED to be shown. Not with squeaky clean kitchens where everything is neatly chopped and put in bowls. I’ll plant the cook smack in the middle of the sabzi mandi (veggie market) where tiny kids will follow him/her around for petty labor or bheek (charity) and I’ll kindly ask the host/presenter NOT to meticulously clean the cooking workspace between breaks and let it be messy, crazy and smelly.

The way a kitchen IS when you decide to cook pineapple pancakes and a chocolate milkshake and a main course apart from that.

I’ll forbid talk show hosts from repeating questions and I won’t care how big the politician is (maybe I should ask a mafia head to invest in my idea – that way the politicians would always behave on the shows), if he decides to justify his leader by saying, “That’s just the way it is” he’s not getting to speak again.

And video jockeys should have at least SOME semblance of sanity before being video jockeys. That means they don’t get to use ‘you know’ more than once in one hour, they don’t get to giggle irritatingly between sentences and it is mandatory for them to give a quiz on Pop/Rock and Metal History every week.

And I’m going to ban Meera from coming anywhere near my studio. I don’t care who she sleeps with or decides to marry or produce children with.

I’d kick ass.

That’s why I’m in Yemen with no possibility of opening a channel and that’s why Miss Meera Jee Online is getting to interview Tapu Javeri.

You know one of those books which you pick up from the shelf because they look terribly interesting and you flip page after page after page and nothing happens and the book ends and you realize you’ve just wasted four hours of your life reading something that didn’t make any sense and whether the author was really inspired enough to write the book or just plain bored as you were before you started reading the piece of shit?

James Frey’s “My Friend Leonard” is exactly that kind of a book. To a T.

I flipped page after page after page to hope something good would come out of the book, to hope some twist or turn or some semblance of a story would emerge out of a guy who’s been an alcoholic and a coke fiend (the basis seemed strong enough to expect a storyline) but unfortunately the whole book is one crass event after another until it ends and I am left with a sense of gladness that I never read “A Million Little Pieces” to which this was a sequel of.

The book apparently has gotten rave reviews including one that says,

 ”This book is fascinating. And if you don’t think so, fuck you.”

Well, alright. Fuck you too. The book is a waste of time.

Qurutulain Hyder’s “My Temples Too” is a fascinating read, even in English, that provides the reader with that intimate insight into the era that was pre-partition and the final divide between the subcontinent. A must-read, even though I’m still hoping to read the original in Urdu.

Barack Obama - a biography by Joanne F. Price is another complete waste of time, money and energy. As my husband is prone to say, wikipedia’s great for biographies. And he couldn’t be more right in this case since the biographer has added no personal insight, no angle, no feel to the book itself. It almost seems as if you’re reading a robotic memoir of a man who is perched at greatness (the book was printed before he became POTUS) and sucks all the fun out of the remarkable journey he’s taken.

Management: This is another movie that rambles in and out of the life of Mike who falls in love with Sue. They’re together, then they’re not together, he’s doing something with his life, then he’s not doing something with his life. Eventually it’s just a dull hour and a half with nothing redeeming except Jennifer Aniston’s portrayal of the repressed stoic character Sue Claussen.

The Ugly Truth: As far as rom-coms go, Katherine Heigl sure knows how to pick the unlikely ones. First with Knocked Up and then with 27 Dresses and now with The Ugly Truth.

The movie pits together two television personalities, a producer (Heigl) and a cynical, indelicate tv show host (Gerard Butler) who end up falling for each other in a typical case of opposites attract. The plot’s fine, the acting’s fine, the twists are fine. The film just couldn’t hold my interest despite Heigl’s huffing and puffing at the various indecencies of Butler’s character. Quite surprisingly though, Butler seemed to overshine Heigl (which is saying something) and remained the main watchable part of the movie.

The Proposal: Sandra Bullock is getting old. Despite facial lifts and botoxes, her eyes are still crinkling and her lips are still wrinkling. And since Ryan Reynolds is fairly young and plays her romantic interest in the movie, she just keeps looking older.

The movie however is hilarious and is a must-watch for all romcom fans. Old or not, Bullock can hold her screen presence still and my special favorite scene is when she dances and chants around some bonfire with Betty White to the words, “To the sweat drop down my balls”. The story isn’t original, it’s a typical formula flick – but with lots of laugh and a happy ending. What more can you want out of a chick flick, eh?

Star Trek: I’ve never been a Trekkie and I frankly don’t ever think I’m going to be one. But this movie, even for a non-Trekkie as myself, was pretty well-made and adequately interesting to watch. Plenty of explosions, lots of spaceships and aliens and oh yeah. You get to see Eric Bana like never before. Eye candy includes Chris Pine and his uncanny resemblance to William Shatner’s “Kirk” days of the yesteryears.

Ice Age III: I liked it the first and the second time. No arguments about how I liked the third. It’s quick, it’s funny and I love Sid the Sloth. And where has Ray Romano disappeared to? Not that he needs to make money again for the next five Romano generations but he really shouldn’t retire this early.

Public Enemies: Okay so it’s probably blasphemy to call a movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale boring but it very much was. John Dillinger is supposed to do something interesting to keep the movie on its edge but I’m afraid all his tricks and haps are as old as gangster flicks go. There isn’t darkness in the movie – just drudgery. There isn’t charisma (or hasn’t been exploited enough) in Bale’s character (there was a lot more in Gordon’s character, re. Gary Oldman in The Dark Knight) and Marion Cotillard is just plain playing the chick – except in that one scene where she is brutally interrogated by a police officer regarding the whereabouts of Dillinger in which she is without a doubt, splendid.

The Tale of Desperaux: What started off as a very interesting story ended up being very unoriginal. The kingdom of Dor loves soup. One day the king bans soup because of an unfortunate incident and we are now taken deep inside the world of mouse and men. Or mouse and rat, if you will.

The movie, despite being packed with a stellar cast and stellar animation, didn’t rise up to the expectations that were built in the first twenty minutes. The messages are strong and a little too complicated sometimes for a children’s book (upon which the movie is based on). It was one of those movies you wished were better – because if they were, they’d be very, very memorable watches.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: Harry is growing up, ending his multi-billion dollar ride and getting all ready to defeat Lord Voldemort.

A big fat giant treat for all Potter fans. I can’t talk about this movie objectively because I’m quite a Potterholic myself. So the only way I can talk about it is the way all Pottermaniacs talk about it. What was missing from the book and what we hope to see in the future.

We definitely missed Dumbledore’s funeral. The lighting of wands just wasn’t enough, sorry. We’re happy to see Daniel Radcliffe’s acting improving with time (took him long enough) and we are very much hoping to see something great done with Severus Snape’s story in the upcoming movie. Bellatrix Lestrange must be kept up front and centre (and that mainly because of what a kickass job Helena Bonham-Carter has done in the movies). The romantic triangles are well-played and well-portrayed.

If they can get away with breaking the last book into two VERY GOOD movies, I’d say that would be a job well done.

JK Rowling’s millions of pounds would be proud.

Upcoming/or already arrived movies I want to watch are:

1. Julie and Julia,
2. Funny People,
3. G-Force,
4. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,
5. Inglorious Basterds,
6. A Christmas Carol,
7. Where The Wild Things Are,
8. Couples Retreat,
9. Law Abiding Citizen
10. Up.

–

It is amazing to see how completely thick Pakistanis can get sometimes. And I don’t know if the media does it on purpose or whether it’s just how we think – but callers keep dialing into shows and random people keep showing up on those street interviews stating the most bizarre of theories.

For example.

My personal favorite and the most popular one to date.

“Sab Amreeka karva raha hai.”
(It’s all America’s doing.)

Are you fucking psycho?

I don’t know where we get our roots of blaming people right left and centre. First it was the British. Then it was the Hindus. Then it was the Army. And now it’s America. Oh and let’s not forget the Jews. The Jews are all spending their time and energy and money on trying to eradicate Muslims in the world because they really have nothing else to do – let’s say, maybe save their own dwindling population from going extinct?

The Jews should get cable.

US Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan met with … exceedingly Pakistani reviews.

People complained about the protocol she was given (did we honestly expect her to roam around Islamabad like a hitchhiker with no guards to save her ass in a country where over 200 people were killed in random suicide blasts in the past one month?!) and that it ‘blocked traffic’.

Zardari, Gilani and all his other chailays (sidekicks) don’t?

They complained that she didn’t reach out to the common man (she’s US Secretary of State, not God, it’s not her job to reach out to the common man to solve problems, it’s her job to sit in high-profile meetings, give millions of dollars in aid to a war-torn country like ours and get the fuck out of here before someone shoots her in the head and we get blamed for everything from here to Antartica for the next seventy years) and didn’t do much to deserve thanks and appreciation.

I don’t know what Pakistanis wanted from her, really. A game of lukkachuppi (hide and seek) with the local greengrocer’s son? Or a cozy dinner with Sheikh Rasheed? Really, what?

The worst part is, while all this complaining is going on about Hillary’s visit, I cannot believe Pakistanis are still stuck in “America’s doing it for their own selfish purposes” … well, of course they are, you nitwits, wake the fuck up.

If you had a country that was powerful enough to bring down the economy, if your biggest buildings were bombed by passenger airplanes and if your army was stuck in two godforsaken countries trying to get the hell outta there, you’d do everything in your power to make “War Against Terrorism” your daily slogan and I don’t blame America for that for one second. If anything, I blame Pakistanis for not taking their country as seriously as America takes its own land of opportunities.

Even with the shadiest links they created between the 9/11 attacks and Osama bin Laden, they went to war on his ass and still haven’t given up. They’re losing money, they’re losing morale, and they’re pulling out of Iraq (which in all fairness had nothing to do with 9/11 – but we can thank Bush Sr. for being a redneck for that) but they haven’t given up. They are using everything in their power to make sure that ‘Islamic militancy’ doesn’t rise again – especially in their country and they don’t care if Pakistan seems to be whimpering about it.

And thanks to their free and independent media, no one shuts up about how the brewing of 9/11 was loosely linked to the proxy Soviet War for which America used the Taliban.

No one lets them forget that for a second.

Pakistanis like the whole blame tennis. We don’t want to see how we’re in any way responsible for groups like Lashkar e Jhangvi and Mullah Deisel. We don’t want to accept that whenever someone yells “Nara e Takbeer” we want to lose all common sense and charge into the field without knowing what we’re charging INTO.

So we elected the MMA (which Benazir often called the Military Mullah Alliance), voted for the Kitaab and called Musharraf a heathen when he talked about ‘enlightened moderation’ and hated him for what he did at Lal Masjid.

My question is – when do we stop hating and start figuring out what is really wrong with the attitude we have towards solving problems?

When do we stop blaming America for every small problem that happens in this country and start taking responsibility for all the nuisance we’ve created in the name of Islam?

Because if we do – then we begin to seriously look at our issues, we begin to then (and only then) begin to curse our leaders for what really is the problem … instead of cursing them of just kissing America’s fine hamburger-clad ass.

When do we realize – that our problems lie deeper than a US official’s visit and until and unless we stop supporting (even in our hearts) the bane that is Taliban, Islamic militancy and all this business about mullahs and their ulterior motives … we won’t go anywhere near a Zardari-free future.

People ask me why I don’t have a job. Or why I haven’t thought about working after I got married.

It was only after an incidence or two that I learnt that when I give them an offhand response, they think like all men, my husband is a sexist chauvinist pig who likes women to stay home and produce offspring.

So I began telling them the whole story. Cumbersome but at least clears out the air.

And prevents people from giving me that knowing look or ‘Aoowhhh’ when they hear I’m doing nothing these days.

I tell them that I haven’t been on a break since five years. That I’ve been constantly studying AND working, or just working since the day I got my admission in my masters programme and that having to cook food for one day being the only job I have these days is actually a relief instead of finishing assignments, having a term quiz the next day and then rushing to teach or finish the article on the deadline or arrive at the studio on time.

And then I tell them I’m in Yemen.

To which they produce their knowing “Aoowhhh” again and thank God that’s the end of that.

I don’t work because there really is nothing worth doing here for a person with my skills and degree. Every job requires fluency in Arabic – at which I magnificently suck. Most jobs want me to spend 9-5 hours with them, which I can’t stand because hey. How would I go to the loo?

You heard me right.

The loo.

Two days ago, husband and I attended a book fair at the local expo in Sana’a. And thanks to the enormous amount of cashews and almonds I had consumed right before leaving the house (very, very bad idea) with some pineapple juice (very, very, very, bad idea), fifteen minutes into the dismal, abysmal book fair, I tugged at B’s sleeve.

“Ghar chalo na.”

“Kioon, kia hua?”  He looks up from his copy of “The Three Musketeers” at which he is very disappointed because it’s abridged.

“Bathroom jana hai.”

“What? Now?”

“Haan na.”

He puts down his book. “Shouldn’t you have thought of this before?”

“It’s the call of nature, I can’t think of these things before!”

He grins and continues to throw his witty comebacks about how I have the threshold of a two-year-old for these things and gets even wittier when he sees me slightly whimpering and shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

We quickly pay for the three highly unwanted novels we bought (we bought them anyway because we’re both book lovers and can’t resist the idea of buying books at what may be the ONLY book fair in Sana’a for the next year and what may be our ONLY chance of buying books for the next year or so and what were the ONLY two stalls of English books in the 2-300 plus book stalls in the expo centre that was filled with books in Arabic), and proceed towards the exit.

I realize the exit is too far and too complicated to locate in this labyrinth of Arabic books, so B spots a female guard and tells me to ask her where the loo is. God forbid if a man addresses a woman here – esp. asking that question.

The female guard thinks I’m trespassing so she quickly jabbers in Arabic and almost shoves me aside.

Not helping.

I explain to her again. “Hammam! Mojood?”

The light dawns and she navigates me to a group of toilets where the men are getting ready for namaz and doing wud’u. I look around for a sign of a woman in a frock but the guard points to a pair of shady looking stairs.

“Fouk” or something to that effect, she says. Which means up.

Oh dear.

I rush up the stairs and the first thing I see is a woman sitting on the dirties possible floor breastfeeding her little kid. She looks up at me and I give her a feeble smile.

I want to say, “Wouldn’t it have been better to go home and do that instead of exposing your barely-one-year-old to the hazards of a Yemeni toilet floor?”

But maybe she’s in as much of an emergency as I am.

So I check the three stalls.

And hold your noses. The first two I check win the Nobel Prize for the Dirtiest Public Washrooms. If I wasn’t in a hurry, I’d take pictures and post them all over the internet with a title, “And you wonder why people have swine flu here?”

The third one is a little (and only a little) better, so I get my business done and walk out. The woman is still sitting there. The baby continues to stare at me and while I manage another attempt at a feeble smile, I realize it’s best not to wonder the amount of germs that little bundle could be contracting at that very moment.

Not that Pakistani public washrooms aren’t contenders for the aforementioned Nobel but Yemenis are just too fascinatingly gross for even a lowly Pakistani such as myself. And especially after what B told me – that even the most educated of Yemenis use the toilet in a very creepy way.

Now I need to figure out how exactly should I explain this.

They perch themselves on top of the flush as if they’re sitting on an Indian toilet. So basically they’re gracing the toilet seat with their shoeprints. And it’s only GOD who’s saving them from all kinds of diseases in the world. They certainly haven’t left it to good sense.

Maybe these things get easier to deal with when you’re in your home country. Because you at least know what you are getting into, what you’ve grown up with. But in a Middle-Eastern country like Yemen – especially when other Middle-Eastern countries are virtually speckless clean and don’t chew on Qat, you kinda wonder what went wrong with this lot.

So I lie sleepless now (this morning was thoroughly disturbed by the new construction workers next to our building who think 8 in the morning is a perfect time to sweep the ground clean with their dumpers) .. and I can’t help but wondering about the future of not only this country (I’m not that selfless) but of the possibility of having a family here. Raising children in this country is an ordeal. The schools remain closed at the slightest whims of the ministry. This very year they’ve been shut for over 5 months, due to the swine flu pandemic.

I don’t know what these teachers teach since most kids in 9th grade chemistry are oblivious to what ‘matter’ is. And I’ve been told that a very recent math class in a very upscale, expensive school here spent the entire period questioning why -4-4=-8.

One day while B and I were discussing our respective cultural shocks from Qat, to eating habits, to driving craziness here, we wondered if people thought the same thing about Pakistanis? Foreigners who came from … I don’t know … America, Switzerland, Australia … did they find our pan-spotted walls and peeing-on-streets gentlemen just as grossing out? Or how donkey carts could easily and lazily travel on main and busy roads and how one man can establish himself as an entreprenuer with his thaila that claims:

“Mr. Barger – humari koi branch nahee hai.”

Do these people consider us just as bad as Yemenis? Or would they prefer Yemenis because Yemenis have that whole oh-everything-here-is-over-four-thousand-years-old and this-and-this-has-been-declared-a-UN-World-Heritage-Site going for them and all we’ve got going on right now are suicide blasts and a death toll that rises every day thanks to the motherfuckers that are Taliban.

Maybe I’m being biased – but we sell more than just URDU books in our book fairs. We don’t have a government order for women to wear burqas and we have cinemas, thank you very much. And oh yeah. Our food’s fucking brilliant. From seafood to Chinese to Pakistani. Our varieties of food, clothing, shopping kicks anybody’s ass any day.

Our women may only be as qualified as 25% of all the 82, 035, 128 women of the country but for a country that’s not as old as Methuselah, we’re getting there. Even in this meagre number, women are progressing in so many sectors of the country.

Our government schools still leave a lot to be desired for but we have our saving graces in institutions like IBA, LUMS, GIKI, FAST, NUCES, Aitchison, KGS, Convent (s), BVS, Mama Parsi etc etc. I’ve met with students from all these institutions and they are not still stuck on why -4-4=-8 … they may have their weaknesses in their own respects but they’re still pretty goddarn awesome.

Our streets may be riddled with beggars and donkey-carts and peddlars selling tissue paper and people peeing in the sidewalk … but we’re still a nation that has had only a few years to grow and we’re still a nation some countries wouldn’t recognize because they didn’t think we’d last more than a year.

We’ve done more than last a year.

Don’t you think.

Oh and ps. I’m thinking of changing my blog name to “The Daily Bakwas” … if that already hasn’t been taken up already. Feedback on that is welcome.