Treason

Guest Post by Amer Nazir

Living in exile, in my loneliness, I often wonder. I wonder about my homeland. I wonder about patriotism. What exactly is my country, to whom shall I give my loyalty – the land, the people or the regime? It is difficult to decide when all three are in conflict with each other. Were they not suppose to be on the same side… I often wonder…

‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country…’ is yet a statement that sends shivers up my spine. To me, it is a statement that gives license to dictators, it helps transfer responsibility, it shifts onus…

Patriotism is my personal need, the need to belong, like the need for food and water – yet, for some people there is no 911 to ring when killers are pounding at the door, no emergency services when there is an earthquake… For them, the realities of life are different…

In the General Hospital in Lahore, in the top most brain surgery institute of Pakistan, people lie in verandas in unhygienic conditions. As it is – they are either about to go in for a surgery that has low chances of success even under normal circumstances or perhaps they are trying to recuperate from one. But never do they dare ask for more since they fear being thrown out into the street – they, having already exhausted all their worldly connections to gain this limited space in the first place. Or it could be that they don’t expect more. Maybe, they simply don’t know if there can be more, that such a possibility may exist – that there can after all be more to expect…

Helpless as they are, everything is God’s will – they must only somehow pass the time until the transition to the next world where there will not be any pain, no more putting them to tests, no disappointments – where there will be justice, rivers of milk and honey and tranquillity and nothing less. And this alone makes them go on. It is the only light at the end of the tunnel in an otherwise joyless life, bliss in this transitory imperfect world being nothing but a fallacy.

It is not as if they are not vaguely aware that human endeavours can change life conditions – it is just that they know that it would be too much to expect in their case – that never will they ever have the opportunity. And hence, resigned to their fate, the patients thank God for what they receive…

And their visitors secretly thank God that it is not they who are lying in their place in the veranda – and yet, they nurture this secret guilt also. The lives of the visitors are nonetheless marred with fear and dread. From nowhere comes this fear of the unknown that engulfs them. They cannot understand how they have been reduced to the point where an absence of misfortune – and that alone by itself, seems as ultimate good luck, that why expecting more is greed…

And once in a while, the patients are removed from the veranda and are hidden out of sight irrespective of their condition. The walls are then whitewashed and the corridors cleaned and scrubbed. It is the day when the dictator is scheduled to pay an official visit along with his entourage in screaming cars that ply on hastily carpeted roads.

Later in the day, the dictator claims in front of the international press that Pakistan has surplus hospital rooms and one of the best doctors in the world. That, in short, Pakistan has one of the best medical facilities for the common man… and yet, either everyone forgets or else they are not allowed to mention the earthquake victims in another part of the country, where more people die in the aftermath than by the earthquake itself.

After the speech, during the question hour, the dictator is angry when a local journalist poses him a question. ‘We cannot allow people to put their personal interests before that of the state, for this is what you are implying, and the other name for it is treason,’ the Dictator replies ignoring the actual question. As usual, each question that does not have an answer is an attack on his person, on the country…

The journalist still insists. The question is still ignored.

‘Where is our pride, eh,’ The Dictator now shouts in Urdu, ‘why do we insist on washing our dirty linen in public…’ he questions the question.

The Dictator is unmindful of everyone except the blue eyed blonde journalist from far away lands, the only person in the crowd who would expect to be dealt differently – the only knowledgeable person amongst the rest, someone who alone may have the best interest of the nation at heart… The locals did not count, they never have…

The game had to be played – as it has been played for sixty years. She did not need to be told anything she may want to know…