I had been lounging on the sofa with my cats. I’m not sure why I had decided to work from home that day. Other than, of course, the obvious: so that I could spend some quality time with my two little furry divas. Then a ping on my phone interrupted my best attempts at cajoling Wagh and Tiara to stop messing about on my laptop. Back then, they used to mind terribly when I used to sit and work on it. Today, they are older and wiser; though they both do insist on keeping me company as I type away; especially when pulling all-nighters.
I reached for my phone. The message read, they have killed him. It was from Fasih Ahmed, one of my oldest friends in Lahore and the Editor-in-chief of Newsweek Pakistan, where I was working at the time as his number two. Not understanding the punch line, I called him up. Voice faltering, he told me that Salmaan Taseer had been shot. What are you talking about, I asked, each time he repeated these words; beguiling in their simplicity. Eventually, he told me to watch the news and not to come to the office. No one knew what the situation would be on the streets.
Back then, I had no television. I still don’t. But at least now I have got to grips with live streaming the news. So I gave the furpots a snack and ponked their noses as I grabbed by laptop and headed for a nearby coffee shop that boasted a television set, in what the western media likes to refer to as an upscale Lahore locale. As I settled down with an extra large dose of caffeine, eyes glued to the screen, it finally sunk in.
And that was the first (and only) time this thought occurred to me: maybe I no longer want to live in this hard country.
He was someone whom I had never met, even though I had previously spent five years working for his paper: this newspaper. And so I waited, as many of us did. For the wake-up call that never came. The alarm bells that never rang. Meaning that what other rude awakening did Pakistan need? When a sitting governor can be assassinated, by a member of his own security detail no less. Over his moves to challenge the existing blasphemy laws. As well as his campaign of solidarity with a Christian woman whom by then had already spent some 18 months in prison on contrived charges of sacrilege. But the liberal outrage never came, not really. Maybe everyone was running scared. Indeed, just days before his assassination, the then PPP government staged a remarkable U-turn and called off its mission to reform these most draconian of laws.
And then, on the day that he was buried we heard the news that the then President would not make the trip to this once lush city of gardens to pay his last respects. Due to security concerns. That was the day that the religious right had won; the day that the state had lost its writ and capitulated to an extremist agenda. With a sitting governor and, just two months later, a federal minister representing the collateral damage.
From that moment on, none of us had any right to express abomination. Not when Rimshah Masih, an underage Christian girl suffering from mental health issues, was picked up for allegedly desecrating pages of the Holy Quran. Not when Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for pursuing an education. Not when a Christian couple was literally burned to death. And so the list goes on.
This was different. And the problem was not the religious right extremist agenda, per se. For the latter is very upfront about their vision for the country. No, the question was the lack of a seemingly coherent counter-narrative
I remember I had been in the newsroom when we heard that Benazir had been shot. None of us was allowed to leave for fear of what might be going on outside on the streets of Lahore. Somehow our resident editor managed to arrange food for us all. I can still recall one of our copyeditors crying as he had to finish subbing a story detailing the former Prime Minister’s meeting with Hamid Karzai that had taken place in the morning. Just as the memory came back of my being scolded by the same resident editor over letting colleagues sit in his office to watch the news. It seems that even the immediate aftermath of Benazir’s her assassination wasn’t sufficient to dent the patriarchy even a little bit. Yet as much as this murder knocked me for six, it didn’t have the same impact on me. Maybe because all of us had been going through the dark days of the annual supplement and none of us had slept much. Or possibly because journalists unwittingly develop a thick skin of sorts that allows the show to go on. Perhaps it was something else; that fact that however abhorrent the assassination it was easy to dismiss as politically motivated.
But this was different. And the problem was not the religious right extremist agenda, per se. For the latter is very upfront about their vision for the country. No, the question was the lack of a seemingly coherent counter-narrative. There were murmurings from certain quarters that he should have known better; should have understood in which country he was living. Just as some women’s rights activist circles chided his ‘irresponsibility’ in confronting the religious right head-on. Which they believed had irreversibly hindered their quiet-behind-the-scenes efforts to do have the blasphemy laws reformed. As if working to protect minority rights is something shameful that needs to be brushed under the carpet. Tellingly, all of these voices were Muslim. And yes, admittedly, there may have been credence to their claims that any moves to the contrary would then likely incur charges of being anti-Islam. And in that environment everyone was on edge. Yet three decades of working under the radar had achieved nothing except thirty long years of minorities living in fear for their very lives.
A few years later, I met by chance an American lady working for FAFEN (Free and Fair Election Network, a non-profit NGO). She began telling me about a project that she was heading here in Lahore; complete with EU funding. Working to overhaul the court system in Pakistan to better deliver justice is how she described it. Her team was currently busy training lawyers, whatever that might mean. Upon asking her whether they were also going to tackle the issue of reforming certain ‘negative’ laws, such as those pertaining to blasphemy – I found myself rather shocked by her response. She became entirely dismissive, describing this issue as a current hot topic that would soon fade to grey.
Maybe for her it was. But for the minorities of this country – it is a daily reality that lives long after the media loses interest a particular act of violence or wrongful accusation. Which is why, as we commemorate the courage of Salmaan Taseer we must also not forget that of Shahbaz Bhatti. Pakistan is a harder country without them.
The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at [email protected] and tweets @humeiwei
Published in Daily Times, January 4th 2018.