https://thefridaytimes.com/29-Apr-2024/gaza-monologues-at-lahore-s-alif-laila-library

Gaza Monologues At Lahore's Alif Laila Library

"I arrived home shaken, with an entirely new perspective on the readings I had just heard"

• Rabia Ahmed

• Culture, Features, Literature, Poetry, Reports

April 29, 2024

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Don’t cry child,

Your mommy has only just

cried herself to sleep

(Faiz Ahmad Faiz)

A session of the Gaza Monologues was held at the Alif Laila Library in Gulberg on Friday. The monologues are an initiative of Ajoka Theatre, consisting of readings of prose and poetry translated from Arabic, in the poignant words of the children of Gaza, speaking of a war that destroyed the region on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Egypt and Israel.

This session was held in collaboration with the Alif Laila Book Bus Society, an organisation that for almost 40 years has provided the book-starved children of Pakistan with a wonderful selection of reading, free of charge - and “Suno Kahani Meri Zubani,” a much-needed effort to promote Urdu reading among children in our own country.

Going home after the event we were caught in a ferocious storm, lowering black clouds, and winds that made hoardings boom and flutter alarmingly upon their poles. Then the rain came down, making it almost impossible to see what lay ahead. This was followed by the worst hailstorm I have driven through. Large hailstones thundered down upon the car, and the prospect of them shattering the windscreen was terrifying real. I arrived home shaken, with an entirely new perspective on the readings I had just heard. If I, an adult living in relatively peaceful surroundings had been so intimidated by those sounds and events on the way to a safe home, what were the people – including the children of Gaza – going through? Can anyone say what a child goes through when he loses his parents?

Don’t cry, child

Just a while ago

Your daddy took leave of all his sorrows

Reflections On The ICJ’s Verdict On Gaza

It must be terrifying to live in a place that is prey to the vicious rapacity of a neighbouring country which has the inexplicable backing of the powers that be

What are the people of Gaza going through? That question was addressed most effectively at the event at the library by members of the three organisations mentioned above, by young Paarsa Sarmad, and others. We heard about how children are terrified of losing their family and friends to the bombs that rain around them like so much deadly hail; that they really do lose them and find themselves suddenly bereft of all that they held dear and took for granted. They have no idea of what lies ahead, of whether or not they will live to see the future if it comes.

The hail on my windscreen did not actually shatter it, it simply left me shaken.

What can the condition of those people be, whose homes are actually shattered and burnt, whose parents, children and relatives are found in pieces in the midst of surroundings that once gave them peace and love? “No, I don’t know who that belongs to, that shattered bone that ends in a shoe. I recognise the shoe, though. It belonged to my brother. He will be back soon from his friend’s house.”

Don’t cry, child

Your brother has gone to another land,

Chasing after his butterfly dreams

It must be terrifying to live in a place that is prey to the vicious rapacity of a neighbouring country which has the inexplicable backing of the powers that be. To be surrounded by sounds of bullets and bombs that are far louder and far more ominous than the rattling of hoardings in a storm, sounds that mean the destruction of every happiness hoarded inside the heart, the death of all security that one leant on and slept with.

Don’t cry, child

Your sister has married

and left for another country

We heard about young Huzaifa, and how he found himself bereft in the midst of the war, and how so many of the people of Gaza have no choice but to scrounge for food from the trash thrown away around the city.

Maybe if you smile

They will one day all return

In a different guise

To play with you

We can only hope. And pray. And support the endeavours of people and organisations that do as much as they can help and to raise our awareness about the tragedy and devastation that is unravelling in Gaza.

Given our lives of safety and security, it is no surprise that it is hard for us to visualise the despair and pain that others go through. Hearing it in their words helped. And hurt.

WHITEWASHING HISTORY

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2023/03/14/whitewashing-history/

Mullahs of the literary world

It is impossible to adapt the world to a single set of values. There will always be a wide variety of opinions. One must take that or leave it, like it or not. The options are to block our eyes and ears, or live in a cave.

And yet, the act of trying to force everyone onto a uniform platform is familiar for us here. But what about this current attempt in some Western countries to force the literature of the past to confirm to the opinions of the present?

As it happens, this practice is nothing new. Roald Dahl and his books might have come more intensely under the public eye recently because of their publisher’s attempt to sanitize his language, but there were other similar cases which seem to have escaped the uproar the changes to Dahl’s books have caused.

Six books by Dr. Seuss are no longer published because they contain images said to be racist and insensitive. Cat in the Hat seems to have escaped the ire of the literary mullahs. Enid Blyton’s popular The Magic Faraway Tree series has been edited to cut out the kids having adventures on their own, without adult supervision.

The children’s name in that book have also been changed, Bessie and Fanny to Beth and Frannie, and Jo, the boy to the more valid spelling in current days, Joe, for a boy. As for Rick, he was known as Dick in the original text; his name has been changed for obvious but unnecessary reasons, even though Dick Cheney still retains his name and fails to attract the giggles his name is apparently supposed to.

And then, as Lionel Shriver in The Cut points out that in literature, ‘fat has persistently marked a character as disagreeable. The corpulent John Reed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and a similar Mrs. Van Hopper in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca are both bullies. The rotund Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist is wicked. Pudgy and victimized, Piggy in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is sympathetic, but also weak and pitiful. So, the prejudice goes way back. And it continues, with for example J. K. Rowling’s Dudley Dursley, Aunt Marge, in Harry Potter who are loathsome, their bellies an outward manifestation of interior defects.

And let’s not forget Umbridge, Crabbe and Goyle.

Once a book is published, it comes into the public domain and ought to be out of the publisher’s hands; he/she should no longer have the right to edit it.

There was Jabba the Hutt, the bad guy in the Star Wars anthology. And ‘Fatty’ the leader of the Five Find Outers by Enid Blyton who was a very good guy, and ‘The Fat Controller’ in Thomas the Tank Engine who was not a bad guy at all. His real name was Sir Topham Hatt. The presence of those particular other names has been criticized, however, for fat shaming, because both of them were corpulent.

Other books have faced that ire, for example the Babar the Elephant series, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, the first because they were said to be a celebration of colonialism, and the second for a stereotyping of Native Americans.

In the C S Monitor, Gay Andrew Dillin reminds us that in the 1980s, Judy Blume, a best-selling writer of children’s books wrote about several subjects that tend to get various reactions, such as homosexuality, the female body, menstruation, racial prejudice, cruelty among peers…etc. And there was her most popular book: ‘Are you there, God? Its me, Margaret.’ The very name suggests an “Uh-Oh! Be careful!”

Blume’s books have come under repeated attack, to which Judy Blume’s response was worth thinking about. She said, ‘”You don’t teach values. Values are there. You absorb them. One doesn’t say, ‘I’m going to teach you these values.’ Children absorb them by watching their parents’ behavior. If your parents say one thing and do another, the values they are teaching their children is by doing, not by saying.”

And that is a most important point.

Once a book is published, it comes into the public domain and ought to be out of the publisher’s hands; he/she should no longer have the right to edit it.

Over the ages, we have had different values, and different ways of expressing ourselves. Words that were once considered acceptable, are no longer so, generally with valid reason. But to pass on these values to our children is the job of parents and teachers, not the job of Penguin House, or Simon and Schuster. Because we and our children belong to a varied group with different ideals and values, even if a book is changed to delete one value and depict another, it would be variously acceptable…or not, to different people in society.

Changing what Dickens or Wilder said is tantamount to attempting to white-wash history. The new edition is not the way Dicken’s spoke, or the way Wilder presented her stories.

It is also important to see the struggles mankind has faced to reach the point it is at now. When the struggle is successful it is useful to know how that success was achieved, to study the methods and analyse them for application to other such issues. When the struggle is ongoing, or has failed then too it is useful to be able to study the process. This is how man learns, starting in childhood.

The treatment and language used by plantation owners when dealing with their slaves, the treatment and language meted out to their workers by feudal lords and rich persons in general in Pakistan is enlightening. We can study it and know how not to behave. As it is enlightening and important to know what the North American States went through to achieve what racial freedom they possess today, and where it still falls short. It helps to know about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. And about the people in Pakistan who have fought injustice, Akhtar Hameed Khan, Parveen Rahman, Asma Jehangir, Faiz Ahmad Faiz. The option is to remain in the dark and for the new generation to imagine that every person in the past grew up exactly as they do now, and had the same values as we are taught in this day…which is how it will be if publishers continue editing books. This is as important as it is to know the struggles our religious figures went through to push through the various reforms they did in their ancient societies.

Words that we disagree with can either be left out when we read out these books to our children. Or…which is better….they can provide a ground for discussion on how it is not right to use such words, or hold those values, and the fact that until people fought against them those words and attitudes were once used and considered acceptable.

Children do not live in a sterilized world, and it is to their detriment if we force them to think they do. They need to learn the meaning of progress, and the different between right and wrong, and also to live with what they cannot change, such as different points of view around them.

THE PARKING LOT

 

My novel The Parking Lot has just been published. It is available from all Ferozsons stores, Saeed Book Bank, Liberty Books, and online at https://ferozsons.com.pk/

Also on Amazon as as ebook at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3RYXRKK. 

STOP BREATHING

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/11/13/158095/

Lahore has been rated the most polluted city in the world with an Air Quality Index (AQI) touching 500 and more. That means the very act of taking breath in this city is hazardous to health, and Karachi is not far behind on the scale.

It is such a sad state of affairs that even the Punjab government has taken note of matters as they stand and declared the situation to be a crisis. Unfortunately, that is all it seems to have done so far.

Of course, it is not just the air one breathes that is hazardous to health in this country, it is also the water one drinks and several other things including the traffic on the roads, all things that one encounters every day and cannot stay away from.

The major reasons behind the pollution are the fuels that are burnt in factories (plastics are used as fuel by some), and the amount of pollution being spewed into the air by the many brick kilns. The major factor, however, has to be the fumes emitted by vehicles on the roads, and of course the crop burning that takes place in the Punjab, the agricultural giant of Pakistan– and therefore one of its greatest polluters.

This ‘crop burning’ takes place after a crop is harvested and the stubble is left behind in the fields. This stubble can be removed by machine, or by hand, or it can be allowed to remain where it is. Removing it by hand is obviously not an easy process. If the stubble is allowed to remain where it is, it disintegrates in time into the soil, in the process returning some nutrients for the following crop. This is the easiest and cheapest solution, and the one that gives the best results. The third solution is to turn the soil by machine to bury the stubble back into the soil – a process that would again put back some nutrients. But this is an expensive process.If this option is selected, machines exist that can make it happen, some cheaper than others, yet still too expensive for the average farmer. This is where the government can step in and provide these machines to do the job at a subsidized rate where required.

It is obvious that farmers in Pakistan lack the information to do their job effectively, they are unaware of the pros and cons of the various measures, and unable to evaluate their options, so they generally choose to burn the stubble, causing a blanket of carbon-laden smoke to cover the region, which coupled with the other pollutants in the air is responsible for our elevated AQ Index. This is another place where the government can step in; indeed it must, to ensure that farmers are educated in the best way of doing their job… not by those with an interest in selling their products, but by means of some genuine trainers in the field. They must also ensure that crop burning is brought to an end, by penalising all who attempt to do so, without discrimination.

There are some factors that have always prevented this country from making much progress, and will always prevent it from doing so, as long as they exist. One is the habit of invariably pointing a finger at someone else, and ignoring one’s own role in any given problem. It pleases the people of this country therefore to point a finger at India, which shares this practice of crop burning, despite all arguments indicating our equal share in the problem. It has been pointed out that the wind direction almost throughout the year is north to south, at other times it is west to east. It is only for a short time every year that winds come from India in the East to Pakistan in the West, and yet, judging by the comments in any article and column in the newspaper, everything is always India’s fault, or the fault of the political party other than one’s favoured one, or the fault of some mysterious Western mafia.

The other roadblock in the way of progress is the tendency of the wealthier classes to use their power and money to exempt themselves from all rules by greasing relevant palms. Seeing that it is this class that owns the most land, and this class that owns the most kilns, factories and cars, it is easy to see what this argument refers to and where it leads. The habit of accepting pay-offs pervades every aspect of society, at every level.

Unless these matters are tackled and brought to an end, Pakistan might make a few dazzling malls, it might have become a nuclear power, it might posture and try to figure as a voice to be reckoned with in various matters; but this is no progress, and with this alone Pakistan will never amount to more than what it is at present, and that is nothing much at all.

One of the actions that could make a difference is take stock of those in control, and since this is about the environment, it is an idea to look at the people in charge there.

The person in charge of the environment, who has been in charge for a while now, is another one who considers India predominantly responsible for the smog in the region, and what is far more incredible, has been reported as saying that the smog is fake news, spread by those with vested interests.

She is not alone in being ill-equipped or uninterested in the job that has been entrusted to her

INDIA TAKING THE KNEE? REALLY?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/11/07/india-taking-the-knee-really/

AND PAKISTAN CHIMING IN? 

Before its match against Pakistan began on 24 October, the Indian cricket team ‘took the knee’ on the field, in what is by now an internationally recognised gesture against racism. The Pakistani team expressed their support of this gesture by placing their hands across their chest, à la Ertugrul Gazi.

The gesture has been received with raised eyebrows, given India’s human rights violations, against Kashmiris, and against Muslims, and because of verbal attacks on Mohammad Shami, the only Muslim player in the Indian team, after the match.

Referring to this event, Andrew Bolt of Sky News recently spoke about how India should fix its own record before making grand international statements against racism. He was speaking specifically about India’s caste system, in which Brahmins have the upper hand, followed by others on a descending scale ending last of all in the untouchable class composed of the Shudras and the Dalits, whose lives are a dreadful tale of survival despite discrimination.

There must be several people on both teams, let us presume all of them, who have their hearts in the right place with regards to racism. Neither team had much choice in making this gesture. It has been said that the Indian team did what they did upon instructions from the Board that manages the event at their end. And the Pakistani team understandably had to chime in.

Be that as it may, what concerns us is the Pakistani team and its support of the anti-racist sentiment.

Any country’s national team, even if it is a sports team, represents the country, which means it represents what the country stands for, so the question arises: does Pakistan stand for racial equality?

Certainly, given the political rhetoric against India in this country, you would imagine that Pakistan itself is free of racism. That would be a highly erroneous perception. It does not, despite its constitution, despite the religion of the majority of its people, and despite the image it likes to project.

The foundation of Pakistan and its people being free to go to their temples, mosques, or other places of worship has long since been overridden by certain amendments. That brings one to the religion.

The majority of Pakistanis claim to be Muslim, a religion that at its inception made a gift of freedom against racism and any kind of bigotry to all humanity. And yet, here in Pakistan, that gift has in effect been thrown back into the hands that gave it.

In Pakistan, other forms of racism aside, the caste system is alive and thriving. Conveniently cloaked in terms such as ‘brotherhood’ (baradari), it is difficult to see how the caste system in the Punjab, consisting of Rajputs, Arains, Dogars, Butts, Bhattis and all that bull differs to the caste system among Hindus. People who number themselves as one or other of these ‘castes’ often have the fact written across their cars, and tend to prefer to marry someone from the same caste as themselves. As for Syeds, that is another ball game, hilarious if it weren’t so dreadful, and so belittling of him from whom members of the caste proudly claim descent. The people who bestow that title upon themselves often, (there are as always many exceptions) prefer to marry only within themselves, and yet DNA tests conducted upon some of them in the sub-continent indicate that they have no connection with any Arab, let alone any particular person hailing from that region. And even if they did, if the supposed head of that family held no illusions of superiority for his family or himself based on that lineage, if indeed he condemned such things, nothing justifies the existence of that illusion among many of his so-called descendants.

Far from the government making the slightest move to change this mindset, the land documents issued by the government of Punjab require a person to state his or her caste. If this isn’t racism, our Interior Minister is a level-headed man.

One can name many shameful incidents, such as those against Pakistan’s minorities, the Christians, the Hazara, the Shias and the Ahmadis.

Let us never forget the Christian colony that was burnt down by a rabid mob, and the Christian couple that was burnt alive in a kiln, or the fact that our Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam was drummed out of the country because he belonged to a much-persecuted, discriminated against community, even by law. Just, you know, as Muslims are discriminated against in India, because they belong to the community they belong to, a discrimination our government and people protest vociferously against.

And most recently, there was the case of the Ahmadi student who was expelled from the University that had given him admission on a minority quota.

Mind you, this was not the first case. In 2008 23 students were expelled from a college in the Punjab. Not for any misdeed, but because they happened to belonge to the Ahmadiyya community. And that took place less than a month after the National Assembly of Pakistan reaffirmed its commitment to uphold the interests and rights of all minorities within the country in front of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The most recent incident mentioned above took place this month, when the Bahauddin Zakaria University located in Multan suspended a young man’s admission without informing him or giving a reason for the suspension. It was a relief when the Lahore High Court set aside the decision, saying that it ‘amounted to persecuting the already persecuted.’ One would like to know if any measures are planned against those responsible for these actions in the University.

These events mentioned above are only a very few of the racist acts that take place in Pakistan, acts that bring shame upon all Pakistanis, and upon all those who call themselves Muslim, human or decent.

So, what makes us think we can place our hands over our hearts and make a statement against racism? What allows us to condemn India as our people and politicians have been doing, as a matter of course as well as following the cricket match?  And just what allows us to point fingers at racism when it takes place anywhere else in the world?

THE QUESTION OF WHODUNIT

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/10/16/the-question-of-whodunit/

Forensic medicine, which is the application of medical science to criminal investigation, is a fascinating field, and one of its most vital aspects is employing DNA to identify those involved in crime, particularly in cases of assault and death. It is a technology that has been in use since 1986, and then, in that first case it was responsible for proving that someone had not committed a murder.

The first time DNA evidence led to a conviction was in 1987 in the UK, and in the USA In 1992 two other DNA analyses led to a conviction and an exoneration. This technology is now used throughout the world, and some countries have set up databases so that when a crime is committed the DNA samples recovered from the scene can be compared with samples belonging to known offenders existing on the database, while a search is conducted for other persons potentially involved.

The rules, such as those of sanitization surrounding the collection of these samples are vital, and stringent.  In other words, success greatly depends upon the care with which this technology is used. The same applies to many other things. It can be dangerous for example to eat food or medicines that have been improperly stored, and plants sicken or die if housed under inappropriate conditions, as do animals and humans. There have been innumerable cases where surgery has gone badly wrong because of ineptitude, carelessness, or inattention to hygiene. We still have surgery, despite this, because if it provides the only chance of recovery, not having it would greatly increase the odds against survival.

So, coming back to Pakistan and the use of DNA as evidence here, the case of gang-rape at the Mazar-e-Quaid immediately comes to mind. In this re-trial of the case registered in 2008, the judge in his verdict stated that: ‘the evidentiary value of a DNA test is not acceptable in a case falling under the penal provisions of zina punishable under the Hudood laws, which had its own “standard of proof.”

In short, DNA evidence was not accepted in this re-trial of the three accused men accused of the crime.

It is important to reiterate that The Hudood Ordinance does not accept DNA evidence, while Pakistan’s other legal stream, the PPC (Pakistan Penal Code), which is a colonial legacy, does accept such evidence.

An observation made in the verdict in this case was most interesting. It said that ‘The court pointed out that the clothes of the victim produced in court as evidence were not sealed.’

And that is probably one of the crucial points when assessing whether or not DNA evidence should be taken into account in Pakistan.

While DNA evidence is invaluable in determining responsibility in criminal cases, it can only be so when and if such evidence is obtained and stored in conformity with the guidelines. Even when the guidelines are followed it can still point, in a few cases, towards the wrong person. If those guidelines are not adhered to, that evidence would definitely be unacceptable.

This is the reason why some people wonder if using the Pfizer covid vaccine in Pakistan is a desirable option, given its stringent storage requirements of extremely low temperatures, since it is an unfortunate tendency in this country to ignore guidelines, a tendency fostered by ignorance, and in the case of storage requirements by Pakistan’s regular power breakdowns.

In the case of the evidence produced in this Mazar case, the clothes the victim wore at the time the incident took place were produced in court in a bag that was not sealed. Which means, that even if DNA samples were taken at the time, they stood a great chance of being contaminated by conditions if the bag was not sealed to make it impervious to them. It also means that these samples– clothes, with or without DNA evidence, could easily have been tampered with at any stage. So, even without the stipulations made by the Hudood Ordinance which were legally binding on the judge, it is worth considering whether or not to accept such evidence.

Science is an invaluable asset. It is also worth understanding that certain guidelines that were gifted to us are powerful reminders of the principles behind matters involved, so they should not and do not forbid better and newer methods. However, if there is a great chance that the methods are implemented incorrectly, as they very often are in Pakistan, should such methods be admissible? Or should we first ensure that attitudes towards guidelines first undergo a sea change?

WHEN THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE REPLACES REALITY

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/10/10/when-the-online-experience-replaces-reality/

When something gains such a massive presence in people’s lives as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have— as the entire being on-line experience has— it’s a good idea to be a bit wary and examine the phenomenon a bit more closely to see what effect it is having on us.

Instagram is one of the fastest growing social platforms with a billion users at a time when WhatsApp had two billion users, and Facebook two and a half billion and rising. So, few people would not know that these media platforms had a bad week recently, that not only did they shut down across the world, but that when they did come back, it took a while for them to run smoothly again. It seems in fact that even some Facebook employees were shut out of their offices, since their security cards would not function.

Even those who are not on one or all of these platforms would have heard about the outage from friends and family, and what they heard would have sounded as though they had been deprived of food and water, so important have these platforms become. If you’re addicted to Facebook for example, it is no relief to be forced to spend that time with anything else, not Tumblr, not Tik Tok, not Twitter. They’re no replacement.

For many people social media means entertainment alone, but for as many it stands for the ability to connect with friends and family, and view them and their lives in far-away places, in an age where friends and family are spread out all over the world. And now, during the pandemic, it means the ability to shop online since isolation has become a way of life for those who are able to keep themselves isolated. For businesses it has become a lifeline, particular now that fewer people are visiting shops and malls and other places of business.

But what lies in the online experience for children, who we see glued to the screen even more than adults?

It’s not just Facebook we are talking about, or Whatsapp or Instagram, it’s the entire online experience. Children these days go online for the fun of being there, for the ability to have someone to ‘play’ with without having to coax them to do so first.

Entertainment is available online for the asking so long as someone can access a screen. All those games where you shoot someone, run a race, almost anything you like. It is the place to be, also because online is where the adults are, and children have been copycats ever since humans were born.

Yet being glued to the screen for long periods for children is even worse than it is for adults, since it means that not only could they access all the wrong content, they are giving up active time to sit on a couch, necks bent, staring at something presented by someone else. No physical exercise, no imagination required, no creativity. It leads to obesity, eye strain, and problems with sleep.

One hears it all the time, but it’s a valid concern: there was a time when children played, using their hands and feet and the rest of their bodies, outside, in the fresh air. They jumped, and chased, and fell. They made stuff with their hands, and went camping and climbed trees. None of that is the case anymore. And the result is not good.

There are non-physical problems too.

Children who spend too much time in front of the screen are less able to handle reality, less able to handle social interaction, since their one aim when any human interaction takes place is to get back in front of that screen as soon as possible. They miss out on the give and take and become increasingly less able to pick up social cues. They are likely to become impatient, because they are used to instant solutions, and might be subject to depression when forced to spend time with other humans.

The onus now is on the parents to find a solution. Governments need to butt out of this matter. No amount of ‘banning’ and controlling as our authorities try to do, will prevent those who want to access something from accessing it. Our world is no longer a tiny, isolated space that can be controlled. It is parents who need to place curbs on how much time their children spend in front of the screen, parents who must provide their children with interests when they are not in front of it.

Children need attractive alternatives, activities and other creative things to compete with being online. Unless this is provided, we are set to be a nation of zombies, glued to a shining rectangle, and in the case of a predominantly illiterate nation a set of people with the ability to click but not to understand. The recent downtime for FB et al and the reaction to it should serve as a warning for what the consequences can be.

Social media and being online for work and play is here to stay. There is no way it can be pushed back into the box. The most we can do is regulate the amount of time we give it at home, and this must be done.