PEOPLE AND POETRY

IMAGE BY CHATGPT SHOWING THE 15TH CENTURY MARKETPLACE IN FLORENCE, FLORENTINES WEARING GREY CLOTH AROUND THEIR NECKS WHILE JEWS IN YELLOW CLOTH AROUND THEIR NECKS.

By: Nasser Yousaf

EUROPE, JEWS, MATERIALISM AND DECAY

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) is universally known for his poem 'The Waste Land.' The epitaph at Eliot's gravesite reads:

In my end lies my beginning

I am not a student of literature in the academic sense. But I have always found literature consoling me, consoling me even in my unconsolable moments of grief.

Somehow, I can see and hear the sounds and sights of what is inscribed on Eliot's gravestone. Despite the odds, the world might finally be beginning to see the real evil that is laying waste to the land.

Reading 'The Waste Land,' is not easy; it has the uncanny strength of making one runaway from poetry like plague. But Eliot lends one courage to face such an eventuality.

Eliot writes in his main essay on Dante, 'great poetry is felt and enjoyed before it is wholly understood, but it is only when it is fully understood that it can be read as it ought to be.'

Eliot had literally runaway from riches when he opted to forsake the easy prospects of gaining prosperity through the influence of his family in the US to a life of passion and hard living in England.

My inference from reading 'The Waste Land' is that of a land laid waste to by materialism and unrestrained greed. A land that man has surrendered to working slavishly and the mechanical pursuits of sex and sports etcetera.

I would hasten to add to the list the acquisition of European pieces of art by the wealthy Arab princes. I wonder if Eliot would not have done similarly by including it in his imagery. The poem after all is a kaleidoscope drawn from influences.

Such antique collections to which one neither belongs by history or culture nor the same permit any fanciful thoughts of belonging to only brings to mind the imagery depicted like that in 'a game of chess,' 'the fire sermon' and other sections of the poem.

Israel, as it is now, was handed over to its present Jewish occupiers by Britain. The Balfour Declaration made it possible in 1917 in the middle of the first World War. The wordings in the accursed declaration clearly state that Zionists be informed of their state in the Palestine.

The affinity that countries like the US and Britain feel towards Israel need always be seen as unnatural and indeed scandalous. Israel lies far away from the western shores in the Middleeast to have anything to do with their interests. Truly, imperialism like the raven feeds on carrion.

But even such bizarre favours from the US and Britain have not deterred Jews from looking the gift horse in the mouth. European men of letters have for centuries pointed it out while blaming the Jewish finances as the greatest living threat to the western civilization.

It may be self-deceiving to presume that one can take Jews for friends. Jews are not the kind of people who can be pleased or who can be befriended. Even God and his chosen messengers Moses and Aaron could not cultivate the friendship of the ingrate Jews as we learn from the reading of the Holy Qur'an in the chapter titled 'The Cow.'

God sent Jews food from the heaven, but they soon got fed up even with that. Thanklessness and barbarity is in the Jewish blood of which we find ample evidence not only in our scripture but also on the ground before our eyes. Gaza is the latest example of the Biblical sickness that is the Jewish mindset.

Thought-provoking imagery in 'The Waste Land' is phantasmagoric like the fast changing scenes in the present-day musical videos.

Writer and poet Ezra Pound was the alter ego of Eliot. Without the wise counsel and superb editing of Pound, the poem, of which we are talking, would not have been as popular and widely read and studied as it is now.

One just needs type Ezra Pound in Google and the search machine instantaneously delivers results like:

'Ezra Pound was a distinguished poet and writer, but pound for pound, he was also a malignant anti-Semite. He believed Jews to be responsible for a multitude of the world's problems and embraced stereotypical conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media and banking industries.'

An unwitting admission by Google, isn't it? It's more like a prophetic proof of what Ezra and Eliot had called as the domination of Jewish finances that would be the ultimate undoing of western civilization. One can now safely add to it the total annihilation of the western media.

Somewhat more charitable results emerge in the case of Eliot. But not without plenty of explanations that Eliot had been mislead into forming his opinions about the Jewish people.

It's not just the financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank that are being controlled by the Hebrews, but also the rampaging world of IT. There is hardly any subject on which one may find an an objective analysis, especially if the subject has the word 'Jew' in it.

One may try and open William Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' and Christopher Marlowe's 'The Jew of Malta.' One will find convincing evidence of how many hundreds of explanations are there to daub the two plays into favourable colours so as not to bring Jews into disrepute.

Jews have manipulated even the Old Testament to their liking. For instance, Zionists say Torah forbids Jews taking usury from the Jews, but not from the other people to whom Jews lend money. There is all round ubiquitous mutual protectionism in the Jewish society, community, culture, tradition and history.

Once during a visit to South Africa, Eliot was staying at a place where the hostess was a Jewess named Sarah Gertrude. One night while asleep, Eliot heard an urgent knock on his door. It was his hostess, asking him to leave the next morning. Actually while checking through Eliot's works before going to bed, Sarah had come across a line which she thought was anti-Semitic.

Before Hitler decimated them in Germany, many centuries earlier Jews had suffered a similar fate in Rome. Jews were always battered in Europe but they always vent their spleen on the Palestinians and emptied their guns on the poor folks.

In the ancient Roman Empire, more than 40, 000 Jews were killed in the first century CE. But the hatred for Jews in that land had not diminished even in the Renaissance, and indeed right up to the two world wars.

Mary Ann (nom de guerre George Eliot 1819-1880) had set one of her lesser mentioned novels 'Romola' in the 15th century Florence. I rate this historical fiction as one of her most erudite and painstaking works. At one place in the novel she writes that in the market places, the Florentines wore grey cloth as against yellow for the Hebrews. It showed the racial profiling of the Jews on account of their dishonourable habits.

Himself being fully devoted to religion, T. S. Eliot didn't much appreciate George Eliot's aversion to faith. It is not known whether Eliot also got inspired from George's description of a waste land that she had penned in the case of Prague in her novella titled 'The Lifted Veil.' A few lines from that description may sufficiently describe the scene for us:

'The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visistants infesting it for a day.'

The Prague in the above and the waste land in T. S. Eliot's poem is today's Dubai. The skyscrapers are the metal sheets and men, women and children hurrying in and out of the shopping malls the mechanical toys. No further elucidation is needed.

This Ramadan the UAE ambassador in Israel hosted a party for his bloodthirsty hosts. The ambassador did well because he knew too well whose permission mattered in the building of the waste land back home.

POETRY

Image by: Chatgpt AI

BY: NASSER YOUSAF

RE-READING GHANI KHAN IN THE PRESENT TIMES

The poetry of our Pashtun poet Ghani Khan (1914-1996) has captured the imagination of his clansmen for the last many years. Like his father and a younger sibling, Ghani Khan spent may years in jail as a prisoner of conscience. Here is a poem that he wrote in the Hyderabad Jail in Sindh.

We need to understand that not all that Ghani Khan wrote in verse was of a class that he would have called as inspirational. His soliloquies are a class apart, profound and deeply touching.

But Ghani Khan's monologues are lacking in poetical strength. Among those are the monologues where the poet could be seen taking issues with the mullah. Incidentally, all such monologues are very popular and have been rendered as songs by several singers to great popular acclaim.

In my opinion, such monologues could be called as doggerel. A doggerel is a roughly written humourous poem, though not intentionally. Ghani Khan himself has titled most of such poems as 'mumbo jumbo.'

Since our intellect appears to have frozen in time, we find ourselves being fascinated by little more than wine, women and mullah in our poetry. I consider Ghani Khan at his best in his metaphysical poetry.

Mullah comes within the ambit of what ought to be called as pedestrian poetry. The below given translation is one of those that Ghani Khan has titled as 'mumbo jumbo,' and is ostensibly directed against the narrow-minded mullah.

I have replaced mullah with our common present mindset which is as retrogressive and outdated as that of a mullah. Hence, the mullah in the second line is a 'naysayer.' There were more powerful adjectives or nouns, but a naysayer also connotes cynicism and rhymes best.

Our country recently saw a controversy of sorts surrounding reforms in the religious seminaries. The discussion took a convuluted political turn when even those in three-piece suits, skirts and tight jeans took sides to settle petty commercial scores with the government of the day. 

The mullah or the vested interest won the day but that reminded me of a beautiful retort in a very early 20th century novel titled 'THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN,' by James Joyce. It says:

'I will pay your dues, father (priest), when you cease turning the house of God into a polling booth.'

Our brains need no better diet than the stale and trite talk shows brought to our households every evening by the business concerns and their salespersons masquerading as erudite anchors. We are quite content with that. People quote these anchors as if they were the ancient Greek philosophers. Whereas these anchors simply paddle the business interests of their respective TV- channel owners.

I am not an apologist for my Pashtun clansmen. I tended to empathize with the younger lot in the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM). Though not very learned, these youngsters somehow looked to be capable of raising the level of political and intellectual discourse. But in the post-Taliban takeover of Kabul, PTM appears to have thrown its gains to the winds.

It would now appear that the PTM youth were plain rabble-rousers. Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up the fate of such people or a group of people in these words: A nation never falls but by suicide. 

In view of the foregoing, I feel constrained to take recourse to one of Ghani Khan's popular poems and reread and apply it to our present lackluster and unproductive times. I see it directed against the society as a whole. I see Ghani Khan taking refuge in the company of his wine-bearer from the balderdash thrown up at him by the society.

MUMBO JUMBO 

Come, come here, O wine-bearer

Away, away with you, O naysayer 

How much do I detest you and 

Your stale and banal address

May you fall from the high pedestal 

By looks you are a queer animal 

Little do you know what love entails

A senseless denier of beauty as well 

Here, this gathering is of revelers 

So away with you, farther away

Wine is not meant to be tasted 

By lips hewn so rough as you have 

Go there where food is doled out

To sate on tripe all for you left

Just as a vulture would swoop, so

Spread your wings around the dung

A mosque compound is your reserve

For profaning women ad nauseam

 

Wretched eyes wretched stomach 

So luckless and all to no purpose 

Come, come here see the madman

Raise your glass and be a faithful 

Follow the creed of the really blessed 

Find your paradise in the living world

POETRY

IMAGE BY CHATGPT 

DRINKING ALONE 

A Sonnet (of sorts)

By: Nasser Yousaf 

In my troubled gruesome life;

The end of which is in sight 

I stepped on too many toes

And raised many eyebrows

I said many things burlesque

Little piffle now remains unsaid

A dadaist was I believed to be 

A movement that has since licked dust

Poetry should not mean, a wise man said 

But be

So I find myself bound to the northwest 

Muttering my confiteor to be blessed 

In the calm sipping my wine all alone

Save whistles of the shepherd so forlorn

(Dadaism: a movement in the early 20th century symbolizing presentation of nonsensical works of art.

Confiteor: a prayer of confessions)

BOOK REVIEW

IMAGES BY AI

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)

EVOLVING SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN (A REVIEW)

BY: NASSER YOUSAF 

Some may say I have no right to comment on the subject mentioned anthology edited by you. I say this because I didn't purchase this work but received it as a gift. I couldn't even have purchased it because it doesn't carry a price tag, and hence must not be available for sale in the market. I was a little taken aback when I read your copyright notice with strong-worded warnings because I thought to myself how could anyone copy from it when it is not supposed to be bought and sold in the market.

I am sorry for presuming that this collection of essays on Afghanistan is intended and meant for the officers in the Foreign Office, and the cautionary note is for these officers not to copy from it for their thesis while undergoing training in the Pakistan's elite academies. I also wonder how many Afghans, the protagonists in these essays, even know about such a collection.

My comments on the contents of this collection of essays may thus be called as unsolicited. Though, not unjustified because it has ostensibly been published with the taxpayers money. I may also add that I try to read almost everything about Afghanistan which may be due to our closeness to this country and its people.

I have to say the following about what has been discussed in the aforesaid anthology: 

1: I couldn't find the ordinary Afghans in these essays, the Afghans who live in mud-houses and tents in Pakistan and Iran. It refers to those Afghans just in passing or simply as 'numbers,' 39 millions or 40 millions at different places. Ironically, even after 20 years of the Western evaluators on the Afghan soil, we couldn't arrive at an agreed-upon number. It's as if one million people do not matter in the discussion. 

2: The Institute of Strategic Studies (ISSI) appears to be a body of the Foreign Office of Pakistan. Precisely, Afghan Refugees have now lived in Pakistan for 45 years, if we consider the arrival of Soviets on the scene in December 1979. Since Afghans marry early, three generations of them were born on the Pakistani soil during the last 45 years. A child, who could be seen rummaging in the garbage for his piece of bread, his/her father and the grandparents.These people can speak the Pakistani languages like Urdu, Punjabi and Hindko better than many locals in the areas of their respective residences. A vast majority of them have never set foot on the Afghan soil. Recent years have seen forcible repatriation of more than six hundred thousand refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan where they are said to be living in miserable conditions.

3: The essays say absolutely nothing about these people. These people have their elders and children buried in the Pakistani cemeteries and their daughters married off to the Pakistani lads. Forcibly evicting these people from their tenements and then denying them entry in Pakistan even after passing through a cumbersome and malfunctioning legal channel is like extracting a tooth without the administration of anaesthesia. It's painful beyond the power of words to explain. How could officialdom allow this?

4: Both sturdy and frail-limbed Afghan labourers have built our upscale colonies and houses by the sweat of their brows. They have baked our breads and brought the vegetables to our doorstep. Afghan kids have disposed of our awful garbage for decades. Pakistan's farcical online visa system has made even these Afghans totally dependent on the agents and go-getters. Like in all other departments, we Pakistanis know better than all other people in the world how best to make mockery of the online systems.

5: The aforesaid essays tell us nothing of these Afghans, but tell us only of the Taliban as if the land and its resources are only theirs since time immemorial. This despite the fact that Taliban came to be known only from 1996 onwards. Some of the essayists have laid too much emphasis on which militant group is operating where and with what particular bent of belief. Giving so much importance to such trivial considerations has made the militants look bigger than what they can actually attain which is perhaps what the West wants to brandish as a grave threat to the world.

6: The essays talk of how much in billions of dollars and euros were expended on the rebuilding of Afghanistan and the training of its armed forces by the allied forces led by Mr. Sam. But it doesn't talk of why those security forces trained along modern lines couldn't withstand the Taliban onslaught even for one day. Both the Taliban and those trained by the West were Afghans. When we talk of being invincible, we don't talk of the Taliban, but the Afghans. This saga invariably starts relating itself from the the three Anglo-Afghan wars and as of now ends at the discomfiture of the NATO.

7: Western authors love rhetoric and cliches. The Taliban's retort that the West had the watch but the former had the time could in fact have been rephrased as the West had the 5000-pounders but the Taliban had the jacket. It's as simple as that. The jacket forced NATO out of Afghanistan. It's strange that anything other than this could be attributed to the end result. 

8: One of the essays tell us that Taliban delegates were accommodated in the most expensive hotels during their stay in Qatar. Those talking of rehabilitation should realize that even this grand hospitality didn't help change the hardened mindset. Taliban deliberated but at their own terms because they knew well that the interlocutors across the table suffered from the pangs of resistance-fatigue. Apparently, the negotiators and mediators didn't even try to make the Taliban agree to some kind of flexibility on their part. Such a stance could have been the holding of a referendum where only men would vote. The West probably thought such a solution would have made it look to be compromising on its self-styled stand on the women's rights. Based on ground realities both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even a men only referendum wouldn't have given Taliban the mandate to return to power. Had this not been true a great majority of the refugees would have returned home to the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. As things turned out, both the refashioned country and women rights were lost to the fighters on the table. 

9: The essayist Thembisa Fakude ought to have known better that it was in Qatar where the Afghans lost their independence to a group of militants. In its eagerness to show its importance to the world and win undeserved plaudits, Qatar bartered away the most-adored possession of the Afghan people. Before long, Taliban too would realize that the victory that they gained was indeed pyrrhic.

10: The stolid bureaucratic corridors which engaged in prolonged talks with the Taliban would most likely pooh-pooh the foregoing ground realities. The conceited bureaucracy is perhaps more rigid than even the Taliban.

10: The essay titled 'China and Afghanistan' by Amin Mohseni gives a detailed list of Afghanistan's mineral deposits. The essays details that Afghanistan has untapped deposits of copper, lithium, uranium, gold, diamond etcetera including in how much quantity. It's a most intriguing account of Afghanistan's mineral wealth which undoubtedly this godforsaken country must be having but of what use is it to the thousands of Afghan kids as young as three who could be seen working as garbage-collectors on the streets of Pakistan. If the essayist is originally from Afghanistan, as his name suggests him to be, why he and others like him have runaway from their motherland. It's all too easy to settle down in the US or Europe and start writing sermons and an altogether different thing to face the reality head on. Every Afghan, both illiterate and semi or highly educated is trying to runaway and work as a slave in the West in whatever capacity possible.

11: Together, Hamid Karzai (2002-2014) and Ashraf Ghani (2014-2021) ruled Afghanistan as presidents respectively for close to 20 years. Both of them were of the Pashtun stock. They spoke fluent English language, and were very popular in the West. The Afghan people appeared to like these two gentleman, but the liking looked to be one-sided. While Karzai still remains stationed at home after the fall of Kabul in 2021, Ashraf fled to one of his several favourite hideouts from where he had sprang leaving behind a trail of allegations of malpractices. One always wonders what kind of foresight or understanding of the job the twosome had if they couldn't foresee the gathering storm around them. They couldn't even defend themselves against widespread allegations of doling out illicit favours to the people around them. They both had opportunities to leave indelible marks of good governance but they appeared to be consuming their energies in self-glorification in the eyes of the West. Karzai and Ashraf Ghani betrayed the trust of the wretched Afghans like no one else. How could the two forgive themselves especially Ghani who is said to be very highly educated?

12: The essay about Germany's contribution to the efforts in Afghanistan by Christian Wagner appears to be an exercise not worth the while. Germany through its consistent behaviour as an irresponsible state has proved that it should not have been allowed to come out of its status of pariah in the post World War 11 scheme of things. Germany should never have been permitted to rearm itself. Germany's rearming would now appear to have been allowed to aid and abet genocides by Israel on unarmed people like those in Gaza. Germany believes it is the only way it can atone for the crimes it committed against the Jewish people. By supplying arms to Israel to kill kids in Gaza, Germany has demolished the trust it was trying to reconstruct in Afghanistan. God is surely angry with countries like Germany, the US and UK. Why else would we see 17 billion euros spent on the training of 80, 000 Afghan police force by Germany go in vain. It appears that those euros were thrown in an oven in a baker's shop at the Shahr-e Naw in Kabul as the policemen supposedly trained by the rogue state of Germany didn't perform their duty even for an hour when the crunch time came.

13: After reading all the essays, one may safely assume that China, Russia and Iran have emerged as the most responsible states from the quagmire called Afghanistan. These three countries have behaved most reasonably both with respect to their own economic and geostrategic intersts as well as respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan. The NATO countries led by the US have suffered a most ignoble defeat yet. They had to suffer this because wherever America and its partners go in the world they invariably interfere with the way of life of the people they come in contact with.

In conclusion, it can be argued that if Pakistan army can withhold the Taliban legions, although not without a heavy cost, why couldn't the Afghan military trained by the so called superior forces do the same even for one day? The Afghans are said to be formidable warriors. Training by the Western forces and being in possession of the most deadly weapons should have enabled them to offer at least some resistance. This part of the macabre drama needs to be told. It cannot be told in the niceties of the diplomatic jargon; if it is so attempted to be narrated than it will hardly help.

I hope the above will be shared with all the essayists in the best interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the three countries that suffered the most from the tragedy.

BOOKS

Image by AI

WHY DO WE READ LOLITA?

By: Nasser Yousaf

Our reading decisions are mostly influenced by the West. Western media, publishers and the award-giving organizations tell us what to read, and we comply with their biddings, whims and dictates.

Take for instance the case of 'Lolita' by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita is an out and out paedopphilic story. But it has been showcased as a masterpiece in the West.

Had he not been a Soviet or Russian dissident, Nabokov wouldn't have been a household name in the Western literary circles. West loves dissidents if they happen to be from the countries that the West loves to hate.

Incidentally, paedophilia is a sickness that is very common in the West. Elderly people from Europe and America visit some Asian countries only to indulge their craving for children forced into prostitution due to extreme poverty.

But look at the dishonesty. In order to promote a novel by one of their favourite dissidents, and at the same time to cover up its own explicit proclivity for paedophilia, Western media tells us that Lolita is a story woven around exploitation in the former Soviet Union.

One doesn't really know when would the self-righteous organization called Transparency International wake up to rating intellectual dishonesty as a base crime. Intellectual propriety appears to have never existed on the shelf.

Undoubtedly, West has a license to do everything it wishes to do with impunity. It has perfected the art of annihilating cultures, societies and countries through its total control on media and through enslaving the rest of the world economically.

Organizations like the World Bank, IMF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO etcetera are being used like guided intercontinental ballistic missiles. AI and its tools like Chatgpt have now added to the western arsenal.

Lest we forget him, the last Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev died in 2022. We remember him because his rule didn't just spell the end of his own country but it also dealt a fatal blow to a bi-polar world.

Russia defeated Napoleon in the early 19th century. War and Peace by Tolstoy tells the story of the ignominious French adventurism. Again, Russia defeated Germany in WW2. Russia didn't lose in Afghanistan but Gorbachev did when he got carried away with his glorification in the Western media.

Western media pampered and extolled Gorbachev through the excessive repetition of his so called reforms oriented slogans of 'glasnost' (openness) and 'perestroika' (reconstruction) to an extent that he was compelled into doing the bidding of the western media. Adept in flaunting its seductive charms, the western media acting like Circe, led Gorbachev to his inevitable doom.

Such is the power of the western media. But in Donald Trump, western media finally appears to have found its nemesis, and one would hope to the rescue of the rest of the world from the venomous bite of the ubiquitous chatter boxes.

Another novel that we have read despite it being outrageous and, therefore, unreadable is The Holy Sinner by a German Jewish writer Thomas Mann. Thomas was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. Ironically though, the world saw its worst economic meltdown or depression in the same year.

Thomas was an immensely intelligent man in addition to being a humanist. He wrote on subjects as varied as Mohandas Gandhi. It is, therefore, quite strange that he chose some most repulsive human habits to tell his stories.

The Holy Sinner novel is about incest from the beginning to the end. Throughout the torturous reading, one feels like skipping pages to find out if the subject wasn't intended to be what it has come down to. But there was no escaping the fact that the writer indeed was enraptured by the story that he had woven around incestuous relationship between a brother and sister.

The Blood of the Walsungs is another novel by the same writer on the same subject, which luckily one has not read. His infatuation with incest is beyond comprehension although the present-day Western reviewers would do their best to hide it under the veneer of most tempting explanations.

Before one is branded a moralistic prig, it would help to make mention of some of the great but nonetheless controversial works that one has read and reread. Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gabriel Garcia's One Hundred Years of Solitude merit mention among scores of others.

The beauty of its smooth flowery prose of one of the recent works of fiction titled 'The Crimson Petal and the White' by Michel Faber is so tempting that one had to reread it. Set in the Victorian era, the lead protagonist in the novel is a prostitute known for her killing charms, her average looks notwithstanding.

A novel, laced profusely with different figures of speech, is a beautiful narrative. The Crimson Petal and the White like Anna Karenina by Tolstoy is an ever lengthening narrative of love, betrayal and adultery. The prose in all such works makes them unceasingly readable. These superb novels are unlike Lolita, The Holy Sinner and many other similar works where the reader finds oneself in a claustrophobic cul de sac.

Apart from being a smart novelist, VS Naipaul was also known for his uncanny and belligerent arrogance, and no less for touching raw nerves in the literary circles. He had no love lost for women novelists of whom he told The Guardian that they were excessively sentimental. Having read the likes of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Hilary Mantel, one totally disagrees with Naipaul. 

But in the midst of all his scurrilous chitchat, Naipaul would some time blurt out the truth. Of his publishers, he once said that they would sell anything, even tosh, only if the cover had his name printed on it. This is exactly how western media plays with our reading choices simply because of our blindly following them.

'Have you read Bob Wood's latest book about Trump, or have you read Charlie Wilson, Clinton, Obama, Bush, Henry Kissinger?' are some of the inquiries we keep making all the time. We all know all such villainous characters by their criminal deeds they committed when they held the highest offices. Books written by them after quitting offices are little more than piffle.

We should be discerning enough to make better reading choices. Mandela, Gandhi, Castro, Teresa are not known to have hurt a bird. Reading autobiographies and biographies of such leaders raise our spirits.

A great work of literature is like an enticing cocktail. We must choose our own cocktails and sip them leisurely instead of looking to the West to recommend their undrinkable beverages to us. 

POETRY

By: Nasser Yousaf

BEYOND DATES AND POMEGRANATES

It may sound self-aggrandizing, but there appears to be no other way of saying it. One may move earth and heaven, but one may not be able to to pay a visit to the God's most favourite tenement at Makkah till an invitation is received from the Transcendental Being.

Like others born in a Muslim household, one must have wished many times to do the pilgrimage to Makkah, but the mailbox remained empty for pretty too long. When the invitation finally did come, one had suffered an irreparable personal loss.

But that's how the Transcendental One works, as our poet laureate Ejaz Rahim loves referring to Him as such in his monumental work titled, 'Beyond Dates and Pomegranates.'

Almost immediately after exiting the Jeddah airport and boarding a waiting coach to Makkah, a thought, awaiting fruition, immediately refreshed.

For quite some time, the word 'Taif' had been tolling in one's mind. One didn't know where from and why with such urgency. A confession is essential. The ignorance on one's part stemmed from the fact that owing to a perturbed state of mind, all arrangements for the great odyssey had been attended to by the family.

While still some way from Makkah, one broached the matter with the family and decided to include 'Taif' in the itinerary. The journey to Makkah took place through a gray and light brown landscape with not a blade of grass in sight. Some emaciated camels were seen fending for themselves in the blazing sun pouring down from the high heavens.

Having performed the fulfilling rituals of 'Umrah,' one settled down in a comfortable lodging. It was from the expansive glass windows of the room, that one would mostly keep looking at the distant hills.

It was quite interesting that while the blessed Valley of Makkah itself remained lit up with the sunlight throughout the long hours of the day, the distant hills appeared to be under a pall of cloud cover. One had no idea that the hills were the abode of 'Taif.' It was only after traversing the vast desert and reaching the hill station that the distant home of the clouds was discovered.

But for the cool comfort of a luxury coach, the journey through a bone dry desert wouldn't have been easier. Looking at the dun, craggy hills and a limitless sea of sand, it wasn't possible not to think of how our Holy Prophet must have traveled here on a camel's back. Some Divine help must have interfered to the relief of the last Messenger of Allah. Some kind of soothing umbrella, one kept thinking.

One had read of a cloud cover protecting Mohammad (PBUH) from the pitless heat of the sun. Later, upon arriving back home, a most beautiful description of the same was found in Ejaz Rahim's epic poem on the life and achievements of the Holy Prophet.
 
Referring to his early childhood in the company of the children of his foster mother Bibi Haleema, the bard from Pakistan's northern climes writes:

They would often quiz their parents 

Why does a cloud always hover

Over his head providing shade

Against the blazing sun

At age twelve, not many years after camping out of Bibi Haleema's care, Prophet Mohammad accompanied his uncle Abu Talib on one of the guardian uncle's trading trips to Syria. Enroute, a Syrian mystic by the name of Baheera met them at a place called Bosra. Mention of the heavenly shadow cropped up here again.

Like Haleema's children in the desert 

Several years before, the Syrian mystic 

Noticed a canopy of clouds 

Protecting his head

Unbeknownst to him

As he trudged in the sun

Many years later, on his return journey from 'Taif' to Makkah, Allah's continued ownership of His beloved Prophet was witnessed yet again. Some miles short of his destination, Mohammad (PBUH) got knowledge of the lurking threat ahead. A pagan chieftain, Mutim ibn Adi, ensured his safe entry at God's own abode through his seven sons with swords in their hands. Abu Sufyan had not yet embraced the faith.

Ejaz Rahim says:

Abu Sufyan and Abu Jahl who were 

Present in the Kabba 

Could not believe their eyes

But opted not to question 

A powerful chieftain's decision 

Of Abu Jahl, the epic story says:

And that idiomatic leopard 

Had not changed his spots-

On the contrary, both his bark

And his bite had turned 

More vicious than ever 

Here, the probable place where his two arch critics were seeing him perform the 'Thawaf' (circumambulation) could be the present-day site of Makkah Tower. An endless burlesque Western capitalist drama takes place here under the euphemism of the Sacred name of Makkah. 

The Holy Prophet's stay at Taif was not quite uneventful as he faced resistance from the locals and their trenchant opposition to his preaching. An old woman caused him much distress by throwing litter in his path, but of such strength was his character that he refused to invoke God's wrath upon his detractors.

They also arranged an assault 

By their minions until 

He bled profusely 

Yet in that precarious state 

He inspired a poor Christian slave 

Named Addas to seek Shahadah

Even to this day, a humble little mosque by the name of Addas stands witness to the events of those days. This, despite the fact that for reasons hard to understand, the present-day custodians of the sacred cities of Makkah and Madinah do not seem to like preserving the historical record of those defining times on the world's stage.

The journey to the hill station at Taif was not a pleasure-seeking trip. It was undertaken at a most challenging time in the life of the last Messenger.

It has been aptly described

As the Year of Sadness for him

Of his beloved wife, Bibi Khadijah

And his loving uncle, Abu Talib the Wise

With their departure 

Two lamps of love went out

Two pillars of strength were lost

Undiluted faith does not need the crutches of miracles. The Holy Prophet remained steadfast in the face of challenges from his staunch enemies to exhibit his heavenly powers which he never claimed to have.

They accused the Holy Prophet 

Of being a con man, as someone 

Who forged revelations 

With the connivance of a ghost-writer

Identified as Rahman of Yamama

And taunts like:

Call upon Him', they demanded

'To descend from the skies

In a blaze of radiance

In front of our eyes

Let Him convert our barren hills

Into fertile plains dotted with water rills

Let him resurrect for us 

Our great ancestor Kosai

Whom we all respect 

As proof of his puissance'

Before proceeding to Makkah, one's simple mind would always think of the two most obvious signs of miracles which one thought were enough to reinforce one's faith. The eternally flowing spring of Aab e Zam Zam in the otherwise parched desert and the Divine Book revealed to an unlettered shepherd.

The famous Iqra command: Read

In the Name of the Creator-

The Lord of all creation

'How can I?' remonstrated instinctively 

The untutored and unlettered Makkan

Upon reaching Makkah, one immediately realized that here was another miracle, greater than the other two that had captured a simpleton's imagination. The sun-baked desert was in fact a sea in which all the rivers of the planet Earth flowed. 

Despite the avowed declaration in: 

Al-Baqarah (The Cow)

Let there be no compulsion 

In matters of Religion 

There wasn't a land that had not sent a representative, or many thousands of them, to plead on their behalf to the Omniscient and Omnipotent.

We will show them of Our Signs

In the Afaaq, or the far reaches

Of the universe 

And in their own selves or Anfus

Until it is manifest to them 

That this is indeed the Truth 

The journey to Makkah had necessitated a re-reading of 'Beyond Dates and Pomegranates.' One had already read it immediately after receiving it. What a great companion to the Holy Land the epic would have been, one keeps thinking. Especially, since Ejaz Rahim appears to have left little to imagination. 

He starts his arguments with the challengers to the faith: 

Aficionados of Modern Science 

Flaunting fluorescent flames

Yet, alas, many have fallen 

Into the ubiquitous trap 

Of hubris, that illusory state 

Where mortals start believing 

They've overthrown their Creator-

Fashioner and Sustainer 

Of the universe, and of every aspect 

Known and unknown in the cosmos

Earlier, in a beautifully scripted and convincing prologue, Ejaz Rahim lays down the framework of his project when he pens:

Science has superseded 

Both religion and philosophy 

To become in our times

Executioner, judge and jury 

In the hunting grounds 

Of haunting realities 

Surrounding us with spectres 

Of probabilities and possibilities 

Never encountered before 

Nowhere in the epic stretching over 345 pages, does the poet leave a shred of doubt about his love for science and reason. Indeed, he builds his epic solidly with reason and rationale.

Reason should not be run down 

Or scoffed at lightly 

By ecclesiastical champions

Or secular tycoons 

Reason and faith must seek 

A happy balance 

To achieve the best outcomes

For human beings 

And then with an even greater conviction, he says:

We are not faceless cogs

In a heartless machine 

But a body-spirit phenomenon 

Playing a pivotal part 

In a grand cosmic opera

Where the known, the unknown 

And the unknowable 

Are performing in sync

And further on:

We who are apt to measure 

The flow of celestial time 

By successes and failures

Of our own wiles and guiles

Must also understand 

That without God's intervention 

In the order of existence 

Not a single current will sail

In one's direction-

But when He wills

A whole river will fall like a cascade

At one's feet

As regards reason, Ejaz Rahim couldn't have got his inspiration from nowhere. The protagonist of his epic himself was the fountainhead of reason.

The Holy Prophet recognised

Reason as a heavenly book

Meant to generate

And validate knowledge-

The kind of reason preached in the aforesaid lines is best in evidence at the Haram and the Grand Prophet's Mosque at Madinah. As the call for the prayers go, not only the the milling crowds made up of hundreds and thousands of people from all over the world but also the pillars and stones and indeed the entire edifice of the two august houses fall in order as if by a fiat from God Himself. 

What is so wonderful to find at such moments is the complete absence of acrimony and malice. In row after row, people from different countries and regions would be seen praying in their own styles but no coneited or self-righteous among them would have the strength to pluck the courage and point out any oddity. In fact, every prayer turns out to be a congregational prayer.

And, all this due to the Allah's beloved messenger who was a human being just like all of us. His likeness to the human beings is manifest from the Surah Abasa when he gets a reprimand from the High above for neglecting an ordinary blind man. He was a mortal like us as is forcefully mentioned in the Surah Aal-i-Imran:

Every human being is bound to taste death...

Mohammad is only an apostle 

If he dies, will you then turn away?...

Prophets before you have also 

Suffered in God's way

Many years ago, one had read a book by an American writer called Michael Moore. The book was titled 'Stupid White Men.' As the title suggested, the writer was at war with the Republican voters, mostly whites, for electing a man like George Bush as the president. The writer taunted the US president on many counts including the latter's inability to have read and understood Iliad by Homer.

Such is the way in which the West makes its literature known to the world. Although Iliad was little more than mythology with a limited sphere of influence, yet its renown is such that not having read it is considered as unfashionable, if not gross ignorance.

But here is a true story of unimaginable importance, consequences and influence narrated by a man who is a veritable repository of knowledge of the world. Ejaz Rahim has an inexhaustible treasure of words with which he embellishes any story that inspires him like no one else. The story of the Holy Prophet is the closest to his heart and soul and he has narrated it in a way that no one else can do with such passion, flair and finesse.

One hopes this great epic will be remembered for all times to come, beating all other epics told by everyone else.

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Show quoted text

READING

BY: Nasser Yousaf

LETTERS AND SERMONS

The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)pp

The above quote recently popped up in one of the websites that I frequently visit. It may have a very subtle relevance to what I wish to discuss here.

I loved reading newspapers from a very early age. My love for reading literature sprang up from following stories in the children's section. This passion led me to reading and writing letters, especially those penned by the ordinary folks.

One of the most unforgettable and touching letters that I ever found and read was in a book titled 'THE OXFORD BOOK OF LETTERS.' It was written by a woman in the Victorian era, perhaps to her immediate family, in which she had narrated the agony and trauma of having undergone a double mastectomy surgery.

Times have changed. Reading and writing letters is a passé. It is very unlikely that someone in the present age will now go to the Peshawar Archives Library, look for that book, and pick it up. People have more urgent matters to attend to.

Sermons-writing, on the other hand, continues with an even greater flourish. It is not the most commonly known religious sermon that one would like to refer to; it is the one that we find in editorials and newspaper columns. 

We have seen all different types of crops of sermon-writers in Pakistan. The knee-jerk types who can hardly wait for a bullet to leave the barrel before they file a story to a newspaper. Those having retired from the civil or military service and having got themselves a weekly slot in the newspapers. The out of touch with the real world armchair intellectuals. Those wishing to use their articles as their recommendation letters and waiting in the wings to hop on the bandwagon by grabbing a choicest position in the government.

Pakistan has seen and experienced the net worth of all these different types of dispassionate writers. Quite a few of them got themselves the ambassadorial robes, others found themselves snugly settled in the public sector departments and organizations. Unfortunately, none of them left indelible marks in the areas that they worked in.

Such people could best be described as critics with no substance. They use the power of the glib and pen as sheer nuisance value. In their interviews, they are seen sitting in their studies with bookshelves full of books in the background.

One such gentleman got himself a very prestigious and lucrative position as the chairman of the country's revenue department. He had absolutely no experience of how a government department functioned except as an outsider. A few months into the job and he quit feigning interference. He has now relegated himself to giving interviews on podcasts and YouTube.

A few months ago, the Government of Pakistan appointed two columnists to a committee tasked with downsizing or rightsizing (a mouth-watering cliché) of the bureaucratic machinery. The two gentlemen have been writing scathing critiques on the country's economy and everything that ails it for as long as one remembers. 

Again, the two columnists had no experience of how things worked, or didn't, in the officialdom. One of them has since quit citing unfathomable reasons, and his video talks are now being bandied about on the e-machines.

What makes us useful to the society is our knowledge of how the proletariat, those languishing at the lower tier bide their time and how they manage to find their piece of bread. This knowledge is not available in the voluminous books and tomes lying on our shelves.

Scientist in Pakistan, as perhaps elsewhere, brandish their knowledge of science only to ridicule the clergy. Some of them are literally pompous to a degree. Their research and experiment appear to be focused more on pooh-poohing the clergy and less on mitigating the sufferings of the downtrodden. This is particularly true of Pakistan.

It is said that laughter is the best medicine. One can find something or a little to smile or laugh at, even during the times of untellable sadness.

During the Indian Moon Rover Chandrayaan 3's launching, a discussion ensued in Pakistan as regards why couldn't we do the same. Mullahs were facing the brunt of the blame. 

During the heat of the discussion, a very vocal religious scholar from Lahore was asked the reason for Pakistan's failure to do likewise. 'Who is stopping our scientists from going to the moon, do you want us to send them, did the Hindu sadhus send the Chandrayaan to the moon,' there came a sharp retort from the erudite Allama.' 

The retort could be enjoyed by those having some little sense of humour. By and by, we need our clergy to be in possession of their vast deposits of humour so as to be able to take on their critics with the power of their intellect, and not otherwise.

One wouldn't like to drag this discussion turning into an insipid sermon. One would better leave sermon-writing to the charlatans.

One would rather like to read from some beautiful poetry, or a page or many from a book read long ago and fascinated by it. One could also go back to reading from letters penned mostly by ordinary souls about their existential matters. There is an element of personal touch attached to writing and reading beautiful letters which is a world apart from reading an impersonal soporific sermon in a newspaper.