PEOPLE (YESTERDAY's REBEL JOURNALIST)
YESTERDAY'S REBEL JOURNALIST
By: Nasser Yousaf
Perhaps, it may never be possible to reflect on one's brief stint in journalism and not think of Mansoor. That tannish young man from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's heartland of Charsadda was indeed a true Mansoor, in the midst of a war, and yet armed with only a pen. Since he came from a family with little resources, he appeared to be custodian to very few worldly possessions. He would work as a clerk in the post office in the morning, but his rebellious streak would start glowing with the whispering advent of the evening when he would occupy his position in front of a rickety type writer. There he would be seen typing hurriedly, caring little for the niceties of grammar and spellings, while looking at his notes culled from his day-long under cover beats, and blowing up the smoke from his cigarette.
Mansoor had grown up among a motley crowd of progressive-leaning younger and not so young people. While his own life ended brutally due to reasons and causes other than those springing from his thoughts, one now sees fewer of his comrades of those days when the Soviets were preparing to leave Afghanistan, and when our evening-time office would serve as a kind of a cavernous bistro.
When I joined the bureau office of 'The Muslim' in Peshawar, Mansoor was already there. I must confess his motivation inspired me then, and even though with little of energy and stamina of brain and brawn left, I now seem to be feeling the loss of progressive journalism in our backyard that Mansoor espoused and practiced, more than ever before.
The Mujahideen of yester years who have since metamorphosed into Taliban would then, as now, keep handing us out statements announcing the fall of such and such number of Afghan districts to their zealots on a daily basis. Mujahideen used such tactics to up the ante in their favour with the CIA for more generous funding. But we were taught to always treat such claims with a grain of salt.
Its attendant trials and tribulations aside, one feels a kind of hard-to-explain fulfillment that comes with writing for a cause that is otherwise considered a taboo by those wielding power. The situation in the days when we were reporting on the imminent withdrawal of the Soviets was less severe than what it appears to be today in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A gruesome one-sided war has unfolded in our midst where all that one sees and hears is right with no trace of the left, or even what is left of the left. I keep saying that war breeds literature, the kind of literature that can rid us, or at least our coming generations, of our existential woes. The fact that even the worst of our predicament could not bring out the best in our writers, scribes, journalists and men of academia is perhaps our biggest loss. We have not been able to teach the profound virtues of resistance to tyranny to those growing up around us.
Our inertia has engendered milling crowds of pliant and conformist youth who consider our great benefactors like Bacha Khan as a liability just because his grandchildren preferred to sully their family's name for some quick bucks. Our present generations believe more in the falsehood spread by a megalomaniac given to ostentatious lifestyle than in the philosophy of an unassuming man preaching nonviolence.
By: Nasser Yousaf
Perhaps, it may never be possible to reflect on one's brief stint in journalism and not think of Mansoor. That tannish young man from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's heartland of Charsadda was indeed a true Mansoor, in the midst of a war, and yet armed with only a pen. Since he came from a family with little resources, he appeared to be custodian to very few worldly possessions. He would work as a clerk in the post office in the morning, but his rebellious streak would start glowing with the whispering advent of the evening when he would occupy his position in front of a rickety type writer. There he would be seen typing hurriedly, caring little for the niceties of grammar and spellings, while looking at his notes culled from his day-long under cover beats, and blowing up the smoke from his cigarette.
Mansoor had grown up among a motley crowd of progressive-leaning younger and not so young people. While his own life ended brutally due to reasons and causes other than those springing from his thoughts, one now sees fewer of his comrades of those days when the Soviets were preparing to leave Afghanistan, and when our evening-time office would serve as a kind of a cavernous bistro.
When I joined the bureau office of 'The Muslim' in Peshawar, Mansoor was already there. I must confess his motivation inspired me then, and even though with little of energy and stamina of brain and brawn left, I now seem to be feeling the loss of progressive journalism in our backyard that Mansoor espoused and practiced, more than ever before.
The Mujahideen of yester years who have since metamorphosed into Taliban would then, as now, keep handing us out statements announcing the fall of such and such number of Afghan districts to their zealots on a daily basis. Mujahideen used such tactics to up the ante in their favour with the CIA for more generous funding. But we were taught to always treat such claims with a grain of salt.
Its attendant trials and tribulations aside, one feels a kind of hard-to-explain fulfillment that comes with writing for a cause that is otherwise considered a taboo by those wielding power. The situation in the days when we were reporting on the imminent withdrawal of the Soviets was less severe than what it appears to be today in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A gruesome one-sided war has unfolded in our midst where all that one sees and hears is right with no trace of the left, or even what is left of the left. I keep saying that war breeds literature, the kind of literature that can rid us, or at least our coming generations, of our existential woes. The fact that even the worst of our predicament could not bring out the best in our writers, scribes, journalists and men of academia is perhaps our biggest loss. We have not been able to teach the profound virtues of resistance to tyranny to those growing up around us.
Our inertia has engendered milling crowds of pliant and conformist youth who consider our great benefactors like Bacha Khan as a liability just because his grandchildren preferred to sully their family's name for some quick bucks. Our present generations believe more in the falsehood spread by a megalomaniac given to ostentatious lifestyle than in the philosophy of an unassuming man preaching nonviolence.
It thus shall be our punishment that while we suffer indiscriminately, we shall not be able even to read, but what is commonplace and plain piffle.
posted by Nasser Yousaf @ 07:32
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