Raw Spirit and Body Language
Hospitalized several weeks ago with severe kidney pain in Abu Dhabi while attending a Conference, the doctor’s advice was to come back immediately for a pain-killer injection on recurrence of the pain. When the pain returned in strength at 1 a.m. the following night, the Pathan taxi cab driver who took me to the hospital a few minutes car-ride away would not take the taxi fare. He refused to leave me alone unless either I was admitted or ready to go back to the hotel. When I did come out, he was stubbornly refusing a couple who wanted to hire his taxi (few taxis being available at that time of the night). When the pain came back again the next night, the taxi driver (another Pakistani) insisted on going into the hospital with me and stayed till he dropped me back to the hotel. My Pakistani colleagues had left strict instructions that I should not go alone to the hospital, the “Reception” staff at the Hotel had to be stopped from waking them up. This was symbolic of pure Pakistani spirit, a Pakistani was in some trouble, colleagues or utter strangers, everyone responded unitedly quite selflessly.
One can understand the Pakistan-bonding with each other but why do we as a nation, volunteer to be the champions of all Muslim causes, particularly when some of those affected have no love lost for us? One can understand the religious aspect, Iraq is home to a major number of muslim holy places, fourth in emotional muslim religious issues, after Haram Sharif in Mecca, Masjid-e-Nabvi in Madinah and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. With Iraq astride a vast reservoir of oil and Iraq surrounded by half a dozen countries, anyone sitting in Baghdad can call the shots as the geo-politically dominant force in the region. That’s what the suspicion is among the Muslim countries, i.e. apart from the usual Israeli bogey. A million-man protest march in Karachi against a US-led war against Iraq was tall on organization but short in number of participants, less than 150,000, the same as the Rawalpindi million-man march a week later. Nevertheless the public sentiment was impressive, the largest by far in the country for over two decades, matching the return of Ms. Benazir to Lahore from self-exile in 1986 but far less than the non-denominational universal protest witnessed in London and Paris a few weeks ago. The Iraqi people have been oppressed by more than three decades of Saddam Hussain’s tyranny, war would only add to the misery of innocent civilians, Saddam will quite deliberately and callously put them in harm’s way by having his Army fight in urban areas. One has to target Saddam Hussain, not Iraq; that about sums up the world’s message.
