November 3, 2007: I am on a narrow road making my way from a small hamlet where children sleep hungry to the city where an insatiable greed for power feeds on a nation's hunger. Over the radio I hear the announcement of the evening, an expected flourish of that sword which has hung over us for much of our existence. An image of a slaughterhouse comes to my mind, flanks left naked and raw, suspended from a metal hook in the ceiling, swinging to the rhythm of loss. I switch off the radio and then slide into a silence which slips over me like a veil, like a layer of the fine dust which draws patterns on the leaves outside just before they wither and die.

In these past eight years, I have watched and yearned, waiting for some small fissure through which I could insert myself and seek relief for this burden of recognition, this terrible sense of foreboding which governs my reticence. I have seen the unfolding of the grand design, the clamouring for the spoils, and the arrogance of the victor. I have seen our General bask and beam under international scrutiny, switching the texture and colour of his well-cut coats with the ease of a consummate actor playing out the longest farce on a west-end stage. I have seen the others flock around him, seeking him out, asking him to tell us, tell us, tell us, where does our future lie? And I have seen the deception and the lies, and the disregard for what must be truly, our national interest, as the parade marched on and we became a side-show in the game being played out around us, indeed, amidst us.

December 21, 2007: We stand outside the house of a man who has come to symbolise perseverance, the pursuit of principles, and integrity of the spirit. Aitzaz Ahsan has been arrested while on his way to Islamabad, taking advantage of the three day parole granted to him by the Punjab government. It is Eid – Aitzaz had wanted to offer the morning's prayers at Faisal Masjid alongside his colleagues from the legal community, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and Justice (retired) Tariq Mahmood. That both these gentlemen, who have stood up to the worst form of despotism, were refused permission to congregate with the rest of the Muslim ummah at the mosque on Eid day speaks for itself. That Aitzaz Ahsan was brutalised and dragged by Punjab Police into a waiting vehicle, the uncovered back of which held him captive for eight hours until he was returned home to Lahore, speaks of the desperate and despicable measures taken by despotism at it’s best. That his son, Ali Ahsan, was threatened with death, a pump action gun thrust into his chest, signals the moral breakdown of a regime gone mad with lust for things temporal and inconsequential. That night, somewhere on the outskirts of Chakri, driving down obscure roads, unlit and unpaved, Ali Ahsan witnessed the reality of our country, where people have been broken again and again, their spirits flogged with the whip of tyranny.

December 31, 2007: And now the final convulsions of this rotting corpse of all things light and moderate. It has been an insidious plan, this grand design to reign us in. We never even knew the hour of our own violation, we were asleep when  the drum roll of the conqueror sounded in our ears, loud and clear, beating its rhythm with the regularity of the assured.

But can we remain oblivious while the howl of hungry hyenas threatens to become the kind of music nations like ours have lived and died by?  Is it not time to recognise that so many of us have been complicit in the machinations of regimes which clearly appealed to the sentimental liberalism of the ‘enlightened middle class’, members of which chose to celebrate the Day of the General with the gentle tinkle of champagne glasses? Can we absolve ourselves of the naïve faith we placed in the purported strides taken by an economy which now lies gasping and wilting like a dieing creature? Can we deny that many of us found it just too convenient to have a military man at the helm of affairs, citing investor confidence and a greater sense of security in the market as some of the economic benefits of military rule? How many of us dared to look the Dictator in the eye and tell him that he was wrong, that the mega-projects of his regime would not result in the improvement of the quality of life of the people who shall build those dams and the ports which shall enrich the obscenely rich and impoverish the immorally poor? (That unread page in the survival kit says tyranny is no accident, survive it as best you can)
We have forgotten that the rallying cry in the past was for social and economic justice, for truly representative rule, for an end to feudal fiefdoms and the tyranny of inequity. We have not considered that the rule of law and constitutionality alone have not brought in either gender equality or equitable distribution of resources. We do not care to recollect that a regime was brought down when sugar became costlier, but when flour was still in plentiful, at a time when our beloved country was nearing food-sufficiency. We do not question the maneuverings of political leadership which failed to live up to their lofty promises, conveniently flogging the new horse while wiping clean a slate which was chalked with criminal disregard of both rule of law and the constitution. We no longer look towards the shadows at the ghosts who orchestrate this pantomime.

I look, and I see, and I turn away, for I have recognised the enemy and I fear that the enemy lives within us. (How do you stand tall, how do you exist when tyrants rule, how do you keep the stitches of the soul intact)
 I have grieved now; I have grieved for much of the time between the loss of innocence and the recognition of reality. I want to put the sorrow away, until its hooded eyes seek me out again and remind me of the tragedy which has befallen my beloved nation.  I want to be able to look clearly into the eyes of the woman whose young daughter died last night while delivering her first child. I want to be able to tell the labourer from Baluchistan who calls me everyday to tell me that his young daughter suffers unbearable pain while she loses her struggle against bone marrow cancer. I want to tell the young MSc student from Dera Ghazi Khan that I shall help him replace the diseased valve in his heart so that he can get his degree and hopefully get a meaningful job. I want to tell my friends in Taxali and Lohari Darwaza that their children will no longer fall ill from the filth they live with. These are the words I want to speak, but all I can hear is the dull thud of truth as it falls, once again, by the wayside, crumbling like a mud wall in the monsoon (But how do you stretch beneath the low ceiling of tyranny, how do you bear the hailstorms of despotism, how do you stand still in the whirlpool of oppression when tyranny's rank smell swirls from your soul.)