Day 4
Kabir has organised this day for me and he has an exciting schedule of government MNAs and Ministers lined up in the Pakistani National Assembly buildings in Islamabad. We are both picked up by Mubashir, an assistant and cousin to the Deputy Speaker, and a Bhutan. This means he is white with green eyes, his hair is light brown but he has noticeable blonde hairs in his moustache and beard. He comments that if I wore shalwar kameez and a Chitrali Topi I would be indistinguishable from them.
Mubashir’s driver takes us to the National Assembly buildings, en route the police presence is overbearing and on every corner. Mubashir opens the sun roof and puts a blue police light above. Every junction of the roads surrounding the parliament buildings are, as you would expect, blocked by both the military and police. There are barbed wire blockades and patrols of armed soldiers. Bunkers are built in to the sides of the roads with helmeted soldiers carrying assault rifles. After being stopped twice and questioned, Mubashir gives directions for us to pull into a subterranean car park. A guard in military attire and peaked hat salutes us and we follow him into the National Assembly building from underground. The complex is vast, the decor is twenty years old and a little scruffy, we go into a lift, go up a floor or two and head straight into the Deputy Speaker’s waiting room. The anti rooms are packed with aides, we pass them and then bypass twenty or thirty constituents and we go straight into his main office. Mubashir explains that the Deputy Speaker is running late, is still in session, and suggests we go to watch him from the VIP gallery. We agree.
At all times we have a security escort, but I believe it is more to ensure we don’t get lost, and that we don’t go where we shouldn’t. We enter the VIP entrance, a guard protests we havn’t any papers to allow us here, our guard tells him off and we sit down. These are the best seats in the house. The assembly room is large and circular. The National Assembly members sit on the ground floor and the Senators (our House of Lords) sit on a gallery above them. There is a beautiful gold circular centerpiece elevated from the ceiling with Arabic script from the Qur’an. Only ten meters away is the charismatic Leader of the Opposition Nisar Ali Khan. He stands and shouts, waves his hand in the air and shouts more. He accuses the Prime Minster and members of the ruling PPP of corruption. He says Transparency International has proved the PPP are corrupt, they reply in turn that Transparency International itself is corrupt!
The proceedings of the house are done in English, the Deputy Speaker is in the chair, his name is Faisal Karim Kundi and he is friends with Kabir. Some MNAs will speak entirely in Urdu, others will speak entirely in English, others will mix and match. The Prime Minister walks in casually and people walk over and shake his hand, so does the Leader of the Opposition. MNAs don’t shout “Yeah Yeah Yeah” like in the UK, they clap the table top if they agree with something. Kabir says they’ve tried to copy the Commons but its gone horribly wrong. It is also far more animated than the Commons, one MNA was shouting with rage that he was being disallowed to speak to his amendment to a bill, and I am informed that fights have been known to break out on the floor here. Even so, the Assembly is poorly attended and only a quarter full, these MNAs apparently have more holidays than sessions.
We get bored and I am delighted that I can smoke in the corridors of power. It is suggested we wait in the actual Speaker’s office (she is on holiday) and we agree. Expecting it to be full we both find ourselves alone in an Office of State. A large mahogany desk is at one end of the room, two Pakistan flags are either side of the Speakers green leather chair. Above her chair, for everyone to see, is a large portrait of Jinnah. One item of particular interest is the actual letter of resignation from General Musharraf, it is even signed by him. I speculate how much it is worth as I have collected autographs in the past.
We get bored of waiting and are informed that the Dep Speaker is still running late, so we go for lunch. A guide escorts us to the dining room reserved only for MNAs. Unfortunately it resembles a leisure centre canteen. We do actually get to meet Faisal Karim Kundi, but he only has time to have his picture taken with us, which will go on his website. However it was pleasant to sit in with him and see how he dealt with eight constituents at a time.
We leave and take the Dep Speaker’s bullet proof car to Kashmir House, this is where the Kashmir Government Ministers have their apartments. It is still in Islamabad of course. This building is less grand than all the other Pakistan governmental buildings (all of which are quite plain, modern, concrete and monolithic), we are escorted in by a man with an AK-47 and led to Mehmood Riaz’s apartment, the Minister for Overseas, Information and Environment.
Apparently the Minister is also a British citizen and lived in Slough for several years. His wife and children are still there and he visits them on holiday. Mr Riaz, who is an amiable and polite man, tells us that he, himself, narrowly avoided a bomb which blasted 30ft from his car only this month in Islamabad. He has a very influential voice in determining which way Kashmiris vote in Britain, and his electorate is actually made up of several hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris who live in Britain and have a vote from abroad.
Our final outing of the day is dinner at Wazir Ahmad Jogezai’s house. He is the former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, and a PPP (Pakistani People’s Party) member. He was a MNA for thirty years. En route we pick up Nadeem. Jogezai must be about seventy, is rotund and a real character. He has several friends at his lounge table and they are smoking cigarettes and cigars. The conversation is good, amongst the group are a quiet and sober young man who is to soon present a current affairs and political show on Pakistani television, and Ali Qadir Gilani, the impressive Group Director of Interflow Group – a media group which own cinemas, news channels and radio stations. Wazir, our host, provides us with a delicious spread of local food and by the end of the night, he tells me I can be counted as a member of his family and visit whenever I please.
Day 5
Kabir says he will take me to the grandest mosque in Islamabad, if not Pakistan. It was built by the Saudis and is called the Faisal Mosque. As it is Friday prayers I expect that it will be quite busy and I look forward to seeing this important site.
When we arrive I notice the mosque (masjid in Urdu) is a contemporary-looking building and I recall that this is always likely to be the case; Islamabad is a city only about forty years old. Four white concrete minarets dominate the skyline and erupt from the four corners of the building. Frankly I am a little disappointed in the architecture; this is not my sort of design. The most impressive mosque I have seen is the Muhammad Ali mosque in Cairo, and although this is a similar size, the Faisal masjid impresses by the virtues of practicality and scale rather than the aesthetic. I make a comparison with the practical and uninspiring churches in the UK built in the 1960s and 1970s to their architectural predecessors which attract people worldwide if only to look at their beautiful craftsmanship. The mosque can apparently accommodate 300,000 people praying at once, but this would mean two thirds would be outside the main hall and praying in the open air.
We take our shoes off and walk round the grounds, the Margalla hills dominate one half of the skyline and add to the aesthetics of the holy site quite considerably; the hills are breathtaking and impress against the mosque like a towering wave about to break over it. The interior of the mosque is modern and there are a dozen wooden cases all holding beautiful hand-painted Qur’ans almost a meter in length. For Friday prayers, the main prayer room is only a quarter full, previously I had assumed that in Pakistan all mosques would be over spilling in attendance, this is not the case.
It was not the hills, the minarets, nor the scale of the masjid which had its the most striking impact on me. It was the sermon. I had previously read the Prophet Mohammad advised against shouting and encouraged his followers to speak gently and kindly. The Urdu lecture, which was amplified by a series of hundreds of speakers in all corners and areas of the mosque was delivered by quite an invigorated, passionate Imam. The tone and intonation was similar to a rallying speech delivered by a generalissimo. What may have sounded rousing and inspiring to the native ear, was actually quite aggressive and frightful to mine. I was later assured that the Imams at the Faisal mosque are quite moderate.
We then visit the tomb of General Zia Ul-Haq, he conceived the idea of Islamabad and is buried in the gardens of the Faisal Mosque. He was an important military dictator. There is controversy surrounding his death; that the General died with several of his key allies, including the US ambassador to Pakistan, when his plane lost control. The tomb is modest in size and visitors leave plastic bags filled with biscuits and loaves of bread.
En route to the Marriott Hotel we are stopped by a police blockade. This time the policeman is quite interested in me. He asks Kabir where we are from and he replies we are from the UK. The policeman disagrees and says that I am an undercover American, that I am a spy or a Blackwater operative. He persists but we are able to convince him of the truth, especially when we tell him we are late for a meeting with Dr Donya Aziz MNA. Americans are generally disliked in Pakistan, they are central to many conspiracy theories regarding Pakistan’s troubled history and most Pakistanis believe there are hundreds, if not thousands, of undercover CIA or Blackwater operatives in the country. The Pakistan government outwardly condemns this and vows to arrest anyone who cannot prove their identity. The British, although widely thought to be servants of the USA, are praised for their administrative legacy, for example the canal routes in Lahore, farm irrigation and railways.
When we get to the Marriott it is impossible to tell it was devastated by a suicide bombing in 2008 which killed over fifty people and injured two hundred more. Of course the security is very tight and our vehicle is searched. This is one of the more rigorous inspections, they check the boot and bonnet and the underneath. Kabir and I walk through airport scanners and we take a look round the plush hotel. Dr Aziz arrives, I had seen her speak briefly in the National Assembly the previous day and so I was quite enthusiastic to meet her. We sat and had chai (tea) and cakes in the restaurant. She seemed genuinely interested in the aid project I am here for and tells me to keep in touch. She invites me to a talk on Corruption for young Pakistanis which will be attended by some MNAs, it is on Tuesday, I tell her if I have not by then gone to Noon Bagla I would be delighted to go. Dr Aziz is about thirty-five and speaks with an American-International school accent. Kabir and I leave to buy some provisions, I need to trim by beard in preparation for tonight’s dinner with the President of Kashmir.
Before dinner Kabir has organized a meeting with another MNA who also lives in Bani Galla. Her name is Marvi Mamon and by the end of our meeting I am convinced she is someone to watch. Her house is a typically lovely Bani Galla villa, we sit down in her lounge and discuss politics in depth. She is attractive, assertive and evidently a formidable intellect, she was educated around the corner from me at the LSE. She is a very liberated woman, has a thirteen year old son and is divorced. She regales us with several remarkable stories.
Marvi, we hear, went on an ordinary political demonstration in support of engineers, two hundred of whom were also with her. She had previously organized with police where the demonstration would take place, as was her right to do so. Whilst marching to the spot, peacefully, the police fired tear gas canisters at them. This in itself would be an outrageous occurrence, but when she learned that the police had decided to charge the engineers with criminal activity she staged a separate protest. She stayed on the road side in the parliamentary complex until 4am. Then she stayed for a further four days on hunger strike, finally getting all her demands from the Prime Minister after staying on the road side for seven days with little food, no shelter and no change of clothes or washing facilities. By the end of the demonstration it had become a huge national story.
Accordingly this had a profound effect on Marvi’s life, she says that living rough has given her a new perspective on life and she has given up all her VIP privileges which come with being an MNA, for instance she flies economy class now. At the moment she is particularly active in raising money for the flood disaster.
Day 6
This morning Kabir left for the UK and Nadeem flew to Karachi on business. There have been four major terrorist attacks this week, one on a mosque yesterday which killed over seventy people. None of them, thankfully, are in Islamabad and tend to be prevalent in the turbulent tribal areas near Peshawar. So today is the first day, since landing, that I am not to be a part of Nadeem’s nor Kabir’s outrageously busy and energetic schedules. I look forward to the rest and am particularly excited about sending emails to my friends and family.
Shaguthta, the house cook, is on form as always. All week we have had freshly cooked meals, whatever we fancy, and the dining room table has been set in case we decide to eat. She cooks the best Indian cuisine I have tasted, and it is very different to the Indian meals I am used to back home. There is far less sauce and the food is healthier.
Before arriving to Pakistan my friends had joked that I would have to fend off all kinds of insects and monsters. I know they exist out here but I’m happy to say things havn’t been too bad. In Noon Bagla, I noticed a nest of about twenty spiders underneath the overhanging roof, but they were all legs and no body and that sort I can deal with. One night, in Islamabad, before getting into bed I saw a strange grasshopper-like creature, but I took care of it by throwing a boot. Its remains are still on the marble floor. People here do mention that Dengue Fever is occurring in areas of the country, especially Lahore and this is also mosquito season. Having said that, I used my mosquito repellent on the first night and since then have complacently neglected it and have not been bitten once.
All week it has been very hot, but it gets dark at about five o’clock and then the temperature drops to 8C. I noticed in Noon Bagla it was even colder than that. The locals here find the night time temperature uncomfortably cold, whereas I am uncomfortable with the daytime heat. Several sounds are constantly audible in Islamabad: barking dogs, crickets and insects at night, birds during the day, the sounding of horns in traffic (though not in quiet Bani Galla), and the intermittent Call To Prayer from the mosques. I seem to have accidently synchronized my smoking habit with the Call and every time I leave the house for a cigarette, “Allah Akbar” resonates. The Call does not sound attractive to foreign ears, but slowly I am getting used to it. It may sound better if the mosques sounded the same call, by the same Imam, at the same time, but one can hear several versions of it at different volumes depending on the proximity of the minarets.
Frankly today has been a lazy one in terms of activity, but I spend several hours writing up my journal, recording my experiences. At twenty eight minutes past eight in the evening however, there is a gunshot. It sounds quite close and also sounds as if it came from a sports rifle, I pause and listen and then there is another one only a minute later. I walk to the front door to investigate and can see nor hear nothing. I speak with Waheed and he says it is a frequent occurrence in Pakistan, and that it is probably someone’s wedding or birthday. People fire guns here in celebration and a couple of single shots is quite tame; normally a burst of bullets from an AK-47 is the fashion! This will explain why Pakistan is one of the world’s largest consumer of bullets.