| December 15, 2001 | Saturday | Ramazan 29, 1422 |
The Osama tape: TV REVIEW
Some really great material for reading: LAHORE LITERARY SCENE
The sanctity of words: LITERARY ROUND-UP
KARACHI: Two months are long enough to fray the nerves of around 5,500 students who are apparently being penalized by the provincial health department for obtaining good marks in their intermediate examination. In a civilized society, the movers and shakers of the Sindh health department — the health minister, and the health secretary — and the IBA chief should have tendered their resignation as a matter of honour for failing to hold transparent entrance tests for students seeking admission to the government-run medical colleges in Sindh. Since government officials and the bureaucracy do not place a high premium on lofty ideals, they have, instead, chosen to punish the students.
THIS week it is mostly about local magazines, journals and recent publications.
THE French are very particular about their language. They mind its misuse, do not permit its perversion and oppose adulteration of any kind.
The entrance tests given by the IBA to the students stood null and void twice amid accusations of irregularities — first on Oct 30 and second on Dec 13. This is ground enough to disqualify the IBA from giving entrance tests any further. But the powers that be have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the same test-giving body will be employed once again.
Analysts argue that the entrance test system adopted by the NED University of Engineering and Technology is most foolproof. They add that if the health department does not want its entrance test system to be tainted with allegations all too often, it would do well to take a leaf out of the NED’s book, at least so far as the entrance tests are concerned.
Candidates taking entrance tests at the NED University of Engineering and Technology are given answer sheets with carbon paper placed in between. When a candidate is through with his test, his main answer sheet is countersigned and kept by an invigilator. The candidate is allowed to leave with the copy of his answer sheet. At the gate of the examination centre, the candidate is given a copy of correct answers so that he can work out his marks independently. Such an entrance test system leaves little room for underhand dealings.
On the other hand, the entrance tests given by the provincial health department is peculiar in that it allows the IBA to merely ensure that cheating does not occur at the entrance tests. (Incidentally, the IBA has failed to do this minor job twice). The answer sheets, after the completion of tests, are taken away by the health department for examination — a move that renders the entire process suspect and susceptible to all imaginable shenanigans.
The health department has disclosed that irregularities were detected in 34 cases. The health department should be made to explain why as many as 5,500 students are being made to take another entrance test — and that too organized by the IBA — when irregularities were detected only in 34 cases. The best course of action that the health department could take was to disqualify those 34 students from medical seats.
By the same token, the provincial health department is least bothered about the fact that those students who do not succeed in obtaining good marks in these entrance tests — despite the fact that their score was good in the previous tests — will not be able to get admission to any medical college, or other institution of higher learning, because the deadline for admission will have expired.
THE release of the so-called ‘smoking gun’ 40-minute tape showing Osama bin Laden talking to several of his senior colleagues and a guest from Saudi Arabia is bound to create further controversy. Throughout the broadcast, the question that most of the Western news channels had on their minds was whether this tape would sway public opinion in the Middle Eastern, Arab and Muslim nations against Osama by proving to the people there that he was in fact responsible for the September 11 attacks?
Even without going into all of that, one might ask: does it really matter what people in the Arab or Muslim world think? They aren’t the ones who carried out the bombing of Afghanistan? In any case, there will be those who have already decided that Osama is their hero. After seeing the tape they will be asking questions like (a) what was the motive for taping this conversation? (b) laughing at the attacks might be a most reprehensible thing but that does not necessarily make the person who is laughing responsible for carrying them out; (c) and nowhere in the course of his conversation did he explicitly admit to ordering the attacks (calculating what would happen to the towers does not, again, necessarily mean that the attacks were ordered by the person making such a calculation); (d) isn’t there a chance that the tapes were doctored?
Before releasing this tape, the US government said it was carefully weighing the pros and cons of whether or not to release it. Presumably, made by an amateur cameraman in Afghanistan some time after the September 11 attacks, the tape was found by US military forces in an abandoned house in Jalalabad. The content of the tape, though, were filmed in central Ghazni province, and the location seemed to be close to where a US helicopter was either shot down (as claimed by the Taliban) or where a wheel of one such chopper came off as it came under attack.
According to US officials, President George Bush and senior political leaders and administration figures first saw the tape and the reason for the delay had to do with two things. The first — and this was something that the US State Department had made an issue of when Al Jazeera showed video-taped statements of Osama and his Al Qaeda colleagues — relates to the possibility of Al Qaeda cells in Europe or North America receiving coded messages if the tape were broadcast by news networks.
The second had to do with the fact, US officials say, that parts of the audio on the tape were close to being unintelligible, and the Arabic translators had a tough time figuring out what was being said (hence the frequent ‘inaudible’ captions). The US administration’s assertion that these translators are independent and have no affiliation with the government is being taken at face value and is being passed on by most international news networks to viewers as if the US government is not in the business of lying.
However, just because Washington says that these translators have no affiliation with any branch or department of the US government does not necessarily mean that they would be outside its influence. In any case, there are millions of Arabic-speaking people around the world and a faulty translation would not escape public scrutiny. US officials have also made it a point to say that the tape proved beyond doubt that Osama knew beforehand what was coming on Sept 11. Even so, knowledge of a crime — even as heinous and tragic as the attacks — does not necessarily mean that the person who knew this should be held responsible. It needs to be mentioned at this point that this line of reasoning is in no way being sued to suggest that Osama is a hero per se, simply that it’s not so simple as ‘we-are-the-good-guys-and-these-guys-are-the-bad-guys’ situation that the Americans are making it out to be.
Several US members of Congress who saw the tape came on CNN’s Larry King Live to take their case to the public. Senator Bob Graham (Democrat from Florida), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee: “The tape is a smoking gun, in itself incriminating of [Osama] bin Laden. But more than that it gives you a sense of the demeanour, the person of bin Laden. He speaks as though he were an engineer describing a structural failure rather than a person who has just planned, orchestrated and directed one of the most horrific acts in history. You see in this tape a smirking person without remorse, without compassion.”
And Senator Richard Shelby (Republican from Alabama), also a member of the intelligence committee: “It shows without a doubt, I believe, his [Osama’s] culpability and his complicity in the whole Sept 11 deal. This is a damnable piece of evidence against Osama bin Laden.”
Fair enough. But according to a story reported by Alex Perry in Time magazine’s latest issue, a member of the US special forces used the word ‘motherf......” for the Taliban prisoners as he called in air strikes at the Qala-i-Jangi. In fact, the exact quote was: “Tell them there will be six or seven buildings in a line in the southwest half. If they can hit them, then that would kill a whole lot of these motherf...... .” So shouldn’t these men be tried, as Amnesty International at least has the guts to suggest, for war crimes? What compassion did these men have for the prisoners of war, or what compassion does George Bush have for probably hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghan civilians who have died in the bombing raids? As for the US government telling the truth, even to its own people, that is a point that can always be debated.
For example, quoting a story carried by the The Washington Post, CNN reported that the US Army was still making high-grade powdered anthrax, 32 years after President Nixon closed down America’s offensive biological weapons programme. So, all along the US government had led its own people to believe that no biological weapons were being made, and were lecturing other countries, especially Iraq, on this but now it turns out that it has been doing the same thing covertly all these years.
The way CNN covered this story was such that it did not at all put the US army in a bad light, which is quite strange considering that America has had a huge anthrax scare recently in which five people died, and where one high-profile case involved inhalation of anthrax in exactly this kind of powdery form. Why did it take the US Army so long to “confirm” (the phrase used by CNN) this? Why didn’t it come up with this ‘confirmation’ at the height of the anthrax scare? This, interestingly enough, as a colleague pointed out, happened to climax just when the US bombing campaign seemed to be going nowhere, and fizzled out just when the operation seemed to be gathering steam, and when hope rose that Osama and his Al Qaeda colleagues were on the run and on the verge of being captured. —OMAR R QURAISHI
There was a time when Fakhar Zaman was active in political circles but for some time he has confined himself to his first love — literature. He did a remarkable job as chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Letters, arranging the first-ever international gathering of writers in Islamabad in which 1,400 delegates from 100 countries took part. In addition, he got the sufi poetry of the four provinces translated into the seven languages of the United Nations.
Even after relinquishing charge of the PAL, he has remained in the news. Author of probably the highest number of novels in Punjabi, Bandiwan, Kamzaat, etc, he is promoting the cause of the language and is all set to arrange an international Punjabi congress next year in London. Delegates from 25 countries are expected to participate.
Fakhar Zaman is also the secretary-general of the International Congress of Writers, Artists and Intellectuals. As a part of its activities, the organization is getting foreign literature translated into Urdu. Earlier this year, Fakhar Zaman commissioned Khalid Iqbal Yasser, previously director-general of the PAL and currently head of the Urdu Science Board, to translate a collection of the Swedish poet, Peter Curman, who has been president of the Swedish writers’ union for many years. He was also the driving force behind the literary circles in the Baltic, Black Sea and the Aegian which resulted in two dynamic writers’ and translating centres under the auspices of the Unesco.
On behalf of the ICAWAI, Fakhar Zaman has now got translated two books by foreign writers into Urdu, again by Khalid Iqbal Yasser. One is the second novel by the Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho, who writes in Portuguese. Titled, The Alchemist in English, and Kimiadan in Urdu, it brought him recognition as one of the top most writers of the world. His works have been translated into 42 languages.
The other book translated by Khalid Iqbal Yaseer is a collection of love poems by various Polish poets. The names of the poets are all unfamiliar except for Wislawa Szymborska who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996. Her lyrical poetry contains personal motifs and philosophic reflections. As the citation says, the award is given “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historic and biological content to come to light in fragments of human reality.”
Unfortunately, without access to the original books one cannot say how far the translator has been true to the text. All the same, both the books make good reading.
ALTHOUGH I don’t think that it is a financially viable proposition, Shaista Hasan continues to persist with publishing her monthly Shohar-i-Namdar. The other day when she came over to deliver her latest issue, I remarked, “So, this is the ninth issue of your magazine.” “No,” she retorted, “I have come to present the ninth Shohar-i-Namdar to you.”
Shaista started the magazine to highlight the atrocities (if I may use the word) of men perpetrated upon their wives and mobilize public opinion against it. She collects details of the happenings from various sources and reproduces them in her magazine to make people realize the gravity of the situation. Everyone has read about a religious stalwart who subjected his wife to such cruelty that she was badly mutilated. It is against this evil that Shaista is leading a crusade and hence deserves all encouragement. She is extremely sore at the plight of women in our country, particularly because they are regarded as playthings and are ill treated on various pretexts. She is giving practical shape to her knowledge of sociology as she holds a master’s degree in that subject.
However, to make the magazine readable for the general public, she has written a sort of research article in the current issue about one of the stalwarts of our freedom movement, Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar. She has also included a famous short story, Jagga, by Balwant Singh. Incidentally, in a recent talk delivered by Dr Arifa Syed Zehra on the Urdu short story, she had particularly mentioned Balwant Singh as a top writer. When someone in the audience pointed out that he had advocated violence in his story, Jagga, she said that one must not forget that Balwant Singh was a Sikh and violence was a part of his life. All the same, the violence advocated by him in the story was for an honourable cause.
The issue of Shohar-i-Namdar also carries some ghazals by prominent poets.
SIDDIQA Begum has given a totally different shape this month to her literary journal, Adab-i-Latif. She has laced it with a variety of ‘tasty’ articles and poems. To begin with, Dr Agha Sohail’s write-up about Josh Malihabadi’s prose writing is illuminating. Similarly, a personal account of Farhatullah Baig by his nephew, Yusus Imtiaz, who lives in Canada, is worth reading. It throws a lot of light on the personal life and habits of that great humorist and, to be honest, tells us for the first time that Mirza Sahib not only wrote poetry but also has a published book under the title, Meri Shairi, to his credit. Other worthwhile prose pieces are by Prof Asif Ali Asif on Mushtaq Yusufi’s humour and a study of Mustansar Tarar’s novels by Ghalib Ahmad.
In the poetry section it is nice to see the reclusive Abdul Aziz Khalid with his rubaiyat (quatrains). But I really do not know how to express my appreciation for Ghalib Ahmad’s poem, Barg-i-Hunar. It is the best in free verse I have read for a long time. Moreover, its theme is exquisite. I am not reproducing any part of it as it is only after reading the entire poem that one feels its impact.
IN the latest issue of Dr Akhtar Husain Akhtar’s Punjabi monthly, Lehran, I saw an article by Syed Sibtul Hasan Zaigham which revived some old memories. The article is about Urmila Sondhi, daughter of Government College, Lahore, principal, GD Sondhi, the first Indian to hold that job. When I joined the college in 1939, Mr Dunicliffe was the principal. Mr Sondhi succeeded him.
Urmila became my classmate in the college when I reached the third year as co-education was not allowed in the intermediate classes. She was as graceful as her mother whom we called the Lady of the Lodge. Rather reserved, she did not mix well with others. One day, she inadvertently dropped her handkerchief in the classroom. Somehow, I spotted it and picked it up. When I showed the prize possession to my classmates, with the letters ‘US’ neatly embroidered on it, they begged of me for it. They only wanted the credit for returning it to her. I flatly refused. That kerchief remained with me for a long time until it was lost somewhere down the corridors of time.
In Europe they are one people who resent incursion of mass culture trends from abroad and are particularly allergic to assimilation of verbal garbage of American origin in their daily parlance.
In sophisticated circles and among people who have attended college words are not used loosely, quaint constructions are avoided and unnecessary mixing of foreign terms and resort to vulgar language is shunned.
Provincial differences are there of course as there are in every language but the standard usage around which the local variations give off their peculiar colour is guarded like women’s chastity in conservative cultures. It may be too unliberal to suggest but this is how it ought to be.
Your language is the vehicle of your thought and your thought is the core of your being wherein resides your soul. As Tennyson said, ‘words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.’
If I were an honest man I will be very careful when I opened my mouth which is why languages have such elaborate grammars. ‘And weigh thy words in a balance, and make a door and bar for thy mouth.’ Thus warned the Bible.
In the subcontinent unfortunately the tendency to take liberties with the rules of grammar and correct usage has been growing under the influence of the very people who are supposed to protect and promote the proper use of language.
Style is a matter apart but to affect stylicisms and to appear to be modernistic unschooled writers, particularly of the abstractionist kind, have been recklessly emptying words of their meaning.
Yet the villainy of television is far greater than theirs. Now that anybody who has done a comic role in a TV play can become a playwright, dialogue writing which used to be a special field even in Bombay talkies that used to employ versatile prose writers and dramatists for this job, has sunk to a level of inanity you start wondering if scripts are read at all from the point of view of language.
It would now be amusing to recall the angry din of protests and righteous concern when the Amritsar TV broadcasts started reaching Lahore. Slogans of cultural invasion went up. Housetops displaying the elaborate antennas fashioned to capture the signal were regarded as haunts of enemy agents. But that did not lessen the enthusiasm. All that people wanted was to watch Indian movies they had not seen for some years. Doordarshan could offer little else. We didn’t feel small because PTV had class, a certain standard that cultured professionals like Aslam Azhar had brought to its productions. There was strict quality control. The feared invasion failed. But that is history.
What is the prevailing scene? Dismal, all round deterioration. The playwright business is booming and sinking under its own tonnage.
Serials that have no end, no subject, no theme, no objective, no language, no character, no atmosphere have crowded out every other thing except perhaps clumsy pop music and amateurish talk shows.
If you have the nerve to watch them you will notice the amazing recycling of corporate stuff that the channels are surfing for your ease. The noticeable decline is in the area of dialogue.
The writers of the scripts are stuffing the speech with English words and sentences to substitute for meaning and to impress the great majority of the vernacular viewers.
What remains of Urdu in this hotchpotch is bracketed within ouches, wows and oh la las. A lady giving her recipe for boiling eggs kept ouching and wowing till the shell cracked and the chick came out. This invasion has not come from across. It is springing from the deep hollowness of our national psyche that we feel we can only fill with English words.
Surprisingly you don’t see this on Iranian, Turkish or Arab channels. English is undoubtedly an asset from our colonial past that we have no reason to lose but it is vital for us to guard against the corruption of our own language through misuse and disuse. Our national genius will never flower in any other language but our own.
A more serious and alarming development that must be taken notice of is the copying of silly expressions like mein hoon na from Indian movies and the misuse of possessive pronouns like mera, tera, tumhara in place of apna like in the choli song, yeh dil mein doongi merey yar ko,’instead of the correct yeh dil mein doongi apne yar ko. I was appalled the other day when I heard actor Nadeem, good old guy that he is, utter this abominable profanity; mein meri maa ke marney pe bhi nahin roya tha in a TV serial authored by some illiterate goof. That PTV allowed it is a pity.