| 21 April 2004 | Wednesday | 30 Safar 1425 |
An anthology of modern writings
When John Crossman walks out of prison today, he will be entering a world that has changed in some ways, albeit not beyond recognition, since he was sentenced to 18 years in the slammer on a treason charge.
The reaffirmation this month of popular faith in the African National Congress coincided with the 10th anniversary of South Africa's first democratic elections, whereas back in 1986 the demise of apartheid seemed a distant prospect. Nelson Mandela was still the world's most famous prisoner of conscience at the time; who could have known that within two decades he would more or less universally be acknowledged as an international eminence grise?
But then again, who would have thought that in the same period large numbers of people who detested everything that the Reagan-Thatcher axis stood for would be looking back on that era with a hint of nostalgia? After all, the Soviet Union still sprawled across Eurasia, providing an essential component in the balance of power; what's more, Mikhail Gorbachev was not only beginning to loosen the shackles of Stalinism, he was also getting through to Moscow's traditional adversaries.
It was possible to hope that the threat of nuclear confrontation, which had hovered ominously over the world since the Second World War, would in time wither away.
Back then, any vision of a world dominated by a single superpower governed by a radically right-wing cabal with the son of Ronald Reagan's vice-president as its figurehead would have been dismissed as a far-fetched dystopia. Nor, so soon after the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, would anyone other than the most dogged ideologues have been able to imagine Ariel Sharon at Israel's helm.
Israel was, of course, already a regional superpower. It was also widely suspected to be the world's seventh nuclear power - after the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and South Africa. The latter provided Israel with technological assistance - and Israelis appear to have found apartheid a convenient set of rules for applying to Palestinians.
Although it is hard to believe that Western intelligence agencies were unaware of Pretoria's nuclear proclivities and capabilities, the apartheid regime never faced any demand to give up its weapons of mass destruction. (It did so voluntarily on the cusp of democracy, presumably because the idea of a majority-ruled South Africa possessing a nuclear arsenal was as repugnant to the ruling elite among the white minority as it must have been to their friends in Washington and London.)
Israel's intentions on this score were reasonably clear as far back as the early 1960s, but neither the US nor anyone else insisted on inspections of the Dimona reactor following the 1967 war. The question simply never arose. It wasn't a matter Western governments wished to discuss - or even ponder (and that hypocrisy remains intact).
It therefore caused quite a sensation when in October 1986 Britain's The Sunday Times ran an illustrated report about what was going on inside Dimona. The newspaper quoted an insider as saying that Israel's arsenal consisted of at least 200 bombs, that its capabilities were offensive rather than deterrent, and that it may even have developed thermonuclear weapons.
By the time the story was published, the man who had provided the details was already in Israeli custody. Crossman - better known by his Jewish name, Mordechai Vanunu - had made a serious mistake.
He had first taken his story - and pictures - to the Daily Mirror, whose proprietor, Robert Maxwell, promptly passed them on to the Israeli embassy. If Mossad wasn't already aware of what Vanunu - a former junior technician at Dimona, who had previously attracted official interest in Israel as a pro-Arab peace activist - had up his sleeve, that must have been the cue for the secret service to swing into action.
Kidnapping him from London could have caused a few crinkles in Israeli relations with Margaret Thatcher's government, so Vanunu was lured to Rome. A young woman purporting to be an American tourist showed a great deal of interest in him, and invited him to accompany her to Italy.
Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist assigned to cover the artless whistleblower, warned him that "Cindy" might be a Mossad plant, but Vanunu thought he knew better.
The story of how he was captured in Rome is yet to be told, but we do know he was smuggled to Israel on a ship, tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years in prison for betraying state secrets. Twelve of those years were spent in solitary confinement.
Even beyond that, he wasn't permitted to communicate with other prisoners, and meetings were only allowed with "first degree" family - which has included a pair of Catholic peace activists from the US who adopted Vanunu as their son in the hope of gaining him American citizenship.
Nick and Mary Eoloff, along with Hounam and scores of other supporters from across the world will be waiting to greet Vanunu outside Shikma prison today. Whether they will be able to do so is a different matter. Despite having completed his sentence, Vanunu's release is not unconditional.
He won't be allowed to communicate with foreigners (possibly including his adoptive parents) let alone leave the country. He can't talk to anyone about Dimona or the circumstances of his kidnapping.
He can't surf the internet or possess a mobile phone. He can't go near any foreign embassy, nor make an appearance in the vicinity of an airport or sea port. He can live anywhere in Israel, but must inform the authorities before he leaves a city or town.
Small wonder, then, that Vanunu is reported to have said to the Shin Bet officials who last week brought him tidings of these restrictions: "I am against Israel. I am against your state."
Vanunu is said to take pride in the fact that he remains unbroken and unbowed, and intends to legally challenge the planned curbs on his freedom - which have caused considerable consternation in liberal Israeli circles. He can, of course, be re-arrested at any point, even though he has no more secrets to reveal. All he wants is to resettle outside Israel, preferably in the US, and to rebuild his life, while reserving the right to campaign against nuclear weapons.
Although Vanunu's ordeal - which was instigated back in 1986 by none other than the supposed "dove" of Israeli politics, Shimon Peres - pales in comparison with what the Palestinians have endured for far more than 18 years, it nonetheless illuminates yet another dark aspect of the state often touted as the only democracy in the Middle East.
Vanunu has been nominated more than once for the Nobel Peace Prize, but it was Peres, the father of Israel's nuclear programme, who won it (alongside Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat). And perhaps Sharon will now qualify for one, after being described as a courageous visionary for his plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip while retaining a large part of the West Bank.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has compared Sharon's designs with the creation of semi-autonomous black "homelands" in South Africa under apartheid, but George W. Bush has approved of it in writing, signing off on provisions whereby Israel will not only retain the right to barge into Gaza whenever it chooses to, but will also control all exit points.
For many years now the Gaza Strip has effectively been a concentration camp, with poverty and despair fuelling the sort of rage that facilitates the recruitment of suicide bombers. That concentration camp may be handed over to its inmates next year. But there'll be no changing of the guard.
It would take an inordinate degree of myopia and extraordinary bias to interpret this as a step towards a peaceful settlement or a Palestinian state. But the opposition Sharon has to cope with is mainly from extremists who are opposed to giving up even the handful of Gaza and West Bank settlements that he proposes to abandon - at least in name - while substantially extending Israel's 1967 boundaries.
To win backing from the fanatics, the Israeli prime minister desperately needed Bush's stamp of approval, and he won it through the good offices of Condoleezza Rice and Elliot Abrams.
Sharon is more than a war criminal: he is also an astute politician, and he realized that no US presidential candidate would snub him outright in an election year. He had cause to rejoice when the White House blessed him with more than he had bargained for.
A day or so later, Bush was trying to help Tony Blair maintain the pathetic fiction that the so-called roadmap to peace in the Middle East has survived Sharon's land grab. And when Israel celebrated its triumph in Washington with a terrorist strike against new Hamas leader Sheikh Abdel Aziz al Rantissi, the US conspicuously did not join in the international chorus of condemnation.
Israel offers living proof of the theory that oftimes the oppressed take on the characteristics of their tormentors: the Jewish state's Nazi traits are hard to miss. The same could be said of Hamas; and any future Palestinian state must beware of incorporating a Zionist streak.
But that's hardly an immediate concern. The Sharon-Bush axis has diminished to the point of negligibility any likelihood of a viable state in the foreseeable future. Vanunu will walk out today into a fascist state sustained and encouraged by a superpower seeking to act out an imperialist fantasy. He'll find that some things have changed since 1986. Mostly for the worse.
e-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net.
An anthology of modern writings
Maqsood Elahi Shaikh, a London-based writer, was in Karachi last week. He has compiled and published an anthology of literary writings - poetry, prose and short stories - titled Makhzan III, the earlier two numbers having been published previously.
Mr Shaikh was a guest at the Karachi Press Club when he explained many things about himself and his publication, "an effort to build bridges in the vast Urdu world."
He was born and brought up in Punjab, came to Karachi in the late 1950s, worked as a banker and then went to England in 1960. Fascinated by Urdu fiction, he wrote stories which were published in Pakistan and brought out an Urdu weekly, Ravi, from Bradford, where he had settled. Ravi, now defunct, was a popular literary and cultural organ of the Urdu-speaking people in England.
Asked by Prof Saba Ansari as to why the paper closed down, Mr Shaikh had a long story to narrate. Petty jealousies among writers and their indifference as well as economic factors came in the way.
When loan began to pile up, which Mr Shaikh realised he could not pay back, he was advised by his lawyers to declare himself bankrupt. He thought it was most humiliating, and decided to return all the outstanding sums in small instalments, which he did over the years. He is now living on pension after retirement from service.
Makhzan is an entirely different anthology from similar other publications. It carries the writings of Urdu writers living overseas. Mr Shaikh said he sends a selection to critics of his choice in Pakistan and India, maintaining complete secrecy.
The material marked out by the critics and is then published in the Makhzan. Mr Shaikh appears to be keen to remind subcontinental writers that their counterparts living overseas are making their own contribution to literature.
Himayat Ali Shair, Shamshad Ahmad, A. Khayyam and Haider Malik were present in the audience at the Press Club. 'Hamd' and 'Naat' by Khwaja Mohammad Arif and their critical evaluation by Prof Nisar Ahmad Farooqi (India), Mohammad Ahmad Sabzwari says nothing unusual about them, except that a poem written for children, 'Aashi nay ek bakri paali,' placed along with a ghazal 'Nazr-i-Ghalib' looks ridiculous.
A short-story by Qaiser Tamkeen illustrates the socio-political atmosphere of the Muslims in the West. Noted critic Waris Alvi's comments on the story make it even meaningful and readable too. Jatender Bilo's stories based on the sexual mores of a group of middle- class persons fully reflect the permissive West.
A day before, Mr Shaikh was the guest of the Bazm-i-Adab-o-Saqafat. Ms Huma Bokhari welcomed the guest and Prof Afaq Siddiqui, presiding over an informal meeting, admired Mr Shaikh for his services for the promotion of literature in foreign lands.
Among those who spoke were Prof Sahar Ansari, Ahmad Hamesh, Jamal Naqvi, head of the Urdu-Sindhi Foundation and Afzaal Siddiqui of the Bazm-i-Nashoor. Poets were also there to pay their compliments in verse.
* * * * *
It was more than a century ago when Maulana Hali and Maulvi Muhammad Hussain Azad had laid the foundation of thematic poetry. They composed poems on social and environmental themes, that led to a strong literary movement and was to prove a harbinger of progressive poetry in the years to follow.
But the tradition has been only fitfully observed since then. An advertising agency now plans to hold a mushaira next week to serve a national cause. 'Kum bachchay, khushhal gharana' is the theme.
Birth control and family planning have always been favourite topics for some poets, but not of a serious type. To my knowledge, only humour writers have found the subject attractive. It was perhaps Shaukat Thanvi who wrote the following line:
Ae merey noor-i-nazer, lakht-i-jigar paida na ho
Zamir Jafri was more meaningful when he said:
Shauq say noor-i-nazar, lakht-i-jigar paida karo
Zaalimon thori si gandum bhi magar paida karo.
* * * * *
'Hum hain naqeeb-i-fikre nau' (we are the clarion-call of the future) - this long title and tall claim belongs to the junior section of the literary committee at the Arts Council, Karachi. Perhaps it was coined to release the pressure the Council has been facing due to growing number of so-called creative writers, specially poets.
The first meeting of the new body was held on Monday. Presided over by Arif Shafeeq, the poet and literary journalist, and conducted by a young Shaukat Ali Unqa, it was more of a mushaira than a literary sitting. The compere was another young poet, Abid Yaasim. Love was the common theme of the ghazals recited. But there were some allusions to reality also:
Aik lambi musafrat ke liyey
Ghar pey taley laga diyay mein nay
Ek nae rastey ki khahish mein
Saray rastay ganwa deyay mein nay
(Shaukat Ali Shaukat)
Some not-so-young and some positively elderly poets were also invited to participate. Perhaps this new forum, whose meetings will be held on every Monday, shall also cater to the needs of superannuated mediocres who were denied access to major literary forums.
Naqqash Kazmi, who recited his poem and a ghazal for the benefit of young learners, advised them to study classical and modern poetry. He also told them to show their writings to any experienced elderly poet before presenting them in public.
As the mini-mushaira - that is what one may call it - came to an end, the name of a story writer was called to present his story. It was perhaps too much to test the patience of the listeners. Naturally, many left.