Songs of faith and devotion

KARACHI: Monajat Yulchieva’s voice is something of an acquired taste. Though it is tonally rich and has considerable elasticity, the Uzbek singer’s style of singing is very different to what one normally hears, especially from female pop and semi-classical vocalists form this neck of the woods.

Monajat, an internationally renowned traditional singer, was recently in Karachi to perform at the International Mystic Music Sufi Festival. Perhaps the reason for the peculiarity of her vocal style lies in the fact that she sings traditional maqam music. Up till the early 20th century, before the Soviets swept through Central Asia, maqam was reserved almost entirely for male singers.

The singer, who was born on a cotton-growing collective farm in the famed Ferghana Valley (motherland of the Mughals), claims that she wanted to sing ever since childhood. After completing high school, in 1978 she applied to the Tashkent State Conservatory, where acclaimed Uzbek rubab player Shavkat Mirzaev took her under his wing and nurtured her blossoming musical talents. Mirzaev insisted that for the first two years, she study nothing but the basics of music.

Though Monajat originally wanted to be an opera singer, fate had other things in store for her. As Mirzaev became both her musical and spiritual master, she was guided towards singing Shashmaqam, a genre of music imbued with the Persian verses of medieval Sufi masters common to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. To this day Monajat prefers singing the poetry of 14th, 15th and 16th century Sufis.

Her teacher Shavkat nearly always performs with her, but due to health reasons he was unable to accompany Monajat for her Karachi performance.

Monajat says that during the heyday of the USSR, before most Soviet republics declared independence in 1991, the State kept strict controls on what could and could not be sung. For instance, words like Allah and mai (a Sufi symbol for the mystical wine, which intoxicates the universe) were proscribed, lest they stir up religious sentiments in the officially atheist state or promote drunkenness! These restrictions have largely been lifted today.

Though the singer has a penchant for Sufi verses, she says that Sufism is not very popular with the masses in Uzbekistan. There are two reasons for this, aside from nearly 70 years of official efforts against religion.

First, most Uzbeks have trouble comprehending the Sufi poetry of the medieval masters, as Uzbek is a Turkic language, whereas the poetry Monajat sings is almost entirely in Persian (a language she has gained considerable fluency in). Also, people generally tend to think that she is singing about Ishq-i-Majazi, or metaphorical love between men and women, whereas the message of the verses serves to carry one towards Ishq-i-Haqiqi, or the love of God.

Each man for himself

While much has been said and written about the May 12 carnage in Karachi, it is difficult for any Karachian to easily forget the apathy showed by the law-enforcement agencies on that fateful day. As soon as the news of the blockade of the airport was received the previous night, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that violence would be inevitable even if the chief justice decided not to come. In such circumstances, one would assume that the government would deploy police as well as Rangers and possibly even the army in order to ensure that no lives were lost and despite an impending clash, peace and order in the city was maintained. After all, one of the political parties taking out a rally also occupies the seat of city and provincial governments.

However, the entire nation was glued to television sets and watched one armed battle after another, one death after another. Live pictures of firing on a private television channel’s building too did not prompt the law enforcement agencies to take action. Thus, one had no choice but to conclude that this bloodshed was all by design since such inactivity by the police and Rangers had never been witnessed before in Karachi.

As the ordinary Karachians remain baffled, the Director-General of Rangers, Major-General Javed Zia, in a TV interview proclaimed that he was extremely proud of his men. “You saw that there was loss of lives, but there was no loss of property. We were guarding the airport and nothing happened there. We were guarding the foreign franchises and they remained safe too,” he declared. It was completely shocking and horrifying to hear the DG of Rangers making such a statement. Since he takes orders from the government, he obviously had been mandated to protect only property while he and his bosses were obviously ready to accept the loss of lives.

One cannot help but wonder if this has happened once, there is no reason why it cannot happen again in Karachi or in any other city. There is adequate proof now for Karachians to conclude that the protection of life is no longer considered a duty of the law-enforcement agencies. (It seems that protecting franchise outlets is their main objective.)

Thus one can easily speculate that not too long from now people will take it upon themselves to protect their lives and that of their families, and rightly so. After all this is the country where the chief justice is seeking justice and the army chief, who is also the president, is more concerned for his own security and protection. Why should an ordinary citizen then think that he will be provided security or justice?—Munizeh Zuberi

A walk up four floors

Kidney patients have a difficult life. They need a regular four-hour dialysis to live on. There are a few hospitals in the city that provide this facility and one of them is the Liaquat National Hospital where a friend has been regularly visiting for dialysis for over three months.

The dialysis clinic is located on the fourth floor of the OPD complex and is served by four lifts. There are hundreds of patients admitted to the gastro, nephrology, endoscopy and other wards on the third and fourth floors of the building. Besides, there is the Operation Theatre compound on the first floor, which is always packed with attendants and relatives of patients undergoing minor or major operations.

For the last few months, three lifts have been out of order and now only one of them is operational taking patients, doctors, nurses, wheelchairs, stretchers, all kinds of supplies, and visitors. This lift is often overloaded and a worry for all users is that it may also break down soon. A walk up four floors by a fit person is a daunting task, particularly for an attendant who makes this exercise twice or thrice a day at least. For months, the doctors and administrative staff have been requested to take note of it and get other lifts repaired, but so far nothing has been done. It is a great worry and discomfort for patients and those accompanying them who crowd into the lone lift and hope that it will not break down.

It is a private trust hospital and Karachians hope that the good trustees will take note of it and instruct the administration to attend to the problem before the situation get worse.—H.A.

The hanging beauty

Icould not take my eyes off the mangoes hanging from a tree in the Haroon House compound, glittering in the bright light. I was waiting the other day for the office van to take me home after the midnight shift. The van was late but I was too engrossed in the sight to feel irritated at the wait.

Like any other fruit, mangoes are a great sight in their natural place, hanging from branches and twigs. It is a delight to eat one freshly plucked. You may confirm this from village boys who are constantly shooed away by the gardener. I hope the Haroon House tree, carefully preserved so far, keeps its fruit till it is ripe and falls on its own volition.

A relative living in the Gulshan-i-Iqbal area has a big Chaunsa tree in the courtyard. Its fruit is different from the usual Chaunsa in that it is larger and sweeter. The family enjoys watching the tree at different stages in the season – from blossoming to the ripening of the fruit. When it is ready to be plucked, they call in or SMS their close relatives to come over and take their share home. The tree has become an abiding source of goodwill among the families.—Naseer Ahmad

Email: karachian@dawn.com

Summer welcomed by the koel’s call

KARACHI: Come summer and the call of the koel becomes incessant in the subcontinent. At times, it sounds like a mournful cry, while at others it exudes a feeling of hope and happiness.

It is this power of evoking strong emotions that the koel, along with the common hawk-cuckoo, popularly known as the brainfever bird or papeha, has been amongst the favourite birds of poets of this region.

“These birds have enriched our literature. The call of the papeha directly affects the heart, which is why it’s called brainfever bird. One can find references to the koel in the verses of Tulsi Das, Soor Das, Abdur Rehman Khane Khana and Kabeer Das. Prem Chand has also mentioned these birds in stories with rural settings,” says Obaidullah Baig, a wildlife expert and seasoned producer of documentaries.

Apart from their poetic significance, these birds have some interesting features. Both are members of the cuckoo family -- the cuculidae -- one of the most diverse families of birds in the world. While the koel is found from southern Asia and China into Australia, the papeha is a resident of South Asia and is locally migratory.

The male koel is easily identified by its entirely glossy black plumage, tinged with blue and green, and striking red eyes, while the female can easily camouflage itself with her glossed brown upperparts -- heavily spotted with white -- and a black crown. The common koel is 39 to 46cm in length. The papeha is slenderer than a pigeon, with a longer tail, ashy grey upperparts -- whitish below – and cross-barred with brown. It is called a hawk-cuckoo because of its resemblance to the shikra. Both the koel and papeha are birds of light woodlands and cultivated areas.

Over the years, the papeha has disappeared from Sindh. Explaining the reasons, Jahangir Durrani, an ornithologist working with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), says that the major reason is deforestation, industrialisation and poverty, which has forced people to hunt small birds. The bird is still resident in India as it’s protected there, but here it’s almost extinct.

About the koel, he said their numbers have also reduced, but there wasn’t a major decline, while the population of crows has increased. One of the reasons which have also affected their population is that the city lacks trees where they can roost. The eucalyptus, found in abundance here, besides adversely affecting the water level, is of no use for the birds, he said.

The word koel also means ‘nightingale’ in India because of the Indian koel’s melodious call. According to Durrani, the common koel comes to this part of the world from Africa during this period for breeding and during the monsoon, it’s more heard than seen.

“It’s the male which makes this enchanting call while the female’s singing is not so melodic. In birds, it’s generally the male which is attractive. They sing, dance and advertise themselves in numerous ways to attract the female, which has an instinct to judge a male with better genetic characteristics,” points out Obaidullah Baig.

Both the papeha and koel are brood parasites, that is, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, which take care of the chicks along with their own. The koel prefers crows as hosts, while the papeha’s choice is, generally, babblers.

Why have we come to this?

WHAT does the shootout and carnage in Karachi on May 12, including the firing on a private television channel, have in common with the following incidents which took place in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi and elsewhere during the past two weeks?

The killing of a 17-year-old student by two fellow students outside their school in Rawalpindi; the killing of a woman and her three-year-old daughter and the wounding of her husband by robbers in their house in Rawalpindi; the killing of the Supreme Court’s additional registrar in Islamabad who was a key witness for the defence in the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry; the killing of a 15-year-old girl in Rawalpindi, allegedly by her cousin; a robbery at a house in Chaklala in which cash and jewellry were taken away; the firing at the house in Karachi of the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, who is also one of the CJ’s defence lawyers; the gate-crashing and disruption of a weekend party at an elite club in Lahore by two dozen men reportedly led by the nephew of a federal minister; and the murder of senior PPP leader at Peshawar.

The answer: guns. In the May 12 carnage in Karachi and other incidents, guns were used to kill and/or intimidate people.

Violence thus continues to be a serious problem in Pakistan and guns play a significant role. While events like the May 12 incident in Karachi make us particularly conscious of the role guns still play in politics, beyond such striking events is the more routine, day-to-day violence and killings in robberies, family/personal feuds and suicides which involve guns.

What began at first as a longstanding tradition of honour and respect among a particular ethnic group in NWFP, the possession and use of guns spread to become a ‘national’ culture in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s. A combination of causes and events, including the migration of this ethnic group to other provinces and cities, the Afghan war against the Soviet occupation, squabbles among political and religious parties and interest groups, unstable and ineffective governments unable to establish their writ, growing poverty and the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots in society, plus corruption, all contributed to the spread of the kalashinkov culture.

All attempts at cracking down on this practice and curbing this dangerous culture have so far failed, the most recent effort being the deweaponisation campaign undertaken in the early 2000s. In an address to the nation on January 12, 2002, Gen Pervez Musharraf said: “Our peace-loving people are keen to get rid of the kalashinkov and weapon culture. Everyone is sick of it.”

Under the deweaponisation campaign, displaying guns in public places was forbidden. But despite this campaign and the apparent strict licensing of fire-arm ownership, there seems to be no restriction on the availability of fire-arms nor is there a hold on the use of them.

From the petty robber to crime mafias, from extremist religious groups to political parties, from the common man to the influentials, the use of fire-arms to commit crimes and robberies, to settle personal scores and family feuds or political and religious/sectarian differences, or simply to display one’s personal, family or political strength and power, continues to be a common feature in our society.

The question that we need to address — if we want to curb violence and prevent ever more deaths from guns — is why. Why have apparent restrictions like licensing on gun ownership not worked and why have specific deweaponisation campaigns not delivered? Since guns have become a national culture of sorts in Pakistan, intertwined with other aspects of Pakistani life, their presence therefore is not just some isolated fact that can simply be changed or removed. Easy access to guns is not the only determinant of violence here, other factors being religious, ethnic, political, economic and socio-cultural differences, exacerbated by corruption and the lack of justice delivery.

Unless we can improve on the problems of inequity, injustice and corruption in our society and our people can learn to reason their problems out before it gets to a breaking point, every difference, every quarrel and every feud is likely to end up in violence — with guns involved (or worse still bombs, like the recent massacre in a Peshawar hotel).

A major source of our fire-arm violence is illegal guns, and a major cause of the spread of illegal guns is on the one hand, lax gun control (both in sale/licensing and manufacturing) and on the other, strong gun advocacy, especially by political influentials.

A culture of fear has developed in our society in the past several decades, convincing many people and groups that self defence, and thus gun possession, is the solution to safety.

It is not difficult to see why our society has come to this. The persistent lack of a rule of law has eroded public confidence in the state, i.e., the police and other security agencies, to protect them. On the streets in Karachi on May 12, it was the private individuals and groups who were roaming around the streets armed with guns and firing them, whereas most of our state protectors, the policemen, were carrying only batons!

But everyone arming to protect himself is called an arms race. The more people start owning and carrying guns, the more likely and easier it is for people to use them as a way to settle differences by intimidating, wounding or killing others, guns being the choice weapon of anger because they are so easy to use.

According to a study on comparative statistics on handgun ownership and handgun murders in selective western countries, a country’s handgun ownership rate is a major determinant of its handgun homicide rate.

According to the statistics given in this study, the handgun ownership rate per 100,000 population in the US is 22,696 and its rate of handgun homicides per 100,000 population is 3.56. In contrast in Australia and the UK, the handgun ownership and handgun homicide rates per 100,000 population are 1,596/0.07 and 837/0.012 respectively. (Note: gun laws are more permissive in the US than in Australia or the UK.)

Pro-gun advocates in the US even argued after the massacre of 33 students and teachers at Virginia Tech that if the students and teachers had been armed in defence, the massacre by a single armed student could have been prevented. The street shootouts in Karachi on May 12 only prove how the presence of more guns on both sides only leads to more violence and killing.

How many more people will it take to die from such street shootouts, political feuds, robberies, domestic shootings, etc., before we wake up to the gravity of the gun culture?