Perhaps it was good luck or a moment of rare inspiration that Pakistan had been one of the first countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China. When I went to China in 1956, this was frequently mentioned to me, as frequently as Pakistan’s membership in SEATO, so that the two cancelled one another.
SEATO was China-specific and only by geographic distortion could Pakistan be shifted to South-east Asia. But then, for decades, Taiwan sat in the Security Council of the United Nations as a veto-empowered permanent member. Everything was possible in the then best of all possible worlds. I had gone to China in advance of Choudary Mohammad Ali’s visit, and I got there but he didn’t. The visit was postponed and postponed again. This, too, was mentioned to me, my hosts expressing their mock-grief at his indisposition, the official reason for his showing up missing. I suppose it is not possible to de-recognize a country or else our friend and benefactor, the United States, might have persuaded us to do so.
It was the Sino-lndian war in 1962 that brought a fresh impetus to our relations with China. The Americans were able to stomach Nehru’s cockiness and his non-alignment, and answered his call for help. Pakistan was left wondering what the hell was going on. We did not fall into the embrace of China, we were still in SEATO, but we freshened up our fraternal ties and vows of eternal friendship. China was off the watchlist of our intelligence sleuths, and one could go to a reception at the embassy or consulate and not have one’s car number-plate noted in an exercise book. Though I am not absolutely sure, as old habits die hard, the Americans could not have been too pleased. There were some border adjustments, and relations between China and Pakistan were placed on a sound footing.
China had not given much thought to international air links. When I was there in 1956, I had been told that it was a low-priority subject and there were no scheduled air services. It was linked by air to Moscow and there was some kind of an air service between Burma and some Chinese border cities. The field, as it was, was wide open. On the southern route, the gateway was Honk Kong, and it was by train that one went to the People’s Republic. That’s the way I had gone to China. Nur Khan turned his attention to China and if there were doubters in the Pakistan government, there were also supporters, including Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Ayub Khan himself. An air link between Pakistan and China was not just a big idea, it was, in a sense, a political hand grenade. PIA would be flying its Boeing 707 and the Americans involved certain obscure regulations that forbid trading with the enemy. Admittedly, a flexible law for big corporations find a way of circumventing such regulations that are seen as violative of the spirit of free enterprise. But Pakistan could be bullied. There were protracted negotiations. The Boeing 707, after all, was PlA’s property. Since I was not privy to the negotiations, I do not know the details, but in the end some kind of compromise was worked out. I came into the picture only when our advertising agency in New York informed me that we could not mention the People’s Republic of China in our advertising since officially, and in the wisdom of the State Department, it did not exist! We were allowed to mention the cities of Canton and Shanghai that we would be serving. But this is getting ahead of the story.
One evening, as I returned home, having gone to a late show of the cinema, my bleary-eyed cook mumbled to me that Nur Khan had telephoned and wanted me at his residence at 7am, and that I was to carry my typewriter with me. I was not sure that my cook had got it right, and it was an ungodly hour for me to call Nur Khan. It sounded very cloak-and-dagger. I got to Nur Khan’s house. He lived at the Air House in E.l. Lines. He was expecting me. My cook had got it right. It was D-day and we would be announcing our service to China, but we had to have the press release cleared by the foreign office. And we had to go to Mohatta Palace to meet S.K. Dehlavi, the foreign secretary. Nur Khan asked me to start drafting the press release. We needed not to seem triumphant. Yet, it was the biggest story in commercial aviation history. We would make the announcement in muted tones, like a strings quartet rather than the Choral of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the call to the spirit, an ode to joy.
We discussed the press release, some adjectival muscle was removed, and it was decided that the press would be requested to play it down. “But it will be on the front page?” I asked. As a single-column item with no gloating headlines. As Nur Khan and I were leaving, Dehlavi wished us good luck. It sounded almost like a warning, if not that, as a prayer of caution. Hell hath no fury like the US State Department scorned.
Half the battle had been won. But Canton and Shanghai did not have the infrastructure to take a Boeing 707. Runways had to be built, navigation aids provided, terminal buildings improved. The Chinese, on their part, were confident that they were equal to the task. They wanted PIA to just announce the date and they would be ready. We had no doubt that they could do the impossible, but miracles took longer, we reasoned.
PIA had come alive and my own department went into overdrive. The Chinese had informed us that we could take anyone we wanted on the inaugural flight, but no Americans and no one associated with an American publication. I went to New York and Newsweek invited me to meet with them. They would put PIA on the cover if we could arrange for one of their reporters to be on the flight. I told them that my hands were tied. They even suggested that I write the story for them. I said no deal. One famous travel writer, Wayne Parrish, not just the doyen of travel writers but the scourge of airlines, for he wielded a razor-sharp pen, met me and said that he just wanted to touch down in China and take the return flight right back. But I told him that the Chinese would not agree. Our advertising agency was not happy because they had to create advertisements that would not mention China.
“So where the hell is the flight going?” they asked in utter frustration.
“Canton and Shanghai,” I told them.
They rightly pointed out that most Americans would not know where these cities were located. “Goddamn it, we fought a war in Korea and most people don’t know where Korea is,” they said. I agreed, “Most Americans don’t even know that Sacramento is the capital of California,” I pointed out.
Gason de Chalus, our PR consultant in London, told me that his telephone hadn’t stopped ringing and he was inundated with requests. The best newspapers in England were asking to be taken on the flight. I told him to handle it the best he could. “Its time you earned your fee.”
PlA’s marketing people wanted to take their business contacts. Everyone wanted to go to China. There were unholy rows between them and me over how many seats they would get and how many my department. As a rule, on previous inaugural flights, the information ministry recommendations were ignored by us, but this time they wanted to see the list of invitees. Apparently, the journalists had to be cleared by the intelligence bureau. As a rule, we did not invite individual journalists, only the editor or his nominee. We passed the buck to the newspapers.
An industrialist, a tycoon by any definition, telephoned me and wanted to be invited. I told him that he was rich enough to charter a flight. He said it was a matter of status. Rene Burri, the Swiss photographer, one of the world’s best, telephoned me from Zurich and wanted to know if he should start packing his bags. I told him that he could. Rene worked for Magnum, the photo agency of star photographers. He was a celebrity in his own right. The occasion was big enough for a photographer of his calibre. A.J. Kardar was making a documentary film for PIA, and I told him to get his crew ready. Prior to start of the first service, there would be a delivery flight.
I wanted him and Rene Burri to be on it so that they could film the landing of PlA’s history-making Boeing 707 at Shanghai airport and the reception and the ceremonies that had been planned. I, too, would be on the delivery flight. I felt the same excitement that I had felt when I had been taken by my father to the Feroze Shah Kotla ground in New Delhi to see the MCC play against a Viceroy’s X1. I was some seven years old and it was the start of my love affair with the game of cricket. And I have been faithful to that love affair, after my fashion.
