August 3, 2003

I left Rio de Janeiro as I had arrived. The air-conditioning at the departure lounge was not working, as it had not been at the arrival lounge. I presented my passport and once again a sinister looking character with hooded eyes and a mocking smile disappeared with it and the flight was being called when he finally re-appeared with it and handed it to me. Did I bear a resemblance to Che Guevera? I should have enjoyed Rio. Instead, it merely refuted Tolstoy; unhappy families resembled one another. There was the Copacabana and the sweep of magnificent of high-rise and expensive apartment buildings and in the embrace of this stunning post-card view were shanty towns that would match any in the world for their squalor. A tourist must leave his social conscience back at home even though conditions at home are not much better.

I decided to stay an extra day in New York. This was no great hardship for I liked New York. Would I want to live in New York? Not if it meant moving out of Karachi as it was my home and home was where one arrived after one had travelled to far-away places. Pat Arton was our PR man. He was of South African origin but adapted to New York, soft in speech and gentle in disposition. He told me that he had laid out some meetings for me. I told him that I would try and fit in the meetings, but I wanted to do three things. I wanted to see the film Bonnie and Clyde, watch professional tennis at Madison Square Gardens and hear Ella Fitzgerald sing at the Rainbow Room in the Rockefeller Plaza. I did all three in a single day.

Bonnie and Clyde starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and though a violent film, managed to make bank hold-ups glamorous and almost heroic acts. The tennis world had divided along professional and amateur lines and Jack Kraemer had set up his own circuit and it was his ‘show’ that was on parade at the Madison Square Gardens. I watched Jack Kraemer and Pancho Segura and the ladies, Billie Jean-King and Francoise Durr. And finally to the Rainbow Room, an unlikely venue, like going to hear Mark Anthony speak at a meeting of chartered accountants.

I had heard Ella sing at the Basin Street, a nightclub in New York, a year earlier. The club was jam-packed and thick with purple smoke and there was a sickly, sweet odour. Quite a few had lit up ‘joints’ and the crowd had been noisy and rowdy. There were quite a few Afro-Americans, pilgrims who had come to lay flowers at the feet of a goddess. Ella had come on stage and the cheering had been so clamorous and wild that it seemed that all hell had been let loose. Ella savoured the welcome and allowed the applause to continue. Then she waved a hand and the crowd fell silent. She was the greatest, she had magic in her voice and she cast a spell on her audience. I would imagine that Lata Mangeshkar had the same effect. I had once gone to Bombay to watch the West Indies play and Lata had arrived at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) pavilion, and suddenly there was a buzz and her presence upstaged the test match.

The Rainbow Room was starchy compared to Basin Street and there was no acrid smell of marijuana. The men smoked cigars and the women wore expensive perfume. There was about the Rainbow Room an overwhelming respectability and it goes to Ella’s genius. She was terrific and though it was “only a paper moon” she made the make-believe seem true. She was a heavy-set woman and when she walked, one imagined, she waddled. She was no pin-up, no cover girl, but one felt that all the world was in love with her and as I walked back to my hotel, the streets seemed quieter, as if they too had been listening and pining.

A.V.M. Akhtar had joined PIA and there was no doubt that Asghar Khan had designated him as heir-apparent, as there was no doubt that Asghar Khan’s innings was drawing to a close. A.V.M. Akhtar was running the airline in matters of day-to-day routine and Asghar Khan seemed to have more time and in the afternoons. He would send for me and we would talk of many things. One thing was clear that when he left PIA, he was not going to walk into the good night. He was a patriot and not even his worst enemies could not have accused him of being anything less. Whether he would translate this patriotism by going into politics was something he had not discussed with me, at the time.

Curtis LeMay had been the chief of staff of the US Air Force, a ‘hawk’ on Vietnam and an advocate of turning its air power loose on North Vietnam without restraint. “Bomb them back to the Stone Age,” he had said. One day, Asghar Khan told me that he had been invited to dinner by Curtis LeMay in New York, and he wanted me to come along. He had known Curtis LeMay from his own air force days. The dinner would be at the Waldorf Astoria and Curtis LeMay was planning to invite a few interesting friends who would enjoy meeting the Air Marshal. It did not seem a social evening with idle chatter as the main dish on the menu.

The drill was that we would first meet at Curtis LeMay’s club and then proceed to the Waldor-Astoria. It was a small dinner and the guests that I can remember were the publisher of The New York Times, Newsweek, Time and a Congressman, a member of the fraternity of America’s brightest and the best. He and I got into a mild argument, confirming one of democracy’s higher virtues that it was possible to disagree without being disagreeable. He gave me his visiting-card and asked me to look him up the next time I was in New York. Asghar Khan had been asked for his views on Vietnam, and he had said that it was a wrong war being fought in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I have a feeling that it was also the wrong answer! What was expected, at worst, was a polite difference of view, not an outright rejection of the scriptures. When the basic premise is challenged, the conclusion drawn is likely to be fallacious. Still, it was a pleasant evening and the steak was excellent and one got an insight into the thinking of the insiders, the substance of the shadows.

Bhutto had thrown down the gauntlet and had latched on to the Tashkent agreement and vowed to expose its dark secrets. He may have been bluffing. In card-game poker, a bluff can be a winning hand if the bluff is not called. Ayub Khan looked a tired man and was said to be not in the best of health. He had fired his strong-man, the Nawab of Kalabagh, and he had no one on his side who could match the crowd-appeal of Bhutto. The preparations to celebrate the “decade of development” were, however, proceeding unhindered though not with the gusto they would have had had Ayub Khan’s own future not been in doubt. Pakistan’s political future had become cloudy. Were these storm clouds that were beginning to gather or would these roll by? Uncertain times are not necessarily exciting times, unless excitement also includes fear. There was no precedent of an orderly transfer of power. Power had been transferred either through palace intrigues, prime ministers had been changed without any reference to the wishes of the people or, as in Ayub Khan’s case, through a military coup.

The horticulturist in PIA’s Nursery had once told me that Pakistan’s soil was so fertile that anything could be grown, even orchids and asparagus. What about democracy? Was the soil rich enough that the sapling of democracy would take root? It was not a question that a horticulturist was expected to answer. Only a soothsayer could tell us. On the evidence of what had gone in the past, the augury was not auspicious. Democracy was not a political system. Democracy needed tolerance, that instinct that does not find a contrary opinion as menacing. It could have been my imagination but we seemed to be getting less tolerant day by day, shutting up the windows and keeping the fresh air out. Either Ayub Khan would ride out the storm or he would be replaced by Voltaire’s caustic pessimism: the more it changes, the more it changes to the same thing.

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