NOT many people seem to remember that not very long ago Peshawar was at the centre of crossfire in a decisive war between the left and right. The left was then headed by the now deceased Soviet Union and the right, as always, was marshaled by America. It ended into the disintegration of the Soviet Union on the least expected terrain of Afghanistan that the former had blundered into invading thus leading to the virtual disappearance of the left.

The eighties of the last century saw Peshawar echoing loudly with praises for and against the Saur Revolution, the taking over of the reins of government by the left-leaning pro Soviet Union Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). With its upscale neighbourhoods literally taken over by the resourceful and CIA funded Afghans and its surroundings bustling with the refugees, news headlined from Peshawar were making waves around the world.

The ideological divide in Peshawar was well-pronounced and in evidence on the streets, and in the bazaars, cafés and drawing rooms. Slogans lauding and denouncing the April 1984 Saur Revolution scribbled on the walls around the city made interesting readings from the twisted windows of the broken down buses.

One could quite at will bump into a leftist on every next corner. Elderly people attired in the traditional hand woven rough cotton dress, late red shirt leader Bacha Khan’s signature clothing, could be seen openly professing their love for the left. Young men and women wearing the red eye-catching Democratic Students Federation (DSF) badges were a common sight in the colleges, universities and in public transport. DSF was not just monotonous rhetoric as the student group made considerable gains whenever elections for the student unions were held in colleges and universities.

The leftists’ central retreats in Peshawar were the offices of the English language newspapers; one a bureau office of the now out of circulation ‘The Muslim’, and then of course the head office of ‘The Frontier Post’. Most of those espousing leftist views were practicing Muslims who did not mince words to display their regard for secularism like Haji Adeel of the Awami National Party (ANP) could be heard doing so these days. It was not uncommon to taunt every leftist as an atheist but the share freedom of the times when one could brandish one’s views with aplomb now says a lot in hindsight.

Mr Adeel, his surname notwithstanding, looks to be one of the few most audacious secularists in a society that appears to have insulated itself from all discourses even remotely connected with reason and objectivity. Haji Sahib, as he is popularly called, made headlines when he questioned why a non-Muslim could not be elected as the president of the country. Before the rightists could lynch him, his own party founded on the lofty principles of secularism by the Khans of Charsadda took the lead to announce that the party had nothing to with Adeel’s personal views.

The ANP still claims to be a secular party despite its overtly Hotiesque culture that has struck at the roots of the party as was proved in the recently held elections where despite being a victim of the militancy it could not tilt the popular perception in its favour. During its five-year long rule, ANP’s mainstream leadership acted like a frightened and shriveled sparrow caught in a rainstorm in the face of onslaught by the rightists. ANP’s detractors led a successful campaign founded on the bizarre theory that ANP alone was responsible for the state of restlessness in the province.

What stirs a feeling of nostalgia about the eighties is the fact that although the country was for most of that decade under the priggish rule of a dictator, dissenting views flourished enabling the leftists to make their mark. Very little of that remains now, not because of the fact that we are presently witnessing the most brutal manifestation of the right but because most of the leftists of that era turned out to be soulless. They started vanishing into thin air with the gradual disintegration of the Soviet Union. ‘If you observe them now busy in making capital gains, most of them were in fact cupboard materialists,’ recalls an Associate Professor of political science Tariq Khattak of Nowshera.

Some of the party-goers who frolicked at the expense of PDPA in Kabul scampered back to their destined zones of comforts in Pakistan when they found the tide turning away. As one observes them still partying in their new garbs, they seem to have totally forgotten their mentor whom they had earlier left at the mercy of the zealots to be killed in a most shameful manner.

One got a rare glimpse of the undiluted era of the candid discourse of yore recently at a reading session in Peshawar where poetess and writer Fahmida Riaz read out from her works to an attentive audience. ‘And then a most handsome, tall German prince with blond curly locks appeared on the scene,’ Fahmida paused in the middle of a passage to explain her allusion to Karl Marx in one of her most riveting stories. ‘I am a Marxist still,’ she reiterated during brief pauses while reading out in her calm passionate style from her poetry and prose spanning over six decades of Pakistan’s turbulent history in which she spared neither the left nor the right.

A depressing sign of the present times is that hardly anybody knows people like Fahmida or Lal Khan who contributes a weekly column to a Lahore-based English language newspaper. Comrade Lal Khan is the editor of the Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. Nadeem F. Paracha who also writes for an English language newspaper is yet another survivor who could be observed wearing his identity on his chest as one saw him wearing a red tea shirt with the hammer and sickle emblem printed on it.

Comrade Abdul Lateef of Abbottabad is perhaps the most obscure but yet the most active and sincere leftist alive. Selling home-made ice cream in a shop in the main bazaar, Lateef is perhaps the only person for miles and miles around this godforsaken province who is selling literature published by the miniscule leftist press. A Kashmiri by origin, Lateef started his career from working in the post office located on the Mall in Murree before shifting to his present station in Abbottabad where he initially set up his ice cream shop in a six by three foot shop.

In his present bigger shop where he has expanded his menu, Lateef has since become a bourgeoisie of sorts without forsaking his original thoughts. A cheerful man by all accounts, Lateef’s physiognomy tells his inner feelings as he bemoans the conditions of the labouring class in his unassuming style. Living and selling red magazines and books in a radicalized conservative city like Abbottabad says a lot about Lateef’s dogged struggle. Relishing different flavours of ice cream in his shop, one can never stop thinking if this poor socialist’s voice will ever contribute to narrowing the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots?