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THEY have desecrated my grave. My three-foot by six-foot plot was located in a family graveyard in Miani Sahib, where my father lies, his father before him, and his father before him.
My aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces are interred there. Among them, a young cousin who died 50 years ago and whose grieving mother kept the space next to him tended until her own death decades later, and a young nephew who died prematurely in his sleep. Both were the only sons of their parents. Both are mourned even today by a majlis of mourning sisters.
The stillness of my family’s graves has been violated this week by the sound of bulldozers knocking down time-honoured boundary walls, by the silence of water taps cut off, by the entombed darkness of disconnected electricity. Which monstrous Frankenstein, you might ask, dares disturb the lifeless, helpless dead?
One man alone might have baulked at committing such a sacrilege. A government-appointed committee, however, can be trusted to have no collective conscience and therefore no individual qualms. On May 3 this year, a notification was issued by the government of the Punjab constituting an 11-member Committee for Miani Sahib Graveyard, Lahore.
‘Did our graves deserve such precipitate, speedy interest by officialdom?’
It comprised six government officials led by the deputy commissioner Lahore, and five non-official members drawn from the public. Among the latter are two advocates, a doctor, the director general Shehr-i-Khamoshan Authority and the last, inexplicably, a representative of the Pakhtun community.
A few days ago, on June 20, an order was passed in the Lahore High Court on a writ petition filed last year by the Miani Sahib Graveyard Committee that certain unattended (bayabad) ahatas (enclosed graveyards) existed in Miani Sahib.
The honourable judge directed the committee to demolish the walls of the said ahatas, and to report compliance within two days. The police was deputed to assist in the smooth taking over of the ahatas. Any person who hindered or obstructed the task was to be booked under the relevant provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
My dead ancestors are hardly in a condition to ‘hinder or obstruct’. If any of their living descendants or I should dare to do so, we will be challaned as terrorists in our own graveyard.
I scatter petals as often as I can on the graves of my father, grandfather and great-grandfather. The next time I go, I expect to hear their remonstrance: ‘Why should only one corner of one graveyard in one city of Pakistan grab the attention of the authorities? Did our graves deserve such precipitate, speedy interest by officialdom?’ I have no answer, none that would allow them to settle back into the rest death promised them.
I cannot answer them why Asif Zardari can, with impunity, declare 349 acres of irrigation land in addition to 7,399 acres of rented land, and his son Bilawal can admit to a share in the holdings of 2,460 kanals of land in Sangjiniani (Islamabad) as well as valuable pockets of agricultural land in Sindh.
How do I explain to them that Shahbaz Sharif owns 172 kanals of land, his son Humza 155 kanals, and Maryam Nawaz 1,506 kanals of irrigation land?
How can I make them understand that Imran Khan can, without fear of disturbance, occupy 300 kanals in Bani Gala, Islamabad, and till 169 acres of agricultural land?
Yet, a nondescript, petty graveyard in Miani Sahib is a legitimate target for would-be encroachers riding shotgun on bulldozers.
Preparing for one’s burial is not an exercise in morbidity. In Pakistan, we take death more seriously than we do life. Births are forgotten within a day. Marriages may be spread over three, even four, days. A death, though, is kept going for at least 40 days, not counting anniversaries.
We imitate everything about the Wahabi Saudis except their funerary rituals. Theirs is nothing if not functional, clinical. Dead today, buried tonight, forgotten tomorrow. No tombstone, no quls, no memorials.
With us, death is a celebration of sorts. Not of the gerontocratic Chinese kind. They rejoice in the boon of longevity. We celebrate the gift of survival.
Our population is nearing the 220 million mark. Questions such as where will they be educated, be housed, where can they obtain medical attention are beggared by successive governments. But as our religion does not permit cremation, how does the state plan the sanitary disposal of 220m bodies? Where does the state propose to bury 220m Pakistanis when they die? For they shall, as surely as death’s night follows living day.
I would have gladly shared my grave with them, except that mine has now been forcibly appropriated. I must find another plot somewhere. My ancestors, however, will remain there — to shoulder the foundations of a Miani Sahib plaza.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2018
