LAST Friday was pretty special for friends whose lives have mostly been spent traversing the space between Regal Chowk and Charing Cross in Lahore — albeit carrying crosses which, they ultimately found, did not belong to them.

There had been some kind of a revolution in Egypt, our brother not simply on the basis of the Muslim faith but also related to us by circumstance. That called for a celebration, as did the workers’ victory against a PIA managing director.

The friends had been, kind of, working for the two objectives. They had thrown their strength behind the drive to shoot down the PIA management’s plans to find a Turkish solution to the airline’s growing woes. And one of the usual demo messages in the previous few days had invited the conscientious to a picket outside the United States consulate offices in the city in solidarity with the Egyptians.

With proven dictators Hosni Mubarak and Aijaz Haroon sent packing, the protesters in our nook felt they had every reason to let out a cry of triumph. It had been a while since they had cleared their throats and the spring air they inhaled in the bargain should have brought some clarity to their hearts. But then there was enough enthusiasm in the atmosphere to make them forget the vow they had — or should have — made to themselves the last time they were out on the streets: to first check whether the crosses they were carrying were their own or someone else’s.

Last Friday brought back to memory a Punjabi film song that celebrates the innocence of souls that a hard-to-please culture guru once described as ‘mercenaries of good causes’. “Mein juma juma janj naal” is by far a kinder, mellower and, in the case of someone confined to writing in a minority language, desirably ambivalent equivalent of the Urdu saying that pulls up the over-eager Abdullah for behaving crazily at another’s wedding.

Lahore has its share of these decidedly progressive mercenaries happy to tag themselves to a procession — metaphorically, the wedding party the protagonist of the Punjabi song would attach himself to every Friday. They are asking for change, and it seems any kind will do. Occasionally they are out all by themselves while, from time to time, they are drawn to lending a hand and a few slogans to a front made up of bigger, more influential, groups that have come to espouse a certain objective at a certain moment in history.

Yet, history tells us that the brand in question here stands apart and is pushed back to the margins once the moment has passed and the crowd dispersed — like the crowd that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had gathered around him, or the one that had, even if briefly, put its faith in Benazir Bhutto or even Asif Ali Zaradri or the one that had come to surround the small coterie of lawyers who formed the nucleus around which the free-judiciary campaign was built.

Moments of promise and ecstasy pass too fast while bad memories are difficult to shrug off. Thus, you still run into those who carry to this day the scars from the betrayal by the two PPP leaders. What they have no regrets about are the slogans they chanted against the fundamentalist-usurper Gen Ziaul Haq and indeed some of them, for a period of time at least, found merit in siding with the liberal-usurper, Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Many among them who did return to their old, democratic, agenda took time coming back and a few can be seen every now and then wandering off to a track that leads to the doorstep of — guess who — the benevolent dictator. Alternatively, it leads to a point where we have no choice but to be a subject of arbitration by the solitary global power.

During the free-judiciary movement, these friends had marched under the banner of a smaller political party espousing progressive ideals or simply identified by the seemingly all-encompassing term of civil society members. They were warned against losing their identity for, at an advanced stage, the free-judiciary movement did appear to some to be an onslaught spearheaded by the Pakistani right.

Many of them took offence when cautioned that, even when they were fully within their rights to loudly demand a free judiciary, they needed to keep their distance from their ideological opposites who threatened to dominate the campaign. They failed to do so and the results were there for all to see.

Among the political forces, the PML-N hogged most of the applause for the restoration of the judges and Jamaat-i-Islami also got some of the credit. The smaller ‘progressive’ bunches of people got nothing bar the feeling of a selfless contributor who is happy to have played an anonymous role in a popular cause. To have that feeling is good. To have nothing to show to the people but this feeling is not good politics.

Those who decided to picket at the US consulate in support of the Egyptian brethren of faith and fate might be soon forced to repeat this act — and the sooner they acknowledge the fresh news coming out of Cairo, the better. There is already talk of Mubarak’s departure creating greater space in which a Barack and a few barracks can operate. Some unfortunate and but perfectly relevant analyses report a mere regime change in Egypt for the moment while we, the permanent inhabitants of the space between Regal Chowk and Charing Cross, joyously announce the onset of a new order via Yemen. There are parallels to be found in our state and theirs, and no reader of popular sentiment would rule out for Pakistan what has happened in the Middle East. In the end, what matters is who pulls the strings and who the revolutionaries are.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.