It’s a dog’s life

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There’s a dog in our neighbourhood that nobody wants. Actually it’s a bitch. Her litter is on the way, I suspect. The big patch of green bordering my home and the busy road in front is no man’s land (read the CDA) but the lucky homeowners have been gifted the land and told to develop it as best as their aesthetic sense permits. Gardens are abloom all around my garden (says who Islamabad will run dry?) which stands out for its pedestrian look, only because my landlord cares not a whit for the patch. But the dog does. She has dug a cradle under the tangled bushes and lies there unobserved by passersby on the street.

I worry. What if the puppies — God knows how many — invade my space and arrive uninvited in my garden. Their mother may not live to feed them. She’s doing poorly. When she’s not sleeping, she’s scratching herself all over to get rid of the ticks and fleas that infest her body. The vicious summer heat has parched her. The sun is relentless.

Down the road, I watch a man drag his bike on the molten surface. Seated on the bar is a little boy clutching the bike’s handle. Both are bareheaded. The road is deserted but for the land cruisers and Mercedes (one in particular has PML 1 number plate) fly past. Maybe Chaudhry Shujaat, the Pakistan Muslim League quaid, has seen the man and his son, but he’s too busy distributing the spoils of the state to his partymen promising the perpetuation of the PML for life in power.

Once the tires of the bike cool down, the man climbs atop and peddles out of sight. He’s a scavenger looking to collect anything that will feed this little boy and many more he must have at home.

The dog and the man lead similar lives. Both are pariahs in the land of the pure; both must look for sustenance wherever they can eke one; both are breeding babies and puppies that face starvation and death.

First the dog: Mayor Nasreen Jalil, who like Barbara Bush (President Bush’s mom) never leaves home without her pearls, want South Korea to buy our stray dogs for their kitchen soups. How original can one get? Only a woman can think outside the box and come up with this doggy proposal. But can Madam Jalil make it happen? The MQM, if it wants, can move mountains; what are exporting Karachi’s stray dogs before them? Maybe the dogs of Islamabad will be next. It will provide Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz with a genuine excuse to extend his swollen cabinet of ministers by swearing in one more to head the ministry of dog affairs. This time it will be a legitimate move above public censure.

The morning papers relate a tragic story of an eight-year-old in Mardan, who, bitten by a rabid dog, develops rabies and goes mad. She’s been denied anti-rabies injections because she’s poor and therefore her life doesn’t count.

Men, women and children perish daily, but why waste footage or column space on the hoi polloi is how the mass media thinks and behaves

Her father runs from doctor to quack, from hakim to pir begging for help. None arrives. The girl, foaming at the mouth bites anything in sight. To save the lives of his other brood, the father asks the quack to inject her with poison. The girl’s life strewn with agony on earth ends. In heaven she has peace at last. And no pain either.

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End of story. Not quite. The newspapers report another tragedy of a mother with three toddlers. She too gets bitten by a mad dog and in the absence of medical aid has to be eliminated.

In the distance I hear the dhols of the devotees. All men of course. They are headed for the shrine of Bari Imam. Most are bareheaded. Some are barefooted. It’s an inferno out there but their mission is purpose driven. Neither heat, nor fatigue can stop these dirt poor people from walking on the hottest day in Islamabad to celebrate their saint’s Urs. They come from all corners of the country.

With temperatures soaring, stories of husbands, brothers and fathers killing their womenfolk make daily news. A brother, a petrol pump attendant in Karachi, shoots his two sisters in their sleep because his wife doesn’t want the spinsters to work in a nearby beauty parlour; a man guns down his wife and his cousin in Sindh on suspicion of the two having illicit relations when the two are innocent; a man douses his wife with petrol and burns her alive when she objects to him bringing home another woman for sex.

Marriage to the Holy Quran comes up for debate in the Sindh Assembly. Fifteen women MPAs set aside their politics to move a bill recommending a life term for men who marry their women to the Holy Book. The waderas, syeds and pirs sitting in the assembly block the bill because they are among the patrons and protectors of the perpetrators of such crimes. While it’s okay for these worthies to take two or three or even four wives, it’s not okay for their female relatives to marry a man. However, it’s ok for them to be married to the Holy Quran.

Boys swim in water that has toxic waste and deadly chemicals. Some die, others are badly burnt. A girl riding a motorbike driven by her father in Lahore is beheaded out of the blue when a kite string suddenly cuts her throat.

If only our judges’ hearts were in the right place. If only murderers were made an example and hanged in the public square, if only punishment was swiftly meted out to people committing crimes against humanity ... Pakistan could one day be counted among the civilized states of the world, states that provide education, medical care, clean drinking water, justice and respect to all its citizens transcending class, gender and political interests.

Maybe it’s too late to catch up and be counted among the civilized societies. We in Pakistan are being pulled in different directions. While the khakis and their chamchas control the country’s real estate and stock exchange, becoming millionaires overnight, the ignoramus fired by preachings of the religious parties multiply not in thousands but by millions, swearing to take Pakistan back to medieval times. Look no further — note the number of bearded faithful at the burial of a Pakistani student, Amir Cheema, who died in police custody in Germany. Our Foreign Office says he committed suicide, but the tens of thousands who turned the day into a national mourning call him a martyr. TV channels and newspapers, not this one, made overkill by giving blow-by-blow coverage to the tragic event. Slogans against Musharraf and the West rent the air.

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Men, women and children perish daily, but why waste footage or column space on the hoi polloi is how the mass media — fast turning corporate — thinks and behaves. How sad. The citizens’ journalism alas, never spawned in Pakistan.

Summer brings out the worst in the abject poverty which is all around us, slowly but surely strangling the country. The president and the PM, meanwhile, sit in air-conditioned salons, with hair freshly blow-dried and suits cut from the house of Armani, spinning yarns of prosperity and richness abounding their state.

Coco, the friendly furry dog with huge eyes and a gigantic face springs to mind. He lives in America. The lucky dog sits in an air-conditioned doghouse and has his hair and nails done on a regular basis. I spent the day with Coco and his wonderful owners last summer. Their mansion in New Jersey is catered for his needs. But, more on ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ another day ...