Last Wednesday, I went to see Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah. But since he had back-to-back meetings, I was left with no option to wait. Tired of waiting, I started thinking of ways to kill time. I noticed a group of the people crammed into a small office and listening to someone attentively. It was a Sindh government minister, who is known for his dreams. He was explaining one of his dreams to this group of curious guys.
“I had a strange dream and am not being able to figure out its interpretation. In the dream, my portfolio had been changed and I was assigned to head the Ministry of National Heritage and Archives. I greeted a delegation of archaeologists from the Western world, taking them to the deserts of Thar where, they believe, an ancient city lies unexplored and undiscovered. I accompanied the delegation to discover what is beneath the depths of this desert.
“Equipped with ultra-modern devices, the delegation started excavating with a sword-like machine under the sizzling temperature. I was sweating, but they appeared calm and composed in their suits and ties. Within no time, they dug hundreds of feet below the ground. Suddenly, we heard a gushing sound. Thinking it must be oil, I went euphoric and stamped my feet in the sand like a little boy.
“When the initial exuberance somehow subsided, I leaned over this large, deep well to figure out what this gushing sound was all about. Suddenly, a powerful wind flung us inside this dark, frightening well, culminating in a large sea where a giant monster with scary teeth, big eyes, and a protruding, long tongue grabbed us in his strong jaw, moving up and down at the speed of the wind and throwing us into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
“There, to our utter surprise, we discovered a strange sand city beneath the sea bed with mummified bodies, piles of books, a plethora of paintings, fascinating statues, bewitching pieces of art, the relics of temples, the remnants of synagogues and broken, tall minarets. One word baffled all of us: 2050. It was engraved all over the sand. As we pondered over this mysterious number, a frightening sound prompted us to rush towards a certain direction, leading us into a large, open space – as big as the Qaddafi Stadium of Lahore – with a mammoth body of a giant dead animal hanging over a towering wall.
“Our eyes moved in fear, from one direction to another. Suddenly, I spotted a huge TV remote control lying in the middle of the open space. Curious, I pressed its buttons. A giant screen appeared on the mouth of the mammoth animal, narrating the story not of the city but the people and things within it.
“A dazzling light emanating from the eyes of the animal focused on a mummified body and its shrill, harsh voice identified him as Noam Chomsky. It said that the man had authored over 200 books falsely accusing the most powerful nation on earth of invading hundreds of states, using lethal arms and supporting butchers all across the globe. He was contaminating the young minds with the idea of critical thinking. When the Ku Klux Klan grabbed power in 2050, it was decided that the old sage must be banished along with his books, articles and audio and video lectures.
The light then focused on Edward Said. It said that this man had challenged the way Western thinkers stereotyped the East. His books were a deleterious propaganda, so the Ku Klux Klan decided to banish him along with all his books so that he could read them over and over again. Then the body of Rachel Corrie caught our attention. She had never written any book, I said to myself. But she committed a far more heinous crime than simply writing a book, replied the thundering voice. She dared to block an Israeli tank and so she was crushed under it. But to our utter surprise, her spirit refused to die and her legend kept haunting us. Her grave had turned into a shrine. So, it was necessary to purge the US of the memories of this rebellious soul.
“And what was the crime of Christopher Marlow, Shelley, Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn? I asked. Read Dr Faustus again, said the angry voice. The voice also added that Shelley had no place in a country dictated by the ideology of a ruling party – the English Defence League – that believes in English superiority and the rule of the white race. Corbyn and Benn thought all human beings were equal and that sapped the ideological foundations of the empire.
“What are Voltaire and Sartre doing here? I asked. Being punished for raising dissenting voices. It is unacceptable under the National Front government to question authority. Authority is the ultimate truth.
“I thought Western people are far more civilised. But look how they treated their intellectuals and stifled dissenting voices – mummifying their bodies and dumping their books under the sea bed, highly condemnable. As I murmured this, the giant monster appeared again, and took us in its jaw again, moving up and down like a wind and dropping us on a sand city beneath the sea bed in the Indian Ocean. Unlike the sand city of the Atlantic, the place was littered with charred bodies, burnt books, broken tombs of shrines, the traces of the relics of Mohenjodaro, Mehrgarh, Harappa and stupors of Taxila, Gilgit-Baltistan and Swat, the white marbles of the Taj Mahal, the broken bricks of the Babri Mosque and the pulpit of the first Christian Church in Kerala. There was no thundering voice to brief us about this place because all voices had been silenced.
“Horrified at this, I grabbed one of the devices of my guests. Still trembling in fear, I started scanning the ashes all around me. The ultra-modern device enabled me to discover that the anthology of Bulleh Shah, Sultan Bahu, Shah Latif, Sachal Sarmast and Rehman Baba, the books of Dr Mubarak Ali, Sibte Hasan, Dr Shah Mohammad Marri, Ali Abbas Jalalpuri, the fiction of Manto and Ismat and the paintings of Sadequain, had been reduced to ashes. Even Ranjha’s flute had not been spared. Ahmedabad, Allahabad and Hyderabad Deccan stood half-destroyed for carrying Muslim names while Lahore and Kot Radha Kishan also met with similar fate.
“In a bid to console me, one of my colleagues offered me a device that could also detect the identity of charred bodies. Hearing this, I burst into tears.”
Suddenly, an annoying voice yelled at me to wake up. I thanked God that the minister had appeared just in my dream. Rubbing my eyes, I turned on the TV. The breaking news sent a shiver down my spine: a mob had lynched a young man in Mardan.”
The writer is a Karachi-based freelance journalist.
Email: egalitarianism444gmail.com