Ad Meliora

Towards Better Things

I have never really had to cope with a loss that I didn’t know was mine before. The other kind of loss I tend to expect, anticipate even.

A 24-year-old boy died recently. Ironically, he didn’t die in a bomb blast, which is the norm these days but while waiting for a ball to approach his cricket bat at the crease outside the Daily Times office. They say, his heart gave out. His heart gave out at 24. I suppose in some measure I envy Saad Anwar. He knows now, he has answers. And I sit and sulk in his absence with even more questions.

I wish I could say that he was my friend and that life is empty without him but he wasn’t and it isn’t. I found out he was gone, purely by accident. My friend Mighty called me randomly and even more randomly slipped out with “Oh didn’t you know, Saadi died.”

I didn’t know because Saadi wasn’t my friend, he was an 'acquaintance'. I have never really understood the meaning of the term in a modern context before. One of my cyber-acquaintances tends to employ the expression with reference to me in our occasional interactions and the usage always irked me, because I felt this person placed far too much value on labelling relationships. Especially, if casually calling someone a ‘friend’ was so obviously taxing that they needed to both physically and verbally be kept at a safe distance at all times. I know better now.

I never really let Saadi become a friend. I’m not particularly apt at making or keeping friends but I knew him. I had smiled with him, exchanged the one-off joke, and a few months ago I even exchanged Christmas pudding (that I had helped my mother bake) with Saadi, who insisted on hoarding the last three slices. About seven months ago, he asked me why I wasn’t taking an editorial position at DT for the opinion pages.

I replied haughtily “What opinion, Saadi, this paper is a rag now. It’s a gover-nerial (we snickered at that) mouth piece, nahin?”

He called me a ‘Befqoof Aurat,’ adding that I needed to think ‘shark-like and screw the principle of it for the money’. The fact that he said it with his rather typical, trademark grin, eye-brows skewed akimbo ‘grinch’ style’ only made me laugh.

He joined in and said, ‘theek he, theek he, raho malang. Dekhte hein kitni der dora chalta he faqeergi ka’.

I responded with “challenge?”

And he gave me a thumbs up sign.

That was my last encounter with Saadi and I don’t think it is one I’m likely to forget any time soon.

At this juncture, I actually wish I could believe in God or religion.It might be comforting to have some kind of false sense of peace or hope regarding this perennially optimistic kid who got dealt a sour hand, or sweet one, depending on how one looks at it. I am sad for his mother who lost her son too soon; for his and my friend Mighty, who I know will not get over this but as is typical, I am saddest for myself.

I am sad that it took Saadi dying for me to recognise that he may well have been one of the 18 people I have encountered in my life that I actually would have liked to know better. The count has now dropped to 17. I am also bitterly amused by the fact that I appear to presently have over 200 ‘friends’ on facebook, and I have no idea what that means anymore.

They don’t have an ‘acquaintance’ tab on facebook.

But I can count the friends I have in life. There are two, my mother and my friend Asma. There used to be three others, cousins in another life where we were four corners of a demented, dilapidated but integral square. A composite element that faced the outside together, each corner with its own baggage and issues but with the others’ back. An element called 'Maria+Ahsan+Salman+Fatima' but that has passed too. Then there is the outer circle I occasionally hang out with, whose company I enjoy enough to take in but never to indulge myself enough to genuinely depend on or worse let depend on me. Then there are people I know of and who know of me. Last of all, there is family, which is and always has been a cesspool swamp of maybe’s, mayhaps’ and mishaps.

There are a few who I would have liked to know, but never had the courage to come out and say, in my third grade avatar of a Forever Friends card “will you please, please be my friend?”. To have and to hold, till mutual idiocy do us part!

I suppose much of it comes with being a displaced person. Having the kind of personality that doesn’t take brackets all too well, makes it nearly impossible to find like-hearted-spirits. Then again, it also makes that finding and the process behind it, more poignant…or so I must constantly assure myself. But I am alone now and I am beginning to feel that I have let it go on for too long to want or be able to alter the predicament. It is a rather cruel twist of rapscallion fate, to finally want to find another half- not a romantic one- just….one, but no longer have the ability to do so.

The thing about relationships, especially friendships, which are more permanent than romances I suppose (not that I would know the difference) is that they pose emotional epigrams. I am completely incapacitated in affecting a suitably likable persona to bridge this seemingly insurmountable gap. I have begun to fear that I have taken to forming only ‘acquaintances’, that friends pose too much of a disappointment because I always let them down or bore them or don’t give them enough attention or give them too much attention. But mostly I am beginning to fear that my narcissism is approaching its peak - that no one is allowed to come close enough because no one deserves to.

They say, it is loneliest at the top.

They neglect to mention that it is the same at the bottom.

Tea trauma

It is an odd sense of displacement, being a journalist and not being addicted to tea.

Let alone not liking tea. But I now worry that my inherent debilitation in avoiding 'chai' and having replaced it with that 'other' foreign cultural export 'coke' may pose overarching consequences for my personal life (sic).

You see, I can cook. Well even, when I want to. I can clean and mend things. But I am inherently incapable of making a decent cup of tea. The reason being that since I don’t drink tea and don't like it, I have no idea what a decent cup of it tastes like. I don't know what makes tea too strong, weak or milky or simultaneously what makes it ‘karrara’ ‘hitchi’ or ‘pisti’. This, according to my grandmother, means that I will probably never get married.

Then again, I'm sure there are other reasons for that failing.

Oh-my-GOD

“Do you believe in God Andre? No, neither do I, but that’s a favourite question of mine. An upside down question, you know. 

What do you mean? 

Well, if I asked people whether they believe in life, they’d never know what I meant. It’s a bad question… it can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God and if they say they do – then I know that they don’t believe in life.

Why?

Because, you see, God- whatever one chooses to call God, is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible: here now, for your very own.” – Ayn Rand

I find it disconcerting how often complete strangers or mild acquaintances will pester you about your views on ‘god’ once they discover you to be a non-believer. Ironically, the trend seems to be the reverse on challenging believers regarding their feelings about their God (then again most believers hardly require an invite to broach the subject.) Perhaps, that is why the brazen-ness of believers irks me so.

I find myself repeatedly being asked to ‘define’ my disbelief and I grow tired of the exercise of elaborating upon how I am not an atheist ‘as per I don’t believe anything’ but I am an a-theist ‘as per I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god or in religion’. This is usually met with a raised brow and ‘surely, agnostic then?’ to which I must sigh and say ‘no, ignostic if anything’. It is generally around this precarious juncture that my opponent smiles a derogatory ‘oh so you’re not clear and are deflecting’ smile and I am forced to dismiss the subject on grounds that raising the point ‘I don’t think one can be clear on anything pertaining to the numinous, I’m very clear about that’ doesn’t usually bode well in dogmatic duels.

The fact that people so easily accept absurdities that drive their lives and thought has always made me uncomfortable. We, as a species, generally tend to question and nitpick everything in our lives to the nth degree and yet I often find myself surrounded by people who can spend hours deliberating the merits or demerits of an outfit or video game but come to the subject of religion (not even belief, just the pure semantics) and suddenly everything flies, including flying ponies in seventh heavens! I do not question the efficiency of this model, however. The idea, that there is this cosmic space - where all this ‘stuff’ that you don’t know or understand or can conceive of - rests and congeals into one great, big, omnipotent GOD is awfully convenient. It allows a person to move on with their hour, their day, their year, their life. It affords us the chance to look at the sky and not wonder about how many galaxies there are; whether the craters on the moon have changed shape or whether we will eventually be eclipsed by the theoretical lip of Hawking’s black hole to witness ourselves in all tenses of time. It allows us to merely muse ‘oh the sky is so pretty today (insert a synonymous Inshallah, Mashallah, Alhamdullilah)’ and sigh. Religion takes this God fellow a step further, it markets Him and it has done so from time immemorial by stripping his subjects of their freedom to think.

The truth is, I find GOD fascinating (who wouldn’t find ‘all that is unexplained’ fascinating) and I always figured His space to be the pinnacle for inspiring quests and glorious metaphysical journeys into and outside of the soul. I thought the answers were so many and so diverse that one could spend ten lifetimes in search and not be any closer to the one-colossal answer (one I don’t believe exists) but have acquired so many ‘perspectives’ along the way that those lifetimes would have had ‘meaning’. That I would have stood in line with Descartes’ glorious maxim Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) and have proven my own existence rather than having over-reached far beyond my capacity attempting to prove that ‘existence’ exists.

I was always the girl who did what she was told. I never really spoke up against anyone, I listened when I could and I certainly manoeuvred my entire life to suit those around me and not cause inconvenience. I figured that none of it really mattered, since I had my mind – this near infinite blank space to fill and ferment as I saw fit. Then I learned about Allah, who said that ‘obedience’ extended to all of me. That my mind too needed to conform; that ‘thinking’ was all well and good as long as it was the kind of thinking that He approved of. I was thirteen when we first threw down the gauntlet and I demanded to keep myself. So, naturally I did what any Muslim girl questioning the basis for her existence would do. I tried to be the best Muslim I could be.

Theistic logic dictated that if I was Muslim enough, my doubts would fade away and I would be rewarded with blissful ignorance and blind faith once more. I enrolled in Al-Huda, with a friend of my aunt who (in her genuine good will and faith) worked to bring me deeper into the fold. I read the Quran daily; I memorised surah’s; I prayed five times a day; fasted the entire month of Ramazan and attended taravis at Faisal Mosque in the evenings; I even did the tahajjud (for two months) but it did not detract from the questions or the doubts that had led to my taking up being a zealot with such zeal. I suppose the fact that I was vociferously imbibing Dostoevsky and Rand at the time did not help matters much. As my final test and coming of Islamic Age gift to myself, I wore the hijab for approximately a year and a half. The latter was a public proclamation of my commitment to seeking God’s clemency. I don’t really know exactly what point it was when I discovered I had been pretending far too hard but I feel it was when my aunt’s friend gifted me with a volume of the Sahih al-Bukhari bearing the note ‘To Baby Maulana, here’s to ensure you spread the ‘light’’. The realisation that I was apparently required to ‘spread’ all this nonsense that I myself was affecting for an audience was the deal breaker.

Since then, I have had many conversations with friends, acquaintances and complete strangers about this infernal edict of the Nicene creed (to believe in one God) and it is hard to separate the basis of our disagreement. It isn’t just that we disagree on God per se…the real offence seems to knowingly disagree on god.

“Have you read the Quran?” they ask.

“Yes, several times, with translation, tafseer and commentary,” I clarify.

“How then, can you not believe?” they wonder.

“How, then can you believe?” I respond.

“Meaning?” they ask edgily.

“Have you met Allah, he has 99 names: some of the names are lovely others are brutal, petty and mean. This would intimate that he is both Lovely and Brutal. He forgives all but wipes out entire nations because they happen not to be favoured ones…etc,etc”

“That is not true, you haven’t read the real Quran” they ALWAYS say.

I have searched determinedly for this ‘real’ Quran the believers invariably allude to but cannot locate it. I find, that it is usually the same text- only it is read through the misty haze of a devotee who can skim blindly, deafly and determinedly over any passage that might force a pause in faith or trouble in conscience. Faith will always be justified by the faithful and will always be attacked by its sceptics. I fear this is the nature of thought being pit against belief. The former requires information and the latter intonation. The sceptic is often labelled a ‘reactionary’ or a ‘subversive’ for merely presuming to disagree with the believer. The only real difference between a believer and I is that we both read (heard of, were told about etc) the same books, they agreed with them and I didn’t. The trouble arises in the fact that the ghost writers and publishers of said books don’t take to critics well…or at all.

Something that truly disturbs me is the fact that I am born into a country that by its very definition I cannot love. Sure I can feel the frequent pangs of nostalgia and patriotism while watching a cricket match or listening to sufi music like all the rest of my generation but I, the kafir, could never really love this country. Pakistan, literally the ‘Land of the Pure’, was not made for me and it has no place for me. It was constructed as a box marked ‘Islam’ to contain only one brand of person. Sure some smaller, inconsequential, low-end brands have managed to trickle into the market and thereby we have our token Christians, Ahmedis, Parsee’s, Sikh’s and Hindus but there is no room, whatsoever, for the brand-less. For the creed that thrives on carving identities from the outside-in rather than the other way around. I will always resent this country for forcing me to state a falsehood on my passport, for having to confirm the lie in person and speech at every desk I ever sit behind or in front of on punishment of death.

God is a figment of the imagination. It is not enough to say that He is ‘man made’ because He is ‘me made’. Every one of us has a point where we will say ‘well my god doesn’t do that’. That crevice where someone brings up a theological trip-up that even a believer cannot go along with and which forces them to play on their back foot and bring up their god. That is where we all stand, with individual ab aeterno (from the eternal) constructions of a divine we cannot and will not every truly understand but one that some of us still care to want to ‘get to know better’. That thing; that anima that frames the breath around us; inspires in us creation and navigates the planets is never really to be boxed in, no matter how hard we try. The fellow the books call ‘god’ is a bastardised shadow of what mortals can comprehend of the incomprehensible, without having the courage to admit their incapacity. That thing prevails and will always remain outside our grasp. I am grateful really, that mankind will never be able to taint the truly numinous nature of whatever it is that spurs all creation, for we would ruin it as we have ruined pretty much every thing else.

In Pakistan, I was offered my first flighty taste of absurd freedom when I made my Facebook account and was able to state my true metaphysical leanings on a public forum. Some have mocked my usage of ‘Ignostic/ Pyrrhonist / Fanatical Epicurianist/Secular Fundamentalist’ under the tab of religious affiliation. I have been accused of trivialising the issue, whereas it is the exact opposite. I have tried to pick the ‘brands’ closest to the ones I might occasionally wear. There are just so many to choose from: atheist, agnostic, pyrrhoist, ignostic, nihilist, fallibilist, determinist, theist, solipsist, sceptic, humanist, relativist, gnostic, laicist etc.

When the truth is, in this most particular and pertinent life-style choice, I hope to stitch my own apparel and define my own wardrobe. I can only pray (sic) that more people would look outside the belief brand, box, label and tag.