Girl with a Tattoo
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Who can believe the reason for Pakistan to be the most infamous underdeveloped country in the world is not its association with terrorism, nor its atomic arsenal, or even Osama bin Laden’s comfortable hiding place in Abbottabad. Instead, the basis for its notoriety is something much more meaningful, more evident and more logical: a tattoo on Veena Malik’s upper left arm, which she graciously flaunted in an Indian magazine just a few months ago.
Although Veena has worked very hard afterwards on her ‘acting’ skills too to be appreciated as much as her tattoo, but so far, despite her best ‘efforts’, the markings on her arm remain the most glamorous and notorious of all her talents. Just like Lisbeth Slander who, despite her computer skills and remarkable hacking capabilities, enjoys global recognition only as the ‘Girl with the dragon tattoo’.
I am sure many Pakistanis would disagree with my assertion about the importance of a tattoo on a topless woman. They may even find my comments offensive and want to snap back by calling me names or threaten to harm me personally. While I am sure most people will not go to that extreme and maintain a decent demeanor, but the rude behavior by the supporters of a certain political party concern me in particular. Yes, I am referring to a Punjab-based, relatively new party that is led by a ‘single’ man with a charismatic personality and an unequivocal political slogan. Because of the ‘clarity’ of his message, the chairman is interviewed almost every day by one of the television networks, which helps the channel, on the one hand, to boost their ratings, and on the other, it has also served him extremely well to emerge as a talk show celebrity in the country. In these programs, the leader of this party always comes prepared with a clear plan: criticize the American foreign policy towards Pakistan and project himself to be soft on the Taliban. At this point, if you think I am talking about the Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan, then no, do not leap to any conclusions yet, because I am not, and I want to stress this point to protect myself from any future cyber assault by mistake.
Instead, the politician I have in my mind is Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed — the president, vice-president, general secretary and the only active member of the Awami Muslim League — who is also a ‘single’ man with an ubiquitous presence on television. Even though, the previous ally of General Musharraf has changed his political ideology for the 81st time in the last 30 years and has closely aligned himself with Imran Khan on his understanding of the ‘war on terror’ recently, the former minister of Railways, nevertheless, is too far behind in his popularity among the urban youth, especially females. Traditionally, female voters have always inclined to favor the PTI, for obvious reasons. But, after the appearance of the chief minister of Punjab in a television program with female students of various universities, they have changed their minds. They have decided to prefer Hamza Shahbaz now because this son of the chief minister of Punjab has provided unrelenting ‘legal’ support to women’s rights in nuptial disputes by setting a personal example.
Notwithstanding the fact that I have cleared my position about Imran Khan and Sheikh Rasheed, I feel confident to stay out of trouble since the chairman has personally requested his supporters to refrain from obscene language on the Internet. Reportedly, he was disenchanted to hear that many honorable columnists and media personalities like Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi and Nusrat Javed have been targeted by his hawkish Internet-based party workers. After listening to their leader’s appeal and conforming to the party policy, in response, his diehard fans, sometimes also referred to as the Cyber-Taliban, have agreed to refrain from profanity, at least for the time being, by offering ‘offenders’ one more chance to embrace the ‘tsunami’ before they are destroyed by it. Although in their private discussions, they are not in complete agreement with the party rules, and are complaining that the Skipper himself continues to use terms such as noora league, robbers, thieves and mafia to bash his fellow politicians on television.
From our discussion so far, we can easily discern that even a simple conversation about a tattoo on a woman can be extremely provocative and controversial in Pakistan, unmasking the deep fragmentation of our society and exposing our inflexible political affiliations that are many times stronger than our religious fervor.
For years, I have attempted to bring it down by discussing the political system of Pakistan with the people around me instead of trying to talk about the politicians, but I have never been very successful. People like to call Altaf Hussain names when I discuss target killings in Karachi. They bash Asif Zardari when corruption is the topic of discussion or they criticize Nawaz Sharif when the future of democracy is being considered. But the worst part is that they would like to question my patriotism when the role of the establishment in politics is brought up.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KamraanHashmi and can be reached at kamranhashmi@gmail.com )
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