Adil Najam

My dear friend (I should say mentor) and former colleague Anwar Iqbal – now the Dawn correspondent in Washington DC – was recently asked to speak on how Pakistan is portrayed in the US media at a conference organized by the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA). Instead of giving the usual staid talk, Anwar being Anwar, crafted his talk with satire, homor and even parody to raise some poignant ideas.

Here is what he had to say. Please read it knowing the context in which it was give. Understand the humor for what it is. But also, please, understand the message behind the humor.

Pakistan in the US media: Onions, Gulab Jamuns and Islamic bombs

South Asia’s presence in North America is stronger outside than in the media. Where I live, we have a halal meat grocery, an all vegetarian grocery, a chutney restaurant and a Nirala sweets shop that sells gulab jamuns and burfis.

There are no gulab jamuns and burfis in the media. The US media, as far as Pakistan is concerned, are focused on the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic bombs in Islamabad.

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Owais Mughal

One of the reasons that made (note the past tense here) Pakistan the greatest cricket nursery of the world was the fact that cricket was played in every street, every park and every free space of every city.

When I was growing up, every street in our neighborhood had a junior cricket team and a senior cricket team. These street teams used to compete with each other on a regular basis. The talent from these teams then went on to play club cricket with hard-ball. The club cricketers then played zonal league organized by KCCA (Karachi City Cricket Association) and so on and so forth. I am sure other cities of Pakistan had similar set-up too.

What prompted me to this write-up was a sudden memory of a street team in our area. It was called Khandan XI (khandaan means family) and no local tournament was complete without this teams’s participation. 

Adil Najam

The Pakistan Kisan Conference met in Lahore this Sunday and (again) demanded an end to feudalism.

My first reaction to reading the news was to remember Faiz (remembering Faiz, by the way, is my default mode in just about all matters):

youN arz o talab say kab aiye dill, pathar-dil paani houtay haiN
tum laakh raza ki khoo Dallo, kab khoo-i-sitamgar jaati hai

But this was tempered immediately as I read of a new World Bank report that highlights the troubling inequity in land ownership in Pakistan.