Dear Mighty Khan... NADEEM F. PARACHA
Dear Mighty Khan / Kaptaan / Übermensch,
Greetings from an ancient admirer, a long-time fan and a member of the species you call ‘liberal scum.’ Back in 1992 when you led the Pakistan cricket team to its first World Cup victory and made that narcissistic speech after the final, I used to work as a reporter and feature-writer for a local English weekly.
While most of the country’s press was wagging its collective finger at you for being selfish and arrogant, I defended you in a series of articles, in spite of the fact that (eventually) you were brave enough to admit that you made a mistake in taking all the credit for the victory as your team mates stood there, scratching their heads and maybe waving at you to remind you of their existence. ‘Hey, skipper, remember us!’
Being a fan, I was extremely excited when (in the mid-1990s) you decided to join politics and form your own party – even though I must admit, I was kind of apprehensive when I saw you hanging out with General (R) Hamid Gul. I know that liberal scumbags criminally undermine General Gul’s role in wisely and prudently utilising the big American Dollar and the Saudi Riyal to deliver a crushing defeat to an atheistic superpower that was known to eat Muslim babies, but to fans like me, a dashing Khan just didn’t augur very well with a foaming, wrinkled Gul.
I know I might be sounding a tad disrespectful of a hero like Gul, but time and history can be a cruel combination because the only Gul that really matters now is Umar Gul and he too, has lost form. But, alas, call it a mischievous itch, I did quite enjoy how you eventually ended up completely peeving Gul and leaving him in an existentialist lurch when you decided to marry a Caucasian British national whose father was a wealthy Jew.
If ever there was a starker physical expression of irony, it manifested itself across Gul’s angry face when he heard the news. I remember him telling journalists how disappointed he was. The protégé had slipped away. I told my cynical friends that this act proved that Khan Saab was still the guy we cheered for across his cricketing career; the same guy we had thought was the most inspirational and intelligent thing ever to happen to the post of captaincy in Pakistan cricket.
Some of my friends called me a fool when one day in 1997 I decided to donate half of my monthly salary to the cancer hospital you had set up in Lahore. They asked me, ‘have you heard him speak, lately?’ They didn’t like how you had started to sound: Like an angry, self-righteous reactionary, or, as one of my friends had put it, ‘like Hamid Gul on amphetamines!’ Humbug, I thought. What did that have to do with the cancer hospital, right? So off I went to the post office with my donation tucked inside an envelope, addressed to the administration of the hospital. I felt good.
Incidentally, that same evening I picked up a copy of The Friday Times and was thrilled to see a full-page article on you. I cringed, gritted my teeth, clenched my fists and tried to look away but just couldn’t ignore some of the things that you had said in the quotes that the article had used. You went on and on about ‘servile brown sahibs’, ‘the drugged out, decadent and liberal youth culture of the West,’ the evilness and corruption of people like Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the glory of faith and how you rediscovered it.
I tried to understand you as being like most urban middle-class Pakistani men who, after spending a good part of their lives in the most flamboyant and colourful manner, suddenly ‘rediscover the wonders of faith’ the moment they hit middle-age.
Fair enough, I thought, but what really bothered me was how instead of keeping such noble spiritual re-discoveries to themselves, they make it a point to exhibit it and flaunt it as a tool to judge other men.
But you weren’t just another Pakistani. You were Imran Khan... read more:
