Sunday morning was pleasant enough in Abbottabad. The temperature was some 22 degrees Celsius and the birds were twittering in the patch of green near the house. I had cookies (from Dunkin Donuts, Islamabad) with my chai, drank my herbal medicine, and listened to Kid Rock’s new album Born Free on my iPod (gifted to me on New Year’s Day by my favourite courier Abu Ahmed-al-Kuwaiti). Now, I know all this sounds unbelievable (yeah, I’ve read those Net profiles too which say I have a “visceral hatred” for music), but ever since I read Chela Kuti’s statement (for the believers, this is a 22-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip) that “music is the weapon of the future” I have become a keen listener. But you wonder then about Kid Rock—that white trash who played for GIs in Iraq and supported that infidel devil George W. Bush. Well, to understand the enemy one must understand his music too. Also, after I got the iPod I remembered a classmate at the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, quoting Frank Sinatra at the debating club: “Rock ’n Roll is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.” The vicious and brutal bit is what caught my fancy. It all came together after I heard Angband, an Iranian heavy metal band—what if I can create a music of mass destruction?
After listening to Kid Rock at full blast for hours, I took out Oliver Strange’s Sudden Rides Again (it’s all part of the education, understanding cowboys and US culture). But old habits die hard so I started reading from the last page backwards. After awhile I must have fallen asleep because my wife Amal (all of 29 years) woke me up. She was in disguise, wearing one of my robes with a false beard pasted on. Apparently, she had driven down in the Suzuki to New Kaghna Cafe on Jinnah Road and brought some delightful mutton palak, chicken tikka and rotis. Incidentally, she is often mistaken by neighbours to be a man. (She likes to call herself Arshad when she wears my clothes and when in a business suit she’s Tariq. I tell you, by any reckoning a very resourceful woman.)
Anyway, to share a secret, she has a pet name for me, Geronimo. For the ignorant, ‘G’ was a great Apache chief who took on the Yanks for shunting his people off to a reservation. For decades, the man eluded the Whites. Well, I sometimes feel like ‘G’ in this rambling house watching the sun rise and set and then rise again. Amal says I must not let depression get to me. She even gave me a poem written by Major James Abbott after whom this town was named (I read the first few lines and threw it away). As I put pen to paper, it is rather late in the night and Amal informs me the ISI has sent a message that the choppers are coming soon. Hopefully, they will take me to a more pleasant location....
PS: Reports in the Indian media that I got a call on Saturday night from Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh are not true. You see, I don’t even have a phone and depend solely on smoke signals....
(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)
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