I am the bare Pakistan

By Syed Muzammil Published: August 14, 2015, Express Tribune

I am Pakistan’s disaster,

I am Pakistan’s reluctance,

I am Pakistan’s prejudice,

I am Pakistan’s vehemence.

I am that blazing ferocious sun, which strikes only the poor of Karachi and pardons the rich,

I am that torrent of monsoon flood that demolish the house of the peasant, overlooking the palace of the landlord nearby,

I am that dancing death in a farmer’s house whose seeds the government didn’t buy,

I am that wrath of God destined for the weak only.

I am the falsified history which is being taught to the students,

History which glorifies the tyrants and undermine the real sons of the soil,

I am the bellicose politician’s instinct of felony; felony that loots a nation,

I am that broken oath on the Holy Quran, a testimonial of a military general that he will not intervene in politics.

I am that wand of a serviceman which he uses against his own countrymen,

I am that constitution, which he shatters and diminishes,

I’m the defence budget; it’s a taboo to bat an eye on me,

I hide behind that prejudice against Balochistan, and that stigma of suppression of its humiliating voices.

I am that stolen baby from a children’s ward that left my mother with hue and cry,

The mother which carried him for nine months in her womb,

I am a poor man’s kidney; stolen and sold by a corrupt doctor,

I am the instinct of that barbarity, which makes a person steal dead bodies,

Dead bodies from unsafe cemeteries; from unsafe graves.

I am that urea, which is being adulterated in milk,

Milk that is fed to an infant; that runs in his veins,

I am the agony of a six-month-old baby being raped by a barbarian,

I am the vulnerability of an incarcerated man for a crime he didn’t commit,

I am a life wasted behind the bars in a jail cell.

I am the poison a homeless mother mixes in food to feed her kids and to herself,

That last fatal supper,

That defeated suicidal jump in the river,

I am the torpidity of a prostitute whose moans are considered as joy,

I am her numbness, her naiveness, her invisible dried tears.

I am that Islam, which is being saved by burning the colonies of the Christians,

I am that dollar-sponsored jihad that took our sons for good,

Jihad that filled the pockets of the oligarchs,

I am the clandestine face of its pseudo intelligentsia,

I am its mainstream, which turned out to become the lame-stream,

I am its hypocrisy.

I am Aamir Liaquat’s fancy branded dress, the dress he wears whilst lecturing about the simplicity in Islam,

I am Junaid Jamshaid’s beard, which made him escape the accusations of blasphemy,

I am Asma Shirazi’s symbolic scarf, which never covered her head,

I am Bilal Qutab’s  tasbeeh that he rocks whilst wearing his Armani suit,

I am Bilawal Bhutto’s surname, borrowed from the mother, the only one of its kind.

I am Salman Taseer’s blasphemy, punctured by the bullets of Mumtaz Qadri,

I am Mubashir Luqman’s hoopla breaking news, nobody believes me.

I am the tumultuous citizen, searching for my culprit,

I am the lost patriotism, the lost philanthropy and the lost nationalism that once nurtured into the heart of this country,

I am a lost dimension,

I am a forgotten ideology,

I am an unworthy sacrifice,

I am the bare Pakistan!

Syed Muzammil

A mass communication graduate based in Lahore. I love to write about the social and political issues of our society. He tweets as @muzjamil