In my late 1970’s boyhood, I was mesmerized by the Shah of Iran’s regal hauteur and magnificent uniforms as he made periodic state visits to Larkana, the then de facto capital of Pakistan. Sadly, the party ended for the Shah in January 1979 as he piloted his Imperial Boeing 707 out of Tehran while a million Islamist revolutionaries screamed for his blood and welcomed a 80 year old mullah with a medieval world view back from a Parisian suburb in an Air France Jumbo Jet.
I never thought I would live to see a Shah of Pakistan anointed and crowned in my lifetime but miracles do happen in the Third World and we now have a flesh and blood Shah – General Syed Asim Munir Shah, the new Shah of Pakistan. I wish General Sahib would borrow the Kohinoor from its rightful owner Queen Consort Camella and Crown himself in the same Lahore Fort where Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab held his Darbar, ruled the Sikh Empire that alone could have vanquished John Company Bahadur and wore it on his Armband. After all, General Ayub never won a war but promoted himself to Field Marshal since his coup in 1958 made him the Pakistani equivalent of Rommel, von Manstein, Guderian and Montgomery, a legend in his own mind and a legend in his own time when state media christened the Khabarnama as the Sadrnama.
Pakistan desperately needs legitimacy and its political class (Thieves R Us), bureaucrats (Dumb and Dumber with Oxbridge accents) and generals (assi-tussi changi gal, khanda be hey aur landha be hey. Translation for our non-Punjabi friends, we are your big brothers, fiends not masters. We eat but we also bring home the loot as the $26 billion skimmed from China’s CPEC and $40 billion skimmed from Uncle Sam’s magnificent delusions attests). There is ample historical precedent for military adventurers who seize power and crown themselves as kings, sultans, shahs, emperors and even caliphs.
Napoleon usurped the crown of the Bourbons at Notre Dame in 1804. Vespasian, the son of a mule trader, killed two praetorian rivals to crown himself imperator of Rome in AD 69, the artist Nero’s true heir. Raza Khan was an illiterate sergeant in the Cossack Brigade in Tehran until he launched his coup against the Qajars in 1925 and crowned himself Shahanshah of Iran. Which means King of Kings in Farsi or Falcon King Afridi in Urdu. The one eyed Mullah Omar declared himself Caliph or Prince of the Believers when the Taliban overran Kabul, as did Abubakar Baghdadi in Daesh held Mosul even as he clutched his Hello Kitty bag.
Pakistan’s biggest problem is that we have monarchy in our DNA but no real flesh and blood king, other than on the cricket pitch or in the neo-Dubai marble palaces of Bahria town. So why not have a real Syed, a Hafiz Quran, a 2 star chief of military intelligence, 3 star generals of ISI, 4 star army chief who gutted the PTI and locked up Imran Khan in Attock Jail now anoint himself with holy oil as the Shah of Pakistan. Surely the PTI Kaptaan understood the ancient law of the Mughal court that every princeling understood. Takht ya takhta – the throne or the hangman’s scaffold.
Now that Modi has changed India’s name to Bharat to honour the exquisite Kashmiri beauty Bharati I once knew, why not change Pakistan’s name to the Faujistan Empire since we have failed so miserably as the Land of the Pure? All our ethnic minorities, including the Pajero/Benzi/Beamer tribes in my city by the silver sea, will all embrace a grand army that won the Bangladesh and Kargil Wars, never molested a single Bengali woman if she was patriotic and sang Noorjahan’s karnailji janarailji at full decibel count and reached the height of our military genius under the legendary Chicken Tikka Khan, whose name has been immortalized by the best Tandoori menu ever eaten in the history of the Emirates.
I admit that I am not a credible chronicler of Pakistan’s geopolitical and economic twilight. I was born into not a burger but a Big Mac family in Karachi where Dad was so anglophile that he ate his peas with a fork/spoke fluent Latin from his Jesuit school boy days and introduced us to real English lords who worked with him in his blue blooded Lloyd syndicate when he was a chokra boy in London. Mom was an Francophile artist who took us to all the great museums of Europe and introduced us to the most exquisite paintings and sculptures I have ever seen, from the Prado in Madrid to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square to the Musée d’Orsay/Louvre in the Ville Lumiere.
As a boy, I lived in the enchanted world of Enid Blyton, Alistair MacLean, forbidden fruit, Harold Robbins. The Sind Club and the Karachi Gymkhana tuck shops and swimming pools and libraries were my haunts. We left Karachi in 1976 for Dubai but how can you ever forget your first love, the city of my birth in Holy Family Hospital (its a boy and a bundle of joy), your early school days with the shamrock and a green tie at St. Pats in Saddar, your classmates who included the sons of Chinioti billionaires, Baluchi tribal chiefs, corporate executives but also Catholic Goan, Anglo Indians, Parsis, Hindus from upper Sindh and Khojas/Ismailis from East Africa after fatso Amin expelled the Asians from Uganda. How was I to know that the adorable liberal Karachi whose social king in the Hotel Metropole was Mr. Bhutto and his elegant wife Nusrat, who opened all my Mom’s art exhibitions as the chief guest, was destined to die in an orgy of ethnic, sectarian and tribal blood letting. General Zia, Pir Altaf, Mir Murtaza, those innocent French naval engineers, the untold thousands of young men and women killed in bomb blasts and the obscene murder of Daniel Pearl still haunts me. James Joyce was so right. History is a nightmare from which we all struggle to awaken.
Since the US Congress will not allow General Munir to become Pakistan’s next President for Life like Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Mush, becoming the Shah and King of Pakistan is his only viable option. I am sure the IMF will fork out the $5 billion he will need to have a suitable party and invite the world’s power brokers to jet into Lahore though I doubt if Vlado the Baddo in the Kremlin will receive an invitation and will thus miss the geopolitical mujra of the century. This will be great for Pakistan’s brand image as Faujistan has no corruption, no crime, no terror attacks, no starving peasants, no teenage servant girls raped and battered to death, no bloodied headless corpses of young women murdered by a monster who has still not been hanged since daddy is a billionaire and boys will be boys in the mansions of F8, no looting, no black money but plenty of manicured golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools and white peacocks. The Fauj runs Pakistan’s biggest conglomerate that makes everything from corn flakes to cement, steel to fighter jets, missiles to bathroom fittings.
General Munir is COAS, Chairman, CEO and Pasha of Pashas of this $25 billion business and patronage empire. So why not solve our perennial problem of political succession and make ourselves an empire since Islamabad rules so many kingdoms? The General can become Shah Asim the First and he can have a suitable successor from his own clan, as long as his name is not Kassim. He has silenced Imran Khan, he has checkmated the Mian Saheb of Mayfair/Raiwind and Asif Zardari – Sub Pe Bari. The ISPR is doing exactly what it did for Zia and Mush in their time when they settled down for a long innings as our Shah is doing now. In fact, we now have two Shahs in Pakistan. In politics the hafiz General whose August 14th speech quoted the Holy Book numerous times but did not speak of democracy or election even once.
Last week, he spoke to a 100 business arabpatis and promised he would bring $100 billion of Arab petrodollars into Pakistan (hello?) and root out the Dacoits of Sindh. Just who may they be, Your Imperial Majesty? Would it not be a good idea for Fortress Faujistan to root out the terrorists of Afghan Taliban and TTP who started a new war on terror that has gutted global investor confidence and the free fall in the rupee now at 305 against the US dollar? As economic Shah, how will you deal with the IMF/World Bank, squeeze more billions from China, patao the Imran Khan acolytes back to fall in love with Rawalpindi GHQ, catapult Kashmir to the top of the global agenda even as the G20 (minus Xi and Putin) convene in New Delhi, force the Gulf to foot the bill for Faujistan’s fiscal fiesta, resurrect white elephant zombies like PIA and find a cure for cancer?
On the cricket pitch there is a far more authentic Shah, King Falcon Shah, an adorable lanky, 22 year old fast bowler from Landi Kotal who will bring home the world cup and history’s tragic saga will continue. Omar Khayyam’s caravans will pass into the long eternal night that ties my umbilical cord to the bottomless trap door of this ancient land. Pakistani people Zindabad, the human race Zindabad.
Also published on Medium.
