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This is the second part of the blog 'An election' in which I shared my experience of joining student politics at college during the Ziaul-Haq dictatorship.
In this blog, I relate to you my exit from student activism.
My association with student politics lasted till about 1990. I enrolled as a master’s student of Political Science at the Karachi University in early 1988.
At the university, I joined the left-wing National Students Federation (NSF), but I hardly ever went to any class because I had also taken up a side job as a copywriter at an advertising agency.
Then, Zia died. On August 18, 1988, the plane he was travelling in (C-130), blew somewhere over Bhawalpur in the Punjab province.
In the election that took place after his death, Benazir Bhutto led the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to become the largest party in the National Assembly.
I returned to the university in December 1988 and this time I was persuaded by the Peoples Students Federation (PSF) chapter there to join the outfit. I quit the NSF and joined PSF – the PPP’s student-wing of which I had been a member at college (Saint Patricks Government College) from 1984 till 1987.
The PSF’s Karachi president at the time was the volatile and hot-headed, Najeeb Ahmed.
I had still to meet him when during a party meeting at the university, I suggested that PSF and the Muttahidda Qaumi Movement’s student-wing, the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO) form an alliance of secular parties to vote out the influence that the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT – Jamaat-i-Islami’s student-wing) still had on the campus. I wanted to repeat the St. Pat’s tactic at the university (see ‘An Election’).
But IJT’s influence was already waning in Karachi with the gradual rise of the APMSO. Sensing this, both APMSO and PSF tried to muscle in to fill the void left behind by IJT’s pullback.
It was during a PSF car rally that was taken out to celebrate the PPP’s victory in the 1988 election, where I first met Najeeb.
I was in a jeep owned by the brother of a dear friend (who was with the PSF at the Sindh Medical College). APMSO had also organised a rally because the election in Karachi had been swept by the MQM.
At one point (at the Two Swords area in Clifton), the two rallies came face to face, creating a terrible traffic jam.
Leaders of both the rallies decided to merge the rallies because Benazir and MQM Chief, Altaf Hussain, were set to form coalition governments in Islamabad and Sindh.
But as if out of nowhere, a tough-looking guy with a stubble jumped out from a car and began to shout: ‘PPP-MQM ittihad na-manzoor!’ (No to PPP-MQM alliance).
He was Najeeb Ahmed. As he and some of his buddies tried to block the APMSO rally’s way with his car, he turned around and saw the jeep I was travelling in.
Before I could ask my friend whether that was Najeeb, he was upon us: ‘Paracha, jeep ghumah ..!’ (Paracha, turn the jeep).
He knew who I was. He seemed to be well briefed about me and my past with the PSF at St. Pat’s College.
‘Kyun, Najeeb bhai,’ (Why, Najib?), I asked. ‘Let’s let go now, we’ll fight them another day.’
He shouted (in Urdu): ‘Don’t be a fool, Paracha! These people did not help us in our struggle against Zia. You know that. Our people went to jails, were killed and flogged, and these people did nothing. And now they want a piece of the pie? They won’t get any. Nothing in politics is free.’
I didn’t turn the jeep. Or, rather, my friend did turn it, but only to head back home.
The next morning I received a call from some guy called Multani who told me that Najeeb wanted to see me at the university.
‘You breached the party discipline yesterday,’ he said, in a thick Pushtu accent. ‘You disobeyed the party President. Go now and apologise.’
It was 15 January, 1989. I took the KU bus to the university, expecting to be ‘disciplined.’
I went into the university’s canteen where I found some PSF guys huddled together at a table.
One of them saw me and mocked (in Urdu): ‘Here he is, guys. Nadeem Farooq Paracha. The man whose father was a real Bhuttoist. Whose father was blacklisted by Zia. But his son, Mr. Nadeem Farooq Paracha, is the man who dumped the PSF and formed his own party at St. Pat’s College to form his own group …’
I interrupted: ‘Yes, a group who voted out IJT and made sure that Zia’s influence and agents are never allowed to take-over the college unlike you guys who just sat there and gazed at your navels …!’
‘Kadu!’ (Bulls***t!) He shouted. ‘I was picked up by the cops from this very university in 1981 and tortured. Najib suffered jails and torture, while you were smoking dope at St. Pats …’
‘I was locked up in the 555 (a notorious police station in Saddar), getting punched and kicked by the cops…’ I proudly responded. This was turning into a silly game of boasts.
I decided to change the topic. ‘I was called by Najeeb Bhai. Where is he?’
‘He won’t meet traitors like you. Why don’t you join APMSO, instead,’ the guy answered.
‘Why don’t you tell the same to Mohtarma (Benazir), who has formed a coalition with the MQM?’ I replied.
I went back home without meeting Najeeb. I wrote a letter to Benazir stating that the PPP-MQM alliance won’t last because hawks in both the parties’ student-wings were making sure that it doesn’t.
I didn’t get a reply, but someone from Bilawal House (her residence and office in Karachi) did call to say that she had received the letter.
By early 1990 the nature and intensity of the clashes between PSF and APMSO turned even more violent with both the parties using sophisticated weapons.
The bloodiest episode of the already gory tussle took place at the gymnasium of the Karachi University where six PSF boys were gunned down.
The violence put a tremendous strain on the already shaky PPP-MQM ruling alliance. The MQM finally decided to quit the alliance.
Even though dozens of students lost their lives in the violence, the most prominent casualty was Najeeb Ahmed. He was (allegedly) ambushed by a group of APMSO men and shot multiple times. He died a few days later at the hospital.
Those were the most paranoid days of my life.
I finally consulted the situation with my father. I even told him I was driving around with a pistol and that I had quit the university.
‘You are at an important crossroad,’ he told me. ‘If you take a wrong turn, you will become the man of the gun. Such men don’t survive long. Throw it all away. Your struggle is over. It’s in the past’.
We both agreed that I had to leave Karachi until the tensions in the city cooled down a bit. We also agreed not to tell my mother.
Telling her that I was going to Lahore for a holiday, I left Karachi on a train for Lahore. I stayed with one of my mother’s cousins and his family for a bit and then took a bus to Islamabad to stay with a college friend who had joined the Quaid-e-Azam University there.
From Islamabad I travelled to Peshawar and stayed at a cheap hotel. Here I ran out of money, so I called my sister whose in-laws had relatives (all Jamaat-i-Islami supporters, mind you), in that city.
I borrowed Rs.500 from them and then took a bus back to Lahore. From Lahore I hopped onto another bus that took me to Shewan Sharif, the colourful little city in the Sindh province famous for hosting one of the most boisterous, musical and populist festivals around the shrine of the famous Sufi saint, Shah Abdul Latif Bhattai.
I just had my small backpack, a half-pack of Gold Leaf cigarettes and Rs.17 when I reached Shewan Sharif.
I spent almost a week here in different jhugis (straw houses) populated by roving, roaming malangs/fakirs (vagabonds).
I ate what they ate (dates and roti given to them as charity); drank what they drank (muddy water and lots of bhang – a beverage prepared from cannabis plants); and smoked what they smoked (lots and lots of hashish).
Losing weight and now running a fever, I asked a Sindhi cop to let me use the phone from a police station so I could call home.
‘Saeen, paray likho ho tum …yahaan kya kerahey ho, (You look educated, what are you doing here), he asked, looking at me curiously.
I lied to him. I told him someone stole my wallet on the bus and that I got down here because a friend lived here but that he had moved to Karachi.
He let me use the phone. I called my mother and told her I was still in Islamabad and staying with a friend.
Then a malang advised me to hitch a ride on one of the many trucks that transported fruits, sugar and wheat to Karachi after stopping a bit at Shewan Sharif. I did just that.
A truck carrying sugarcane dropped me off at Sorab Goth, a congested area in Karachi with a huge Pushtun and Afghan population. By then I had even run out of cigarettes.
I took a taxi and was home after another hour or so. I took money from my grandfather’s driver and paid the taxi fare.
After reaching my room, I just collapsed on my bed.
I must have slept for two whole days. I woke up, took a long, hot bath, ate lunch with my grandparents and waited for my father to come back from the office.
When he did, I walked into his room. He looked at me and smiled: ‘Jaag gaye?’ (You have woken?).
‘Indeed, papa,’ I smiled back. Then exhaling an animated sigh of relief, I said: ‘End of the past, papa. End of the past.’
Later that year (1990), I applied for, was interviewed, and managed to bag the job of a reporter for the time’s largest-selling English weekly, MAG. I never went back to the university.
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com. He is also the author of two books on the social history of Pakistan, End of the Past and The Pakistan Anti-Hero.
He tweets @NadeemfParacha
