My year started, if you’ll remember, in a tempestuous mix of both triumph and tragedy. After much planning, two typhoons, a war threat, three postponements and a not altogether pleasant bathroom experience at the Lahore airport, I made it to be a beach island in Thailand (triumphantly). There I proceeded to tan five shades before losing my cellphone (tragically) in the back of a cab that may have doubled as a drug mule – which, when you think about it, can be said of anything in those parts. If I’m honest, the sea and sand eclipsed my tragedy so completely that it wasn’t until a month later that I remembered to be upset about it. It helped that I picked up a phone for myself from the airport duty free and brought it back to Lahore, poorer but at least connected to the crack-cocaine that we all call “Social Media” (or “social medusa” according to my new phone’s auto correct).
I thought nothing of it until very recently when it came to my attention that my iPhone has been locked and won’t work in Pakistan until I pay someone. This was done remotely, the way pre-teen hackers bring down nuclear missile silos in Bruce Willis movies. That someone, anyone, could remotely disengage my phone shouldn’t be as big a shock as it is to me because we all know that they are in theory controlled by someone somewhere. But a phone is such a personal object – an appendage really – that the idea that some functionary can cut it off seems at best impersonal and at worst a deep violation of my personal boundaries. Turns out it was the Government of Pakistan that did it, because I have to pay a heavy duty that the authorities had levied on imported phones. That I didn’t buy the phone, nor activated it, nor had it shipped to the country, doesn’t seem to matter to them.
PM Imran Khan was adamant on the right to protest during his time in opposition
When I first found out, I thought it was a mistake. How could they know? Is my phone sending out some kind of mutinous signals (something I hasten to add it did NOT do when I lost it)? Have they tapped me, listening to my fevered monologues on RuPaul’s Drag Race and interpretations of the many meanings that the term “sup” can have? Most mind boggling: how can a county that didn’t track down bin Laden for a decade know of my Thai buy within months?
That last bit has been going around in my head for a while actually. Efficiency is not a common thing in Pakistan, so one tends to notice when it pops up. I tend to notice, for example, that I can log into my Pakistani bank online and pay my bills for my electricity, gas, cellphone (R.I.P), landline all at one conveniently centralized location – whereas whether I actually get any of those services is usually up for debate. I notice that it takes the electric company six seconds to put up a new transformer but millennia to fix a broken one. I notice that I can get antibiotics easily but not a salad or a condom. I notice when we can pass legislation on cheese within minutes but tend to want to debate whether men should be allowed to marry underage girls.
In all of this, I did not notice that Naya Pakistan would be so fixedly, doggedly and, yes, efficiently, stalking my cellphone with the carnality one would hope it reserves for corrupt officers. One shudders to think what would happen were I to bring an actual Brie into the country. Can the government shut off my fridge as easily as my phone? Actually, ya, load shedding, never mind.
I tend to notice, for example, that I can log into my Pakistani bank online and pay my bills for my electricity, gas, cellphone (R.I.P), landline all at one conveniently centralized location – whereas whether I actually get any of those services is usually up for debate
All these thoughts came to me against the backdrop of our free-falling economy. As to why the authorities insist on maintaining a tenuous connection between things like smoked cheeses/cell-phones and our rupee value still astounds me. The attitude, and the demonstrable support base for it, shows us all how breathtakingly little the Powers That Be understand basic economics. A moot point, really, since if anyone there did understand it, we would likely have been in a better position. But we are not.
The recent protests by members of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) are another case in point. The protestors were fired upon with fatal results. They are accused of having threatened a security check-post, to which they responded with their own accusations.
Then any media coverage of the event was effectively banned.
How a government like this – having spent most of its time in opposition lecturing everyone on the sanctified right to protest – could now so brazenly label protests to be a crime is disturbing but not shocking. What is shocking is how everything – and I mean everything – is twice as expensive as only six months ago; how badly the forecasts say the rupee is yet to fall; and perhaps most of all, how efficiently the state can use resources if its wants to.
