Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan is a wonderful addition to the series of similar books written by former envoys. The difference, however, is that former ambassador Nazar Abbas rose to that coveted position without a silver spoon in his mouth. And this is what makes his story all the more inspiring. A few years older than Pakistan, he grew up with his country. His life and work have always intertwined with Pakistan – its promise, its achievements and its failings.
Abbas was born in a village on the margins of Potohar, where the surrounding wilderness made any truck with modern amenities almost impossible. There were no paved roads, no electricity, no radio or television, not even a newspaper. In such a Spartan environment, the author developed a strong bond with nature and with the people around him. From his parents, he inherited his survival skills, his grit, integrity and passion for knowledge.
In his characteristic down-to-earth manner, Abbas relates how his father wisely chose to move to Rawalpindi, giving his son the chance to go to a better school. He still has vivid memories of Partition: young as he was, Abbas remembers a Rawalpindi engulfed in fire, escape trenches, crowds running helter-skelter. When a Muslim from his village tried to attack a Hindu from the next village in order to decamp with his valuables, Abbas soberly recalls how the Hindu man fell to his knees and started reciting the kalima. “Forget about the kalmia – we have enough Muslims already. Give me some valuables if you have any,” said his assailant. Indeed, and as the author points out, 1947 witnessed shameful madness on both sides of the divide.
Gaddafi at the Arab summit in 1969
As a nine-year-old schoolboy, the author witnessed the scenes surrounding the assassination of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. Of course, he could little comprehend the politics of this tumultuous event then, but his vivid description betrays a keen eye. As a young boy, Abbas returned to his village regularly every summer and winter holiday. In between his schoolwork, he would take the cattle to graze in the fields. His village was still caught in a time warp, the author recalls, but he loved it nonetheless: “There was simplicity, contentment and [the] bliss of ignorance,” Abbas muses.
On leaving college, he moved to Lahore to read for a Master’s degree in mathematics, after which he found a teaching job at a girls’ college on the strength of a verbal reference furnished by a former teacher at Gordon College. Here, he was diligent and matter-of-fact: indeed, so correct that his young students took to teasing him. His biggest win came in the shape of his marriage to a young lady who had been one of his students. The match was an arranged one, for Abbas was a no-nonsense man from a conservative background who would never have dreamed of conducting even an oblique love affair at college. And yet, he was by no means insensitive to the finer things of life. When asked to choose between the two Kizilbash sisters, he said with a hint of gentle mischief, “I liked the younger one, Nigar: the beautiful, smart and intelligent girl who was the top student in her class.” Nigar Nazar, otherwise known in her own right as Pakistan’s first woman cartoonist, is visible throughout the book, actively helping her husband elevate the country’s image abroad.
The author was then selected for the Central Superior Services and joined the Foreign Office. On his first posting to Ankara, he was dispatched to Mersin to quell a sailors’ rebellion on the MV Shalimar. No sooner had he taken the situation in hand than he was directed to take charge of the Pakistani consulate in Istanbul from a Bangladeshi officer who was not too keen to relinquish the post.
Tripoli followed Ankara: there, a young military officer named Colonel Gaddafi had just ousted the monarch. Abbas’s description of a revolutionary Libya grappling with problems of governance and external affairs is fascinating. He quotes journalist Hassanein Heikal’s impression of the young Libyan leader: “The extremely simplistic way in which he looked at the problems of war and peace and how he sent his number two, Major Jalloud, to China to buy an atomic bomb, for the Arabs’ battle against Israel.”
Abbas with his wife and daughter in front of Lenin's statue in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
In the 1980s, Abbas, who was by now a mid-career diplomat, was sent to head the Pakistani consulate in Bradford in the UK. Here, he keenly guarded the interests of Pakistanis (mainly from Mirpur in AJK), striking a good equation with Mayor Mohammad Ajeeb and local British officials. His next posting, however, was less salubrious: a hardship post in Africa. It goes to show that the author was not merely the Foreign Office’s blue-eyed boy. But rather than sulking, Abbas became a keen Africa watcher. He visited nearby Swaziland where the king – a Catholic, Oxford graduate – had inherited the right to take an unlimited number of wives and refused to surrender this privilege (despite the Pope’s urging)!
"Excellency, if you have no occasion to use it [the whip] on a horse, you could use it on your ministers"
The jewel in the crown was Abbas’s first ambassadorial posting to Bishkek. Having successfully completed his tour of duty as deputy head of mission in Australia, he was now ripe to assume independent charge of the new mission to the Kyrgyz Republic. Within a few days of his formally taking charge, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto paid an official visit to the Kyrgyz Republic, followed the subsequent year by President Farooq Leghari. As Abbas recalls, among other gifts, President Akayev presented his counterpart with a decorated horsewhip. “Excellency, if you have no occasion to use it on a horse, you could use it on your ministers,” quipped the Kyrgyz president. Indeed, soon after his return, President Leghari “used the whip of article 58-2(b),” as the author reminisces.
Abbas’s last posting took him to Romania. Talking about what the two countries had in common, the ambassador told his hosts in Bucharest: “Both Romania and Pakistan are at no. 73 on Transparency International’s corruption index, 2003.” This wry sense of humour is discernable throughout the book.
Concurrently accredited to Bulgaria and Moldova, the author was taken on an official visit to the largest wine cellars in the world, where he participated in the Moldovan annual national wine festival. When asked by the Moldovan president if he drank, the ambassador confirmed he was in fact a teetotaller. (Our Foreign Office has the knack of sending the wrong people to the right places!) In all, Nazar Abbas’s memoirs are an interesting travelogue through history, dotted with diplomatic anecdotes, making them delightful reading both for the average reader and diplomats, past and present.
