(With respectful acknowledgement to Alistair Cooke who made this phrase his virtual copyright with his illuminating weekly broadcasts on the BBC World Service for the last 58 years, retiring finally on doctor’s orders at the age of ninety-one, having recorded and broadcast on 20th.February 2004 his last LETTER FROM AMERICA)
America is a big country with a big heart. To make that statement is to state the obvious. It is as self evident as the immortal words of the preamble in the American Constitution.
o why do I make that statement now. Well, because it needs to be made time and time again. Because there is much open hostility against America and a resurgence of rabid anti-Americanism. To be fair, though, much of the blame lies with America for having over-reacted to the actions of a bunch of thugs who must be laughing all the way to their own hell. Instead of being tough on the causes of terror, America is waging an open-ended war against the symptoms of terror, which is just what the terrorists want America to do. A big country, and perhaps the most powerful country in the history of mankind, is being manipulated by a bunch of “known unknowns” ( or are they “unknown knowns” Mr Rumsfeld?) hiding in some remote hole. All they have to do is to start a scare on the Internet and the busy “chatter” sends shock waves that result in international flights being cancelled, troops and tanks being called out, arrests made without warrant, people detained without trial and denied their basic human rights, and all the other injustices which are necessary oxygen for the terrorists to survive. And even if America succeeds in catching some of these pretend Pimpernels, after having destroyed and rebuilt Afghanistan and Iraq, killing thousands and thousands of innocent people in its war against terror, do you suppose that will be the end of the story? Unless America uses its power to remove some of the most blatant injustices that it is helping to perpetuate, or at least makes a beginning, there will always be these “known unknowns” wreaking havoc from some remote and still undestroyed hole. But that’s another story.
I was saying America is a big country with a big heart and I have just heard its sympathetic beat during my current visit. I arrived here on the 26th of last month at the joint invitation of three universities: Pennsylvania, Columbia and Harvard, and I leave tomorrow 7th March, back for good old Blighty. I haven’t seen any TV or read any newspapers—what a release! So I don’t know what has been happening except for the terrible carnage at Karbala that my wife Hamida told me about during a telephone conversation from London. What an irony that I am here to talk about another carnage more than 1400 years ago by the same kind of people at the self same spot, the victims, then, being the most sacred family of Islam- that of the holy Prophet himself. And the murderers? Again, as now, people who professed to be Muslims. Before we accuse America and the West of carrying on a crusade against Islam, let us pause and look at our own record. How many innocent Sunnis and Shias have we Muslims killed? But I digress.
To recap, I have no idea what has been going on in my adopted and misled country. Is Tony Blair still there and if he is, what other knots has he tied himself in to justify his original fiction? By the time this is published I will be back in London and will know.
In the meantime, let me tell you about a piece of America that fills me with hope and makes me think that America’s mind may sometimes wander but its heart is in the right place.
This is my second visit here after 9/11. Of course much has changed from the pre 9/11 conditions. I had the usual post 9/11 security checks, both at the US Airways counter at Gatwick before take off and at Philadelphia on arrival. My name ABBAS sent their computers whirring. It was not so bad at Gatwick. After a thorough baggage and body search, I only had to show the joint invitation from three of the most prestigious universities in America for my speaking engagement at an Urdu Marsiyah Workshop, and Gatwick let me through without further inquisition. But on arrival at Philadelphia, ABBAS had a minor grilling. The impressive invitation was not impressive enough. ABBAS kept troubling their computers like a virus. The questioning went on from one set of inquisitors to the next—three in all. But no humiliating demands, such as “take your shoes off” or “open your mouth wide” like the man with the tousled beard in Baghdad was made to do. The worst that happened to me was to be tested on my “Erdu”, as it was an Urdu workshop I was attending. I was asked to read from an A4 sheet of paper with Urdu writing on it—not typed but hand written by someone not particularly bright and with an obsession about chairs and tables and files: Mez par file ko rakh do aur kursi ko doosre kamre men le jao. (Put the file on the table and take the chair to the next room.) I couldn’t make out the writer’s reasoning, but I read it out anyway. I was asked to translate in English, which I did without overtaxing my brain. My examiner was satisfied, although I don’t think he knew any Urdu, but he obviously knew the translation. He asked me to gather my bags and accompany him. He handed my passport, my papers and me to another security man in the, by now, empty hall and left with these parting words to his colleague “He’s clean. Not the one we thought he was”. This security man, not as obese as the last one, took a searching look at me and said he would like me to open my bags please. I said “Sure”. But before I could, he relented and after some friendly small talk, during which I remember extolling the beauties of Urdu language as well as the historic importance of the name ABBAS which I was not too keen to change by deed poll in spite of the problems it was causing me, he let me go with the famous Americanism: ” Have a good day Sir”.
It was both a relief and a pleasure to meet up with my friend and host, young and erudite Professor Aditya Behl, who is doing pioneering work at Penn by introducing a special course of study on one of the greatest poets of Urdu—MEER BABAR ALI ANEES, of Lucknow (1803 to 1874). Aditya introduced me to an aspect of America about which I had heard much but never experienced at first hand—the academic excellence and the dedicated scholarship at American universities. It was humbling for me to meet such well-read, well-informed and well-spoken Urdu scholars as Frances Pritchard and Amy Bard, and their friendliness and humility was matched only by their erudition.
These are the kind of Americans who make me say GOD BLESS AMERICA.
-Yavar Abbas
Date: 6th March, 2004