The Missionaries- second installment

7:30 AM

PECHS, Karachi, Pakistan

The alarm of a Samsung mobile phone was buzzing and playing an AC/DC song on the bedside table. It kept on playing for 5 minutes when finally a hand reached out from under the sheets on the bed and killed the alarm.

Arif Hasan got off bed and looked at the time.

“Fuck me!” He swore out loud. For the 4^th day running he was late for work. He had recently got a job at a market research company, thanks to a friend of his dad’s. He loved the job but he always got in late. He rushed to the bathroom had a quick shower, brushed his teeth, dashed back, blindly picked a pair of pants, a shirt and a tie, dressed up, got into his worn out shoes, grabbed his wallet and phone and rushed into the adjoining living room, which served as both a TV lounge and a drawing room.

“Arif, you are late again!! His mother shouted out from the kitchen

“And let me warn you, if you get fired, I will personally fire you from the house and your dad won’t be able to do anything about it!”

She came out of the kitchen sweating. She had a kind looking face which was now contorted with rage. Arif said, “mom, ok, don’t worry. Promise it won’t happen again.ok…” and he kissed her on the cheeks. He took the milkshake mug from her hands gulped it down in one go.

He turned to the television and switched it open and flicked to Geo News.

“You are seeing live visuals from Washington DC, it is extraordinary.  The President of the United States has been murdered. I repeat. The President of America Joseph Reid has been killed. He has been beheaded and his head is missing. The security agencies have been unable to locate the head and security all around USA and its bases have been put on red alert. The American nation is stunned and answers are being sought. The CIA has attributed the murder to a terrorist strike but no finger prints or any weapons have been recovered from crime scene….To further discuss the situation we have invited the host of Capital….”

Arif was looking at the TV too stunned to speak anything. The President of United States, killed in the most secure building on the planet, he thought. Like something from a Roland Emmerich disaster movie.

“Mom, I know I will be late today, but can you stop frying eggs and come out to see this”, he called out.

His mother came out of the kitchen asked what was happening. Arif pointed to the TV screen which now showed a well-known talk show host who, as Arif noticed, couldn’t suppress a smirk. Arif’s mom read the ticker running on the screen and looked at Arif.

“Is this really happening? I am telling you, expect America to attack Pakistan within the next few hours”, she said darkly. And then she went back to the kitchen to fry eggs which left Arif in no doubt that to his mother beheading of the most powerful man in the world was not a big deal.

His phone was buzzing, he looked and saw 35 twitter and 20 Facebook notifications. Of course the social media would be buzzing, but Arif had long since come to the conclusion that chatter on social media was about as productive as the chatter of crows on trees. Meaning. It was just annoying. So much righteous outrage, so many laptop activists, so many news analysts. He just got bored with it and never used it much. That being said, he had made some very good friends on these websites and talked with them only on SMS or voice calls.

Right he was fighting an urge to stay and watch the incredible news or head to the office, to which by this time he was already 40 minutes late. Therefore he wrenched his eyes away from the TV and said good bye to his mother ran to the bus stop. Fortunately, he spotted the bus coming and climbed on it. As soon as he sat on the seat, a text message came on his phone, he opened it and saw that it was from his friend Kaleemullah, an aspiring Jihadi and a Database Administrator working at Humanity Plus, a US government funded NGO. Kaleemullah had assured Arif on numerous occasions that his concern was to manage the company databases and not spread the ‘kufr’ of Satan America, hence was doing nothing wrong. When Arif pointed out that his work kept the databases of the ‘Kufar’ running, Kaleem said, “Hey, even Ali had to work in the garden of a Jew. Bro, you have to. Bad financial times you know...Anyways…did you check out Mathira’s pics?” Arif had always wondered, how Kaleem ever became a Hafiz.

The message from Kaleem read

“Allah be praised, the great American Satan is dead. Allah u Akbar”

Arif smiled. In his mind’s eye he saw Kaleem doing a Gangnam in the mosque.

“Halal Gangnam”, he spoke to himself smiling, which was heard by an old man in a white kurta, sitting beside him. The old man gave him an annoyed partly patronizing look and turned his face back to the window.

Another text message appeared on Arif’s phone, this was from his friend Shahnawaz, who was the son of an industrialist and was his former class fellow. The message,

“Dude, USA president is now Prezi-dead. Fuck!! Whoever dunnit was a daddy cool”.

Arif replied, “Hi Five J “

To pass time, Arif started reading older messages, and saw Sophia’s name on the list. Ah, Sophie, he thought ….when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by blaring sirens of a dozen police vans speeding past the bus.

Must be another suicide attack, he thought. He inwardly prayed that it was a grenade attack rather than suicide one. Suicide attacks had the potential to cause hour long traffic jams , while grenade blasts caused jams lasting up to 15 minutes, firing, none. “Karachi” he said to himself. When you are a Karachiite you don’t wish for killings to not happen, instead you prayed for killings to happen less.

The bus conductor came to his eat and asked for the fare,

’10 rupees brother, he said.

Arif took out his wallet and pulled out 10 rupees from it, realizing that now his wallet was empty.

‘Brother, brother, brother’, sighed the conductor while looking at the Arif empty wallet. Arif didn’t want a bus conductor to pity him so he stowed back his wallet quickly in his pocket.

Suddenly he heard loud sounds coming from outside the bus, the old man sitting next to Arif looked out of the window and saw 5 helicopters in the sky going straight in the same directions as the bus. And they were flying very low.

Arif had never seen 5 helicopters flying together on the Karachi skies before and somehow the rushing police vans and the helicopters seemed connected to Arif. He looked at the helicopters and saw that they were 2 Aerospatiale SA 330 Pumas and 3 Mil-MI 7 helicopters, all with Pak Army insignia on them.  

‘Wow’ said Arif, looking at the helicopters.

Then suddenly the bus drivers swerved the bus to the left to make room for Army’s Armored Vehicles which went rushing Past followed by ambulances.

“Whatever is happening, doesn’t look good” the old man told Arif.

“Baba, the Chief Minister’s house is straight ahead right? “

“Yes son, but if some blast had taken place, we would have heard it because we are just 5 minutes away from the minister’s residence.

Arif sent a sms to both Sophia, Kaleem and Shah, asking if something had happened in Karachi. Then his phone started ringing, the caller ID showed that it was a call coming from his home.

“Yes mom” Arif answered the phone.

“Son, come home quick, your dad is already home and your brother is coming back from school too.” his mom told in a tone that suggested panic and worry.

“Mom, what happened??” Arif asked.

“Son, it just came on the news, although they are not confirming it. The President, Prime Ministers, and the Chief Ministers of all the provinces have been found headless in their respective homes!”

"What??"

"Yes son, just come home because angry mobs of the ruling party are setting on fire anything that they come across, already 15 people have died within 10 minutes.....son come home please"

"Ok mom, don't worry, I am coming back, give the phone to dad"

“Your dad has went out to fetch Imran, he seems to stuck in a traffic jam".

"OK mom I am coming back."

Arif got up from his seat and banged his hands on the bus door. The driver stopped the bus and he got out.

‘Fucking Hell’

Arif knew that if the CM was killed, it would be a weeks’ worth of indiscriminate killings and economic shutdown.

‘Bitches can’t even die without killings 20, 30 folks’ he thought angrily, now crossing the road. ‘But fuck man, 4 CMs and a President. Insane!!!... That would be months’ worth of strikes and carnage…and no work’ Arif bitterly thought. Arif still remembered the events after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Suddenly he heard gunshots behind him and saw that a gang of young men were forcing the shopkeepers to shutdown shops. Aerial shots were being fired. He saw two policemen running for cover. This, Arif saw as a signal that the area was now under gang control and the civilians were on their own.

Ahead he saw a taxi in which the driver was about to get in.

“Hey!!! Hey!” Arif shouted to the driver as he ran toward the taxi.

The taxi was about to drive away when Arif reached it.

“Hey, brother,…PECHS…please”

The taxi driver looked at him and said, “You are lucky I was going in that direction, get in before we both get shot”

“Fucking thanks man” and Arif got into the taxi and they both drove away.

They reached Arif’s home, and Arif saw his dad standing at the gate waiting.

“Dad I don’t have money, the fare was 150 rupees”, said Arif as he came out of the taxi.

His dad took out 200 from his wallet, and gave it to the taxi driver thanking him profusely.

“Sir it was nothing” and he gave back the remaining 50 rupees.

Arif’s dad Mr. Hasan, insisted that driver take the 50 rupees, but the driver only wanted the fare and ignoring Mr. Hasan’s requests, he drove away.

“Good guy” Arif said while looking at the taxi.

“May God keep him safe “said Mr. Hasan.

“ God..yeah whatever..” Arif mumbled and went inside the house, his dad followed him inside.

Book Review::Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base

Area 51 is probably one of those conspiracy theory target places that always manages to maintain this aura of malevolence around it, and the US government does nothing to stop it, in fact the many silly attempts by conspiracy theorists and ufologists to reveal the inner workings of this highly guarded place, actually helps the US government to safeguard its secrets rather than worry about them being exposed.

The review that I am writing today is about one of the plethora of books that have dealt with the subject of Area 51.

Well, if like its counterparts, you are looking for a book that’s riddled with conspiracy theories of alien visitors, captured alien space craft ( sigh, Independence Day ) or some plans to establish a Illuminati new world order than you will be highly disappointed.

Annie Jacobsen’s Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, is a forceful account of the highly secretive workings inside Area 51, a highly guarded military base in Nevada, USA.

This book brings to light the story of the extraordinary genius, vision, hard work and patriotism of the American men and women that worked at Area 51 and churned out marvels of human ingenuity and intelligence.

From Roswell Crash to the ultra secret but gigantic (to the point of being biblical) nuclear tests, from NASA astronaut training to drone aircraft technology, Annie Jacobsen builds on a huge number of declassified never before seen government files, and most importantly, interviews from people  who worked at Area 51.

Great read if you are not a conspiracy theory junkie, this book packs in truckloads of information but somehow conveys it smoothly with the very human stories of the people who worked at Area 51.

I spent two days reading this book and at no point, I was bored.  Worth the time and money spent.

Aliens, Earthlings and the Universe

The next time you find yourself walking in the dark (power outage, grid down, headed towards robbing a house, escaping a rapist, running from the police etc) under the night sky, give a moment or two (depending on the time you have) to the sky above you and observe the shimmering points of light we call stars. Look at the moon and feel it’s cool light.  Look up and you might be unaware that you are looking through the window of planet earth’s sky, into the vast and eerily quiet universe, breathtaking in its beauty and menacingly destructive in its power. 

Before you look up, look down, feel the night breeze, hear the distant bark of a dog, meow of a cat, caw of a crow, sound of a truck trundling by, rustling of the leaves, feel the earth in motion around you, this conglomeration of ‘Beliebers’, neo Nazis, Muslims, Christians, Giants Fans, rocks, gases and liquids is a rocky planet, one of the two billion rocky planets which scientists estimate, are similar to ours. In the universe containing up 100 billion galaxies (and counting) the figure of earth like planet goes to trillions.

Now look up and think before resuming your walk that, there are a trillion or so planets out there, wouldn’t it be stupidly naïve to think that we are the only living beings who possess cognitive intelligence?  What if somebody out there, may be your age, might be looking up, at you, in the same way you are looking up at the night sky, in a random direction, may be that extra terrestrial ( alien) lies in that direction, both of you divided by the barriers of time and space. What if one day, one of those beings from another galaxy, got smart enough and devised a smart way to reach your planet. Then what would happen? What would befall your beliefs, which tell you about man being in the centre of the universe? The alien that will visit you might or might not believe in a higher deity at all. Its technology would be far far…I mean...far superior than ours and probably would be something that our minds can’t even come to grips with. Why?  Because it takes a civilization of an unimaginable power, intelligence to cross the vast intergalactic distances. It takes the light 2 million years from the nearest Andromeda galaxy to reach our planet Earth. 2 million years. 2 million years ago, the first species of apes from which us humans were to evolve appeared. So if you look up again turn your head to the north east of the sky and observe a certain compressed W pattern, the faint smudge of light on the right of the upper half of the W is your Andromeda  galaxy ( if you can’t find it , then don’t worry, most cant!).  But, bear this in mind, the light that is entering your eyes from that faint smudge of light is already two million years old, when the first of your ancestors were roaming the plains of Africa, shirtless, pant-less, headphones-less and iPod-less. Distances are vast; time is limitless, always ticking.

Coming back to our alien civilization and its assumed power, we would find this alien civilization doing scientific investigations on us in the same we do experiments on guinea pigs, rats and monkeys. The explanation of their behavior lies in our perception of whether it’s ok to conduct gruesome experiments on other living beings or not. May be the aliens who are visiting us regard us in the same way; we regard the ants or cock roaches. Perspective.

Now look around, you see that old woman, feeble on her legs, slowly crossing the road, see that unshaven 40-year-old man heading back home, bills and children’s fees on his mind, take a look at the coolly dressed teen heading to a friend’s house. Imagine how an alien arrival would affect them. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492 to Americas, the resulting visitation of Europeans nearly wiped off the native American-Indian tribes whose bodies didn’t have any sort of protection against the diseases that the Europeans carried with them, e.g. small pox. What diseases, what plagues would an alien visitation bring on earthlings? Ever wondered about that?

Now look at yourself and place yourself in the grand order of the universe. The ant eats a grain, the chicken eats the ant, you eat the chicken, you die, you become part of the soil, on which the grain grows and the whole process repeats itself until a giant asteroid smashes into earth and  strips it of all things living. Or what if an alien spaceship comes across our earth and destroys it not unlike ourselves destroying ant mounds or bird’s nests for no apparent reason other than fun. And all of this is just a minute event in the trillion of events happening in the universe. Nothing is special in this universe. Only if we are able to control the movements of the atoms, the spin of a galaxy, the explosion of a supernova, the movement of giant clusters of galaxies, then we can say that we might be something special. Might be.

But here we are, engaged in petty battles and schemes when we should be engaging in exploring the universe.  The modern age owes its existence to Columbus and his peer’s dedication to exploration.  And until and unless we find a way to restrain our incessant plotting and scheming against each other and set out to explore the worlds beyond our planet, then we might just usher ourselves into a new age of exploration an age of new scientific understanding, reason and cultural revolution.