Maybe it’s the impending Valentine’s day which has softened the US heart, or it is the intrinsic part of PAK-US affairs that now, ‘they want to keep us close’ – but how close, no one is sure!
And now ‘they’ are not the only one to decide the degree of closeness, as ‘we’ are now hooked to a unique blend of Chinese whispers, Russian comforting, and Indian detest, a fusion delight that didn’t exist in 1947, or 1977, or 1999, or even 2009.
We took our sweet time to develop a taste for Russian Salad over US burgers, it seems.
‘Affairs’ is not the only word we attempt in vain to describe inexplicably intricate, obviously intimate and evidently troubled Pak-US ‘ties’. But, tie certainly is a verb that denotes our affairs aptly.
Almost all countries have international relations: good, bad or exaggerated. In our case, we always keep it simple; we hop between good and bad, and exaggerate either with equal intensity.
With China, our ‘good’ is exaggerated with the same vehemence as our ‘bad’ is inflated with India.
Since we have tried both good, and the bad with all our neighbours – except of course with Chinese. My guess is, as soon as the CPEC is complete, and trucks and traffic starts running on it, we may like to try something exaggeratedly different with China too.
Hope it’s no an addendum to the CPEC agreement that we want the tanks too to roll on the silk road!
However, with the US of A we have had the most vivaciously exaggerated affair, and maybe there is some uncanny similar trouble in our respective infancy that in our affair we barked and bit more, but cared and caressed less.
Our hot, steamy and troubled affair makes Pak-US relationship look like the average middle-class urban marriage, in which non-negotiable differences and unreported hurts are settled through grudge, ill-will, deception, betrayals and, at times, extramarital affairs.
Soon after the partition in 1947, we literally went an extra 7000 miles to date USA, instead of easier rendezvous with Russians in our neighbourhood. I think it may be because our leading lights of the time did not like Vodka much, or if they did certainly not as much as Jack Daniels or US Wines.
Here, let me clarify that US is not known for wines, but they are very good at ‘promised wines’. And there you go. It’s the promised wines that attract the Muslims fatally. I tell you, alcoholic predilections are always bad if not lethal, whether they are in the unseen lands afar, or in the hereafter.
From, hereafter, I further guess, we went to Americans perhaps for our leading lights’ fetish for white beauties which then seemed closer to the American beauties.
In the last three decades, since ‘defeating’ the Russians in Afghanistan, our leaders seemed to have figured out two things. One, that the Russians are whiter than the white. Two, the promised virgins hereafter will be from all colours, shades, ethnic origins and nationalities – Chinese included.
However, it is not clear if there would be some Indians too. I am quite sure about it, but then I am not a certified Mufti, yet!
Back to Pak-US affairs: it seems once we were in bed with the US, we found out that one of the two had divergently different and elaborative tastes. That’s when we got trumped the first time.
Now who demonstrated what type of divergent tastes can’t be revealed for its being a state secret. It’s such a secret that here we can’t even disclose whose state secret it is. Well, at one level, both types are the same, the secrets I mean.
World of 2018 is very different from the world in 1948, or 1958, or even 1988. Now, millions of couples enjoy their relationships differently, though billions of couples suffer the same way.
Now if Pakistanis leaders want to continue with the historical suffering, we can follow the template and tradition of any marriage.
But in case we too have learnt something from the past, and we too can act progressive, we can enjoy and celebrate polyamorous arrangements with the US in an open relationship. And, in ISPR’s status of state relationship, instead of writing ‘complicated’, we can flaunt, open and ravishing.
That is something which goes well with President Trump’s presidency too.
