The Black Tie Affair

All:
God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat...
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

-Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78


It does not surprise me that English literature abounds in unflattering references to lawyers and their ‘profession’ (if indeed cannibalism can be considered a profession). From the times of Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens, and Shaw, all the way down to the here and now, it has been duly noted by the greatest humanist minds that lawyers have but one purpose: to perpetuate business for themselves at the cost of any, if not all, tenets of human decency and honour, and if need be, their own souls. It is hotly debated whether lawyers really even have souls to speak of. For with most lawyers the word ‘soul’ merely offers alternative spelling for the word ‘sole’, signifying the flat bottom of their shoes, or an adjective, a synonym that reaffirms the supremacy of the individual, as in, ‘the sole benefactor: the lawyer’. To generalize, one might say that they are, at best, of the vilest and most wretched breed of parasite that feeds on human suffering and so gains nourishment and sustenance from ill willed manipulation and opportunist exploitation. Imagine a virus that infects a host and proceeds to multiply in disease and is itself disease with no consciousness of life but with the ability to survive even in a vacuum, in death, till such time, as it smells living blood. A virus is something so peculiar scientists even today are not sure whether to classify it under the general heading of ‘living’ or ‘non-living’.

Like I said, that they are remembered in the history of literature as base and soulless grave-robbers does not astonish me. What astonishes me is the idea of a people, of a nation, so dead, so morally bankrupt, festering in the stagnant pools of corruption and depression for so long that their last desperate resort, their ultimate dying movement to at least look up from the murky depths of whatever unspeakable filth they are drowning in, is one that reveals to them no light of hope flitting about at the surface, but a lawyer. A nation that looks up to lawyers is a nation that is not looking up at all, that has forgotten what it means to look up. It has decided life is not worth fighting for personally. Such a nation does not wish to struggle for its integrity, to stand up for its rights, to change the system if the system is inherently foul. No! This nation of dregs wants a lawyer to stand-in, to intercede in its place and beg for scraps at the table of noblemen who have decided to exact prima nocta in a land where the sun never rises and the night never ends.

But what makes lawyers unfit for intercession? Are they not part of the nation? No, they are not. The way vultures or hyenas are never part of the pride; they are merely part of the circle of life as eaters of the dead. What makes them ineligible for the task is the fact that they argue whatever side they get money for. A lawyer who cannot win is soon out of work. A lawyer’s survival depends on winning at all costs. Morality, the idea of right and wrong, good and evil, take the backseat when the question of survival arises. And who can expect any different from someone who is bound by his profession to not do that which is right, but argue what is arguable. ‘Truth is relative,’ the lawyer will say to absolve himself of any responsibility. The truth is that he is the excrement of a delusional society that believes a black tie is an institution; a society that has become so preoccupied with appearances that it cannot judge what lies behind a uniform, behind clothes and cover. Like a child when he looks at an albino of his own years with prematurely white hair and believes him to be aged - because white hair is for him associated with and can only symbolize old age.

On the other hand, imagine a country where people have become so dejected, so lifeless, that even lawyers have stopped enjoying feeding upon them. Imagine a host that is not dead and yet so lifeless that a confused virus out of sheer frustration tries to revive it. ‘Live, that I may live on thee,’ screams the virus and tries what it can to indirectly ensure its own continued existence. In reality a virus would never do that, but would a lawyer? When a society falls into almost irreparable decay, it seems its lawyers stand up to protect it. True, they do so for their own sake but who can deny the temporary benefits (even if strictly imaginary) reaped by the society at large? The virus becomes the host, the master the slave.

The delight of power can only be experienced in the practicing of it. To practice power enjoyably one needs a subject to exercise it on. A suitable subject is one who is at least moderately close in matching the power of the one who wishes to exercise it enjoyably. Otherwise, flogging a dead horse gains nothing and holds no entertainment value, at least after a while. The powerful, therefore, create imaginary foes if real ones do not exist. Osama bin laden, or the equally elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction, for instance, satisfied America’s lust for exercising power. Similarly, the lawyer’s movement, to uphold the ideals of ‘justice,’ served to provide the lawyer community in Pakistan with some means of expressing their remarkable ability to achieve nothing by making a lot of noise and show. After all, only lawyers can feel gratified and productive by causing needless traffic jams every Thursday on a road that connects citizens with places of work, with schools, colleges, and, of course, with hospitals. And we all saw them, those black and white throngs of apparently illiterate buffoons, traversing the Mall, laughing and giggling like a procession of idiots mesmerized by the hypnotic charms of a camera crew. These upholders of ‘rule of law’ are the same notorious people that even the Pakistani police force tries to avoid. They are like reporters for Geo News (uncouth, incorrigible and devoid of ethic) with questionable degrees in law and a laughable dress code. These are people who congregate in matching outfits and go about saying “Milord” to otherwise perfectly normal men - who get whacked on the head with rolling pins by their respective wives just like the rest of mankind. What compels them to take themselves so seriously, for they must be aware on some level that they are no different from children in fancy dress, is a wonder and a mystery unto itself. But what unholy spirit possessed the rest of us to expect anything productive from them may seem bewildering at first. Nobody denies that ‘the movement’ raised a ruckus that was overheard internationally but it was never really meant to achieve anything substantial. One of its greatest members (a self professing lawyer) refused to distance himself from a political party for the sake of the movement. The only thing worse than a lawyer is a lawyer who is also a jiyala.

It ought not to be surprising though that lawyers are a symbol of hope for our sad and hungry people because we (and I am no different) have always relied on intermediaries. We did not even win freedom on our own. Freedom was announced one day. Some might say we never really wanted freedom to begin with and it was merely an idea we were fed for reasons that we cannot fully comprehend. However, that is an altogether different debate, one I believe is meaningless at this point in time. On the other hand, is it foolish to expect change from this nation? Will we ever represent ourselves on our own? Is there any hope left? Should we continue to wake up in the mornings? What can one really say when the father of the nation was a lawyer? A lawyer, a leader, a visionary who saw no ‘change’ other than fake coins in his pockets. And in the continual exchange and circulation of that counterfeit currency, and in the timeless tennis match between two equally corrupt and shameless political parties, distracted every now and then with a solo performance by a General, somewhere, in this sordid picture, there is ‘us’ (not the United States; you and I). And we keep on hoping that this time, this time it will be different. The lawyers will save us! I think not.

“Liar, lawyer; mirror show me, what's the difference?” - Maynard James Keenan

Hot Fucking June

Ode To Polo
(Hamza Ijaz - Poet)

These are but words, and words have always failed,
Though in your hands such words have lived and hailed
The most intense of passions, and visions
No eye can see but yours; not I but you,
You are the one, who’s in tune with the spheres,
The immeasurable depths of oceans full of thought.
The span of wings with which one soars above;
The green of trees; the grit of sand; the light of moon;
The sense of love no lover can enthuse;
The immense and the minute; the length and breadth
Of heaven and of earth is in your pen;
The violin or the flute, no music can produce
But it is yours or it shall be in time.

Alas! These words must fail: receding waves
That touched the hem of your most noble cloak
And learnt that all the waters of the seas
And all the moisture of the world cannot
But saturate the merest tip of your
Most outer covering cloth. And inside,
Where galaxies of knowledge pure reside,
No encapsulating Words can boast
That they have understood the soul of you
And returned to educate one and all.
For those who turn to you, they are the blessed
And none so foolish that returns from thence.

If God has touched you so, then twice blessed
Am I who has the luck to breathe with you
The air, the molecules of which have joined
Us both in bonds that hardened steel would
Understand
If it could but feel the tip of its own arrow
Pierce its heart and yet not renounce its love.
The greatest sage, that our age produced:
My friend, who in this world of woe, nothing
But love has loosed, was born this day, today
Two and twenty years ago.

Hot Fucking Junes

Thirsty is the paradox of a sweat soaked face:
Like a hostile soil that expels all moisture.
In still June, emery eyes, scratch out their blinks.
Iridescent white walls, summer’s teeth, bared.
My soul stands throat-deep in imaginary pools.
I see from above my own cross section,
- As if the top has been surgically removed -
Of a half-flooded throat desperate to swallow.
But the pool is cologne, aromatic and cool.
Surely this is hell. Apartment of fire;
Here I retire and hope to pass,
Three more months before the magnifying glass
Finds other things to burn, and I, like an ant,
Can sigh a breath of relief, when winter comes.