Dear Fawad, Whatever You Say Will Be Used Against You

“People need to understand that art cannot be fragmented by boundaries and badly drawn lines of ink on a map.”

Dear Fawad Afzal Khan,

I have been meaning to write to you for a long time. First in love, then in loathing and now in love again. You see, I’ve been in love with you since I sat with my mother and watched the first episode of ‘Zindagi Gulzar Hai’. I began to loathe you when I noticed that you haven’t spoken a word condemning the Uri attacks and against violence in general. I expected you to talk about love and harmony and peace, because you’ve lived in Pakistan for the longest time, you’ve been in India for long enough and you have a huge fan following in both countries.

‘You Will be Subjected to Public Scrutiny’

However, I went back to being an ardent admirer when I realised how fickle my own “Fawad-love” is. I went on to understand that if you spoke anything to the media at all, your statements will be heavily misconstrued in one of the two countries, you will be subjected to public scrutiny, put under the police radar and soon declared traitor/terrorist.

The trouble with fan following is that it is rarely dependable. Fans usually are a bunch of obsessive people who will follow you religiously and get excited by every little thing you say, do or project. Excitement, I know, isn’t always a good thing. If my love for you could be so fickle, why couldn’t that of millions of others?

Fawad, just to be clear, I am not talking about a petty public image crisis here. This is more than that, this is deeper than that. It is not like doing two bad films, and being declared a bad actor. It is more like breaking the heart of an entire nation that has loved you. Whatever you say will be broken, shredded, fragmented, misinterpreted, manipulated, highlighted and held strictly against you by one of the two countries that have previously claimed to be besotted by you.

I know, Fawad, you don’t want to be a traitor. I know you don’t want to be a terrorist either.

I solely see you as an artist. Fortunately, art still holds more power than violence ever can. Art can move boundaries, touch people and shape emotions.

This is probably why so many fear art. This is probably why they want to chase you away. If a certain body of people has threatened to attack individuals for not leaving the country, we must all sit up and ask ourselves who the real perpetrator of violence is.

Is it really about our soldiers dying on the LOC? Because, like what a number of well read intellectuals have already pointed out, if we really cared about the lives of our soldiers we would not ask for war in the first place.

Finally, while I know numerous people who will lay their revenge seeking hands on my letter to you will be quick to draw sordid interpretations, I will go on to say that I am grateful to Pakistan. For ‘Coke Studio’, for excellent TV Shows, for Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, for Atif Aslam and for the likes of Ali Zafar, Mahira Khan and you. I censure the attacks on our soldiers in Uri with all my heart and soul. However, I also know that neither did Ali Zafar nor did you have anything to do with it.

‘Art Cannot Be Fragmented by Boundaries’

The trouble with most of us is that we get so blinded by irrational jingoism that we tend to overlook multiple microscopic and highly consequential details.

A plump, peachy woman in Pakistan, cooking breakfast for her four-year-old son, had nothing to do with the attacks. She does not deserve war. An old man, selling tea on a bus stand in Karachi, had nothing to with the attacks. He does not deserve war. Neither do his playful, visibly malnourished grandchildren. The real perpetrators of violence are up and about, sitting in fancy offices and attaining their ulterior motives. They will never be subjected to our hate and hostility or become victims of war.

Fawad, I am glad you’ve gone back to Pakistan for now. Your family must have been anxious. I also hope you will come back soon and the people of my country will welcome you once again with open arms. I hope we will all be able to pull our heads out of this pointless, aimless rage and understand that art cannot be fragmented by boundaries and badly drawn lines of ink on a map. Trying to do so in itself is a violent activity. Violence is solely a whirlpool of chaos and solution to nothing.

See you soon, Fawad. You look impossibly hot in the ADHM trailer.
Love,
Mekhala

(The author can be contacted at [e-mail].)