Knowing the bad guys

(bdnews24.com, May 6, 2011)

The news is full of it. And that does not imply what it commonly does in everyday casual lingo, honest! I was actually speaking of the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden, which fascinating topic has been the focus of all and every television news channel, newspaper, magazine (when printing schedules permit) and conversation. As some bubble-headed Bollywood starlet tweeted, this even did its best to upstage the royal wedding, which everyone had been watching for a couple of days earlier.

But even as the debate raged on how it all happened, how long it had taken, how hard they had worked, how secrets are kept and then revealed and how death comes as the unexpected end, there were questions that demanded answers, some that will never be, not to everyone’s complete satisfaction. Main among them: What actually happened that day at the house where Osama was said to be hiding out? And was that really honest-to-God Osama bin Laden who was killed by the US SEALS who managed to attack his hideout with such stealth and sublime secrecy?

That is something I worry about at some dispassionate level, me and a whole lot of people who cannot completely accept that the man who caused so much grief to so many is really dead and sleeping, as some wag pointed out, with the fishes.

I remember that long-ago evening when Osama’s most stunning piece of work was unveiled for so many to watch, stunned, amazed, horrified. I had just come home and turned on the television to watch a travel show that my parents, many miles away in a different city, had been praising. There was an incredible scenario unfolding as I stopped my pottering to stare at: there was a huge, smoking, red-rimmed hole in the side of a building I knew so well – the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, New York.

As I stared, wondering what bad movie I was seeing the preview of, a plane flew towards the second tower, banked slightly and then dove in. Then, astonishingly, horribly, one tower slowly fell down into itself; then the other crumbled. Without my knowing it, there were tears salting my lips, my nails were digging red dents into my palms. There would have been people I had met in that building complex, maybe on the planes that flew into them. And as news of the other two crashes came in, more tears followed, of a strange empathic grief, of a dread that evil reigned, of a sense of overwhelming sorrow for a world that seemed to have gone mad.

Over the next few days, weeks, months, the extent of the horror slowly unfurled. There was a man who pulled the strings that made all this happen, we all learned, a monster who was called Osama bin Laden. He had created and controlled a network that destroyed, killed, pillaged, all in the name of some warped form of a religion that in its pure form did not advocate murder, friends who were of the same faith educated me. And over the years more people died, friends, children, brothers, sisters, parents, those who had done nothing to earn that kind of fate.

It became oddly personal when someone whom I considered a friend was killed by the same hate-clan, his neck sliced open after days of tortuous confinement, the killing caught on video tape that was made available for the world to see and gasp at. Daniel Pearl, journalist and a nice guy, slaughtered like an animal in a sacrifice. We had met, chatted, drunk coffee, met again, spoken on the phone and emailed; I liked him, I liked his then-shy wife Mariane, I liked the person who had introduced us to each other, a woman called Asra Nomani that I was proud, pleased and happy to call “buddy”.

And with one stroke of a knife, that circle of friendship was destroyed. As were a few planeloads of people who had no connection at all to any of this, no reason to even know that a rather twisted mind called Osama bin Laden existed at all. But, in some ways, the biggest tragedy of the whole plot was the fact that the open, accepting, often-naive and generally friendly American warmth became dark-tinged with shades of suspicion, with the cold waves of hate, intolerance, anger and sadness.

Travel to the US, UK and elsewhere was not as much of a pleasure as it had been. Racial profiling changed from being a concept that raised eyebrows to a reality that turned individuals into sniffer dogs ready to snarl instead of smile. And what was once a theoretically-fuelled debate on one faith being as good as another became a real argument about which belief system could be categorised as ‘killer’ more easily that any other.

Now that Osama bin Laden is reportedly dead – God help us all – will that change, albeit gradually? Will the world ever be the same again? Or will that shadow that he hid behind cloud eyes, judgements and life for ever and ever?