Homeland Elegies(24)
“Who truly started the chaos we may not agree,” Naseem replied just as sharply, though the ensuing silence seemed to give him occasion for regret. “I was talking purely from a battlefield perspective, but yes, you are right to signal the difficulty in managing an entire campaign of such tactics. That is what has failed here in Pakistan. Which is what I was trying to say before. About the cancer we created and that has consumed us.”
Father looked down into his plate. His agitation was apparent. Ruxana stood and moved her hand gently along his shoulder. “Anyone want more naan?” She was looking at her husband.
“I’m fine,” Naseem said in Punjabi.
“I won’t say no, Rux,” Father said to her as if to oppose him. “They’re too good.” She smiled and turned to me.
“I’m still working on this one,” I said, showing my plate. Ruxana headed for the kitchen, but stopped at the doorway and looked back at us: “Get the arguments out of your system by the time I get back,” she said sweetly.
“No argument here,” Naseem said, forcing a smile. Once she was gone, he turned to Father again: “You see, bhai, the effects of war are always personal, but in fact, war is the least personal thing there is. Which can make it hard to see objectively.” Father was scooping food with his morsel of bread, feigning absorption in his meal. When he looked up, chewing, it was at me. There was a warning in his eyes.
I didn’t heed it.
“What would it mean to manage a campaign like this effectively, Uncle?” I asked.
“Do you know Clausewitz, beta? The trinity of war?” I shrugged. Clausewitz was only a name to me. “Three parts of war: the individual, the circumstance, the collective,” Naseem said, using his middle, ring, and pinkie fingers to count out the categories. “You can reframe each of these in various ways. The individual soldier; the unpredictability of the situation; the state. Or passion, intensity, the emotional case for war; chance—like winter coming too soon for Napoleon’s campaign into Russia; and the reasoned, political will to finance the fight. Mastery of the first two parts of the trinity is what we saw on September eleventh. The last part, the collective—that is what has yet to be properly worked out. Al Qaeda is too dependent on the individual, who in turn is too vulnerable to the variations of chance circumstance. What is needed is a state structure flexible enough to encourage the sort of individual agency and creativity we saw on that day. This is what can transform the innovation into a possibility for collective and political action.”
“Okay. I understand, but what does that really look like?”
“We’ve seen it before. The North Vietnamese. Sparta. But the best example is still the sunnah.” I stole a look at Father, knowing this was likely to get a rise out of him. Sunnah was the word we Muslims used for the customs of the Prophet and his Companions, the traditions outlined by the practices of that first community of believers, whose example was still seen as a viable template for possible utopia in much of the Muslim world. “I’m not referring to it from a religious point of view per se. You can take that or leave it. Here in Pakistan, we tend to take it—but all the same. My point is the vision of a community that does not bifurcate its military and political aspirations. The question of policy will always contain the question of warfare. ‘War is just politics by other means,’ to bring it back to Clausewitz. Yes, of course, the question of warfare is ultimately always subordinate to that of civil order, but it is wrong to think of it as a separate question. You cannot make the world as you wish to see it; you cannot keep it the way you want it, not unless you are willing to fight to do it. That is the meaning of war. And the more a society understands this reality, the better. The human being is a battling creature, beta. That will never change. To pretend otherwise is to delude ourselves. We fight as a way to make meaning of our lives. That is why protecting the citizens against war is always a recipe for long-term civil disintegration. The nation must be brought into the military mind-set. Muhammad, peace be upon him, did this better than anyone ever has. Not only was he a good man, the best of men, he was also a great military man, one of the greatest. The fashions come and go, and right now, it’s not in fashion to think this way. But history is clear. The real leaders, the ones we remember—they are the ones willing and able to lead their societies straight into the fight.” I was tempted by a rejoinder to his mention of Sparta: What had they given the world but their unfortunate victory over Athens? I knew what his reply would be. To him—to so many Muslims—Athens had nothing on Mecca or Medina; for them, Muhammad was Socrates and Pericles and Themistocles all rolled up into one. They saw the Prophet and his first followers as the wisest, most courageous of our species ever to step upon the earth and imagined their assembly—attendant dramas and all—as a polity without peer, worthy of eternal emulation. I knew no occasion to sing these predictable praises would be forgone. I held my tongue.
Taking my silence for encouragement, Naseem cited the great American presidents as proof of his point about the fundamental military basis of great leadership: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt. I recall thinking it was starting to sound rehearsed, as if he’d shaped what he was now saying for other captive American ears before mine. Bear in mind, this was back in 2008, still a full half decade before the eruption onto the international stage of ISIS and its black standard bearing the insignia of the Prophet’s personal seal. In returning to all this, in writing it out, I find myself wishing Naseem and I had been able to have that conversation, the one about ISIS. The principles Naseem was outlining were, of course, central to the disgusting social and military project that would come to bloom in Syria and Iraq like toxic desert dogbane, a demonic, self-referential refraction of that first Muslim community Naseem invoked, the original Companions of the Prophet recast as sex-crazed purveyors of snuff films whom even Rushdie’s satirical genius could not have imagined. That would have been a discussion worth having, but it wasn’t meant to be. I would never see him again. By summer of the following year, Ruxana was dead, and Naseem wouldn’t outlive his wife by much. While taking a walk in the Shimla Hills above the city three months after his wife’s passing, he would succumb to a myocardial infarction. His body, like his wife’s, would be buried the same day—per Muslim custom—meaning no one from my family had time to get back to attend either funeral.