The Long Life of the Frontier Mullah

The news anchor then claimed a scoop, as one of the network's reporters thrust a cellphone into Chaudhry's face. The chief justice spoke into it, and his words reached me and the dozen or so Pakistani cabdrivers staring at a television in a restaurant in New York City. "There is still a long struggle ahead of us," he said. Three men at my table broke into a spontaneous discussion. The newscast's images of reform and hope reminded them of their country's failures: a feudal social system, the rule of the landlords, nearly four decades of military rule, widespread inequality. These were men who worked twelve-hour shifts in their rented cabs and had for years lived apart from their families in Pakistan, to whom they regularly remitted their meager savings. One man talked about the tragedy of the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Another compared prepartition India to a neighborhood: the country had been a cluster of houses owned by people who were related, often sons of the same father. They argued and fought, but at the end of the day they lived together as part of a larger whole. "We didn't even maintain the house we got," the man said.