Rich Man Poor Man: A True Story.

Syed Sharfuddin

In a colony of the poor there was a house whose inhabitants had a great fight one day. Their family members had bruises, broken arms and limbs and suffered damage to property as a result of the fight. The neighbours did not know what happened. Everyone thought it was a crazy family, always fighting with itself. Had the family been smart, it would have taken the neighbours in confidence that were all very poor like them and formed one big scattered tribe

The real story was that among the grown up children of that household there was one son who objected to his father going to the house of a rich man who lived in the colony of the rich. The son told his father that the rich man had bad intentions against his maid who was also poor like them and came from their tribe. But the father said he could not do so because the rich man gave him food and if he got annoyed, the other rich persons in the colony of the rich will get annoyed with him and he would get no alms from anyone. The son disagreed with his father. He reminded his father that there were other rich people in that colony who belonged to his father’s tribe. They might prevail on the bad rich man or, worse he could go to his tribes’ people for alms.

The son believed it was not his father’s issue but a wider issue of the poor having dignity and respect. If the father raised a voice against the rich man’s bad intentions, other poor people in the neighbourhood would join his father and the rich will be forced to censure their colleague and ask him to stop misbehaving. But the father would not give in and the son took it upon himself to fight for this lone cause, which he thought was not his own but everyone’s cause in his poor colony and tribe.

That’s how and why the fight started within the household. Most family members joined the father. Some supported the prodigal son; others stood on the margins and preferred to remain silent spectators. The youngsters in the family were too timid to tell anyone outside what was the real cause of the fight. They either blamed the father or the son. But the father had more supporters among the young of the household because he shared the alms he got from the filthy rich man with everyone in the household to the best of his ability and compulsions.

The sad story of the TLP versus the government, which is being blacked out by the news hungry TV channels for fear of PEMRA is exactly like the tory of rich man poor man. The household where the fight broke out damaging and bruising its own family members is Pakistan. The father is the government. His main supporter is the mother who is civil society. She hates the poor and likes glamour and good company. The other sons of the father are different political parties who have their own axe to grind on everything controversial in the household. They are hopeless. The TLP is the rebel son who thinks the social order must change to bring respect and honour for the tribe. The colony of the poor is developing countries, countries emerging from conflict and facing disasters and economic crisis. Most of them have Muslims majority populations. The tribe is the tribe of Islam. The rich man with bad intentions for his maid is France. The maid is the Muslim minority in France. The colony of the rich is G7 countries. They always stand with their rich colleagues in every situation. The young in the family are the media.

The timing of the TLP protest coincides with a legislative bill in France, which seeks to ban hijab for Muslims French girls under 18 attending government schools. It is discriminatory because when it comes to wearing masks to protect against Covid-19 even though it hides the nose, cheeks, lips and chin of the wearer, it is not a security threat; whereas wearing a hijab for religious reasons is not only a security threat but a threat to the liberal way of life of the French people as represented by their government who hold the worst human rights record in the history of colonisation in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. There is some strong racist mentality at work in the upper echelons of the government in France but no one wants to see it or write about it in the poor man’s household.

The argument of the father has some weight that if he objects to the rich man’s misdemeanour against his maid, he will be told this is none of his business. Moreover, the rich households will stop giving him alms, which pay his bills. The son is also right that unless someone speaks up, the rich man will carryon dishonouring his maid who is from the same tribe as the poor. There have been many previous instances where the rich man has got away with similar advances. If no one takes a stand, he will be putting novel demands on the father before giving him alms. Who knows how humiliating those demands would be if the filthy rich man is allowed to proceed unhindered in pursuit of his lust. The people to blame in this brawl are the young of the household (media) who are not reporting the full story to the neighbours (outside world). They are only blaming the son (TLP) for being belligerent and disobedient to the father (government). If they told the neighbours about the rich man (France) and his doings (hatred of Islam and its followers), the poor (Muslim countries) would know the full picture. The poor are also illiterate and scared. As long as they remain disunited, uninformed and exploited, nothing will change. The rebel son might give up and become like the father or his other worldly wise siblings or leave the household and immigrate to the colony of the rich to reform the system from within, which is also the hope of the maid.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Translate »