KHAN-i-KHANAN FINDS HIS JAN-i-JANAN (Dawn Magazine, Friday, September 30, 1994)

Dawn Magazine, Friday, September 30, 1994

KHAN-i-KHANAN FINDS HIS JAN-i-JANAN

By Adil Ahmad

It is a solemn moment. The joining together in sacred matrimony of two larger-than-life people.

Imran, the warrior Khan from the refreshingly mysterious land of the Indus that is Pakistan, has taken a 'prisoner'. Jemima, beautiful, fiery Jemima, a princess amongst princesses from Great Britain.

Adding a further mystique to an already fairy tale setting is the bonding together in the eyes of Almighty Allah of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths as the Christian-Jew in Jemima relents to the Muslim in Haqqa.

The world watches spellbound this practical, exhilarating expression of truce. Jemima is intelligent, very upper curst, and educated in the finest schools in the West. She has observed Islam, and studied it, and found solace in it for her tortured Western soul.

The schoolboy from Aitchison College, painfully shy and tongue-tied in the presence of women, has come a long, well-documented way. Imran Ahmed, as he was then known, had fairly serious communication problems which stemmed in great part from lack of opportunity to communicate in an orthodox and conservative environment.

As a day student he had more opportunity than the boarders, but all that got wasted on a lad completely intent on his cricket. Cricket has compensated Imran generously for his devotion. How and when he made the transition from a shy boy to a suave seducer would make for an interesting story sometime. Thanks to cricket, however, Imran would never be the same again, and never again would the women of the world scream and swoon the way they did for the 'king'.

Talk about turning a new leaf has been rife in the upper echelons of high society for about as long as high society has existed. Imran gave practical expression to that talk. Having checked out life on the swinging side with remarkable thoroughness, his drums began beating a different beat which made for some considerable skepticism amongst people grown old on skepticism. People scorned for he appeared to them in the guise of a Don Quixote charging the windmills.

A high-tech cancer hospital did appear a bit excessive in a nation which could not even provide basic health care to many of its citizens. Imran stood firm on his ground, and his personal trauma fuelled the fires of his passion, driving him on relentlessly as he proved to the world that he had indeed turned a new leaf, and that Islam and Pakistan, and everything Pakistani was now his all encompassing passion. The skeptics were beginning to relent when lo and behold Imran sauntered past in trendy Western clothes with a glamorous Sloane Ranger on his elbow, permanently this time.

The world press is out in force once more and the sabres are rattling. The king has dealt his subjects a potent double fist this time. The paparazzi reels with shock and disbelief at Imran. Not only is he breaking his vows of bachelorhood and incurring the combined wrath of all his former conquests, but look who is at the receiving end of his new vows.

From international jetsetter and champion of glamorous causes like the Brazilian rain forest, to anti-cancer crusader, to uncompromising propagator of Islam, Imran's incredible roller-coaster appears on the surface to have rolled back to where it all started from - Annabel's of London, haunt of the Concorde jet set.

Only Imran comes not to boogy this time around. He is oblivious to all who swoon in his path. The king has finally been felled. Jemima has jimmied the heart-throb’s heart wide open, and fond inside a dupatta, a shalwar and kameez, and Islam. The king is no more. Long live the queen.

Imran has found unreserved endorsement from his mother-in-law, and while Sir James Goldsmith may not be in the habit of marrying Indians, red or otherwise, Pakistanis are a breed apart and eminently acceptable. About the poor girl being less than half the king's age, it is rumoured that she is possessed with a very high IQ, and a fondness for all thing outdoors. Unfortunately, that is not the only thing that is causing a sensation. The veil has been lifted on very intimate, personal detail.

This is one fiery princess that the king has married. We are witnessing a breathtaking, awe-inspiring transformation. Neither the Lone Ranger nor the Sloane Ranger needed to do this, the life-styles of the rich and famous being 'supremely satisfying'. To execute a deliberate volte-face into "traditionaldom" and court the microscopic scrutiny of a ruthless world press can either be attributed to a case of utter madness, or an awesome premeditated game plan.

Having run straight into the face of resistance and controversy in his effort to change the world at the local level through the sanctioned system, Imran has unleashed his global personage with the same thunder and lightening which characterised his spells on the crease not so long ago. Imran is thumbing his nose at a world which has ridiculed his ambitions to serve suffering humanity at the grassroots level, and spited him for calling a spade a spade.

The world press is chattering feverishly about the treasure trove of sensational news, and holding aloft one gem after the other as proof that the immortals are really very mortal. And mortal they are and have never denied to be. Proof of their 'immortality', however, lies in their willingness to shed their jealously guarded privacy and lead from the front an obvious crusade. Whether Sir James Goldsmith will have anything to do with bankrolling that crusade is the seven hundred and ninety million pound question which remains to be answered.

But the priceless Jemima is ours, and as Pakistan's newest princess she has her work cut out for her. Imran Khan, the Khan-i-Khanan of world cricket, is alive and sparking once more. The world has yet to comprehend the enormity of his move. At a time of escalating religious tensions the world over, Imran's high profile marriage to Haiqa comes as a potent reminder that there is still hope for 'lost causes' like reconciliation, harmony and peaceful coexistence arrived at through intellectual compatibility. Haiqa wore a dupatta and shalwar and kameez for the nikah in Paris, in a country whose Muslim population is under siege because of its distinctive cultural beliefs which lay an emphasis on the headscarf.

Imran is out there proving his points and this one memorandum of understanding (MoU) appears backed with action on the ground. And the reality on the ground is that if Haiqa is half the Jemima the world is being led to believe, then the people of Pakistan are in for the treat of their lives as the king and his queen regale the masses with acts of courage in the face of daunting odds. Two splendid specimens of the idle rich and the lucratively unemployed rising to the occasion in the name of Allah. So very inspiring and thoroughly stimulating. Current royalty please make room.