Identity

I could not stop staring at a picture on the front page of yesterday's Financial Times. It shows two men in their forties, bespectacled, struggling with two policemen. One of the men has his arm around the other; a policeman is pulling at his other arm, as if he means to drag him away. The scene is Pakistan, probably Lahore; the two men in glasses are probably lawyers. They are part of the protests against the imposition on Saturday night of martial law. As I stared and stared I thought to myself, "Those two men are me and Howard." It would be easy for me and Howard to be that outraged, that angry. And we have been out on the streets to protest our leaders' lawless behavior, but we've been lucky, and policemen have yet to try to drag us away.

I tried to find the photo on the Internet, but I failed. The one I present here is a weak approximation.