I didn't buy Musharraf's manifesto, In The Line of Fire. I had little desire to support the dictator by forking over twenty-something dollars, not to mention that much dough for a crap effort. Columbia Libraries did, though, and so I did too, insofar as I supported Musharraf by checking his book out of the library and reading a chunk of it while on vacation.

A few superficial sort-of conclusions, since I'm not yet halfway through: Musharraf is a terribly bad writer, plagued by an arbitrary mind. If there could be a computer program written to translate text into Musharrafism, perhaps a sample passage could read like this:

I really loved being in the Army. It was an immense challenge, and demanded constant self-reflection, which I'm good at it, because I'm such a sexy fat little man. Then there was that great time me and Bunty ate kabobs that we found near the movie theatre. The Army is not, in other words, for everyone, for not everyone can be so hard on himself. 

Musharraf is also an astonishingly insecure person, who needs to tell us, far too often, how tough, brave, resilient, action-hero-ish, hard-working, indomitable and popular he is. After all, it's not enough to win at rigged referenda and speaking the language the richest minority of your subject population does. And he is, worst of all, ashamed of being Pakistani, which is the worst characteristic of a dictator.

Like so many others among Pakistan's corrupt, or simply authoritarian, elite, Musharraf readily imbibes and unquestioningly constipates himself on half-truths and convenient fictions, designed to convey an acceptable Pakistaniness. To help ease his military mind's clearly successful brainwashing (see also 'ghusl of the neuron'), he remains deliberately ignorant of India, and that Pakistan is a Muslim state with strong Indic roots and realities. How could he accept that? To him, Pakistan has to be the "Other," that to justify his military's obsession with defeating and one-upping India. But not an Islamist other, an acceptably soft, smooth Muslim nationalism, the laxative of Islamism.

Better to call it "In the Bubble," for Musharraf's worldview is at times as incorrect, stereotypical, pathetic and rotund as the middling mullah's. Take this precious fiction, from page 19, the chapter teasingly titled: "Turkey: The Formative Years":

Tukey and Pakistan have many things in common--first and foremost, Islam. Just as Pakistan was a new country in 1947, Ataturk's country was a "New Turkey" ... Kemal had saved Turkey from balkanization and obscurantism.

Actually, Ataturk was a dictator. Like you! Score two for the in-common column. Turkey's transition from dictatorship to democracy has always been helped by that segment of its population which was not embarrassed of being Anatolian, in the fullest sense of the word, and only after Ismet died and one-party rule went the way of the Taliban did Turkey become the "enlightened" state Musharraf claimed Ataturk made it. Even now, it is the Islamists and the Kurds who represent Turkey's possibility of becoming a true democratic, moderate, confident state: It is the Turkish military that is obscurantist and dogmatic. But, of course, it takes a dictator to not see a dictator.

Much of Pakistan's cuisine originated in Turkey.

No, it didn't. Much of Pakistan's cuisine is South Asian, and is frankly speaking the same as Indian cuisine: We have peculiarities, and the influences of Baloch (Iranian) and Pashtun (Afghan) cultures, too, but chicken tikka masala, the samosa, gulab jamun, lassi, ruh afza, daal roti, channe, these are not Ankaran imports. I'm hungry.

Much of Pakistan's cuisine originated in Turkey. So does Urdu, our national language.

No, Urdu did not originate in Turkey. Musharraf's proof? That "Ordu" is a Turkish word. Good God, are you serious? Get this: The Sanskrit term for the Indus was Sindh(u), or "River," leading to the Persian Hindi and the Greek India, from which we derive terms such as Hindi, Hindu, Indus, India, etc. Does that therefore mean India is a Greek country, because it is officially known as "India" and not "Sindhia" or "Aryavarta"?

Urdu is a beautiful, rich language, with a strong influence of Persian and Arabic, and little if any Turkish influence -- especially the Turkish spoken in Turkey (see also, 'ghusl of the language'). Urdu is grammatically Indic, and has far more in common with Bangla, with Bihari, with Hindi, with Punjabi and Sindhi, than it does with Turkish in any of its Central Asian registers. (Or even Persian.) Its high literature does ooze a certain Persian joie de shairi, but that cultural influence is from one Aryan language to another. This is like reading a history book by a mullah: "Pakistan was founded in 711 by the Arabs."

No. No. No. You were not elected into power, and you cannot write, and you have to stop doing sajdah to other dictators. At least don't be so obvious about your obsessions, Musharraf Sahib. The country is listening.