Zaman Bark’s Bitchcraft

The PTI has remained part of the entire system based on the 2024 system, drawn every benefit from it and yet has tasered it with the lash of its bitching tongue.

When a seemingly aggravated friend described the PTI’s threats of yet another “final protest plan” as “Zaman Bark” and titled the party’s politics as “Bitchcraft”, I was at once amused and offended. Amused because of the brilliant neologism (word coinage): Zaman Bark is a one-alphabet alteration in the name of the place (Zaman Park) where Imran grew up and now keeps family residence; Bitchcraft uses the imagery of sorcery, cross-breeds it with extreme hatefulness to summarise the PTI’s singular competence: trolling. I was offended because he, a good man, sounded so much a PTI wala. But he then explained to me that he wasn’t foul-mouthing the party but only capturing the spirit of what it has come to represent.

Apparently, his lexicalization was triggered by the ugly episode the PTI’s attack brigade had enacted in the UK targeting retd CJ Qazi Faez Isa and the sordid social media show the party put on to make the sad videos go viral. That, my friend said, was the sum total of the trajectory of the party and the character of its hounds of hell (his expression not mine). I must admit: he does make a strong point.

The term “Zaman Bark” refers to the ugly culture of loud threats PTI leaders are now totally immersed in. They want to “ bring the house down” every second week of every month. Every time they open their mouths, all you hear is “funerals”, “blood”, “fire”, “destruction”, “hangings”, “attack”, “shalwars”, “dupattas”, “zilaat” (extreme insult)’ “graves” and other such morbid references. They openly rejoice in humiliating “the others” and vie with each other in smearing the names of “enemies”.

Imran Khan himself is the king of horrendous hooting. He did it even when he was the prime minister. Not a day passed without him mocking, ridiculing and insulting his opponents threatening them with impending annihilation at his hands. Out of power, his temper had no limits in flaring. In jail, he hurls tantrums and volley of abuses at the cameras behind whose lenses he thinks sit his tormentors watching him live. He remains the high priest of low talk.

His party now embodies that spirit, and relentlessly deploys its letters to wound everyone—judges, journalists, generals, lawyers, politicians. Everyone is so converted to this abusive sound and fury that even in their engagement with each other they use the same language. Fawad Chaudhary (FC) the other day called Rauf Hasan ‘BC’. He did not mean Before Christ. He meant exactly what his party calls everyone who is seen to be not aligned with them. This culture of threats and abuse and is what my friend calls Zaman Bark.

Bitchcraft is not a reference to a bitchy witch. It is a title that highlights the craft of bitching about everything under the sun and creating so much fuss that the opponents are forced to go on the backfoot. The PTI has played the “bitching” part beautifully. It has objected to every appointment, scandalized every step the government and the Establishment has made and turned to trash every claim about democracy and human rights, economic revival, foreign investment that has come from the other side of the aisle. Brilliantly, it has remained part of the entire system based on the 2024 election, drew every benefit from it and yet has tasered it with the lash of its bitching tongue. From 9th May to the 26th amendment, nothing has survived its spitefulness. No individual or office bearer who has dared to differ with its narrative has been saved from its onslaught.

The effectiveness of this policy of knocking opponents to the ground through bitch-attacks makes it a true craft that for now only the PTI possesses at a mass scale, far surpassing the prowess of the Establishment that once had a total monopoly over defining its opponents in dark colours and then hanging them from the highest pole of public humiliation. The PTI’s Bitchcraft combined with Zaman Bark has certainly kept its politics alive even though the cost is total destruction of civility in national discourse. Using both tools effectively, the party so far has blunted the Establishment’s bite. When I see things in this light, I think my friend was paying the PTI a backhanded compliment when he described the essence of its political character by calling it Zaman Bark and Bitchcraft.