Two States Born from “Non-Existence”

Israel, Pakistan, Palestine… and the Mysterious Whispers of “BaBa Tal”

Night had already settled over Islamabad like a heavy, thoughtful curtain that refuses to leave the stage. The city lights outside my window shimmered with a tired brilliance, as if even illumination had begun to question its purpose in a world increasingly governed by noise rather than meaning. The day had been consumed by breaking news, geopolitical analysis, war maps, missile trajectories, diplomatic statements, and the endless churn of interpretation that never quite arrived at understanding. Somewhere between information and exhaustion, the mind begins to lose its boundaries, and history no longer feels like the past but like something still breathing in the room.
I was arranging notes on Israel, Iran, Palestine, Pakistan, and the shifting geometry of global power when I first heard it. A faint metallic sound, almost like memory striking memory. A chiming that did not belong to the clock or the wind. It grew slowly, as if it was approaching not through space but through time itself. I did not move immediately because I already knew what it meant.
“BaBa Tal” had arrived.
He stood at the doorway in his familiar deep navy robe, the small, medium, and large brass bells hanging from his frame like fragments of an ancient language. He did not enter like a guest; he entered like a question. His presence did not occupy space; it rearranged it. The air itself seemed to pause in respect or uncertainty. I gestured toward the open kitchen and offered coffee. He declined with a gentle movement of his head and sat down without sound, as though even silence had become obedient in his presence.
Outside, the world continued its conflicts. Inside, something older than conflict was about to speak.
The modern Middle East is often described in terms of strategy, borders, and military capability, yet beneath these layers lies something far more persistent: fear. Israel today lives inside a complex architecture of insecurity despite its technological and military dominance. The state of Israel exists not only as a political entity but as a psychological condition shaped by centuries of exile, persecution, and the permanent memory of vulnerability. The leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu represents a political response to this condition, where security is not a policy but an existential language. Internal divisions, judicial disputes, protest movements, and the psychological burden of continuous conflict with Gaza and regional actors such as Iran have created a society that is simultaneously powerful and unsettled.
Yet Israel is not alone in this condition of unresolved identity. Pakistan, too, is a state born from historical rupture, ideological conviction, and civilizational redefinition. Its relationship with Israel is not based on direct confrontation but on perception, symbolism, and emotional geography. For many Pakistanis, Israel is not merely a country but a representation of occupation, Palestine, and global power asymmetry. For many Israelis, Pakistan appears as a distant but strategically significant nuclear Muslim state embedded in a wider Islamic geopolitical imagination. In both cases, knowledge is partial, and perception often replaces understanding.
“BaBa Tal” raised his head slowly, as if listening to something beyond the room itself. His voice came quietly, but it carried the weight of centuries rather than sound.
“Bacha… do not forget, Pakistan and Israel both emerged from ‘non-existence’ into political existence.”
I looked at him, unsure whether he was speaking metaphorically or historically. He continued without waiting.
“These were not ancient states resting peacefully upon the map of history. They are modern political realities shaped by trauma, ideology, and civilizational reordering. Just as the State of Madinah emerged as a new moral and social order in history, modern states too emerge from transformations of identity and collective imagination.”
The comparison was not equivalence; it was structural reflection. He was pointing not to sameness but to the phenomenon of political emergence itself, where ideas become geography and memory becomes borders.
He leaned slightly forward.
“Write this down,” he said softly, “Pakistan and Israel, in their current form, are not under existential erasure. They are under interpretive struggle.”
Before I could respond, he continued.
“But understanding a state is not the same as agreeing with its actions.”
Silence deepened in the room again. The world outside remained unchanged, but inside, categories were shifting.
Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza, the unresolved question of West Bank territories, settlement expansion, and the return of 1949 boundary debates represent not only geopolitical disputes but unresolved moral fractures in international consciousness. Palestine remains at the centre of a historical wound that has not been allowed to close. Gaza is not only geography; it is a condition of endurance under continuous pressure. The West Bank is not only land; it is a contested archive of competing claims to history and legitimacy.
“BaBa Tal: stood up slowly and moved toward the door, then paused, as if remembering something that could not be forgotten.
He turned back.
“And remember this as well…” Even the ruling Hashemite family of Jordan was not originally born from the soil over which — the land of historical Palestine — it rules today. They came from the Arabian heartlands during the post-Ottoman restructuring of the Middle East, when colonial powers redrew maps and redistributed authority across lands that had not been asked.”
His gaze was calm but unyielding.
“Never study this region through geography alone. Study it through displacement, memory, imposed sovereignty, and the long afterlife of empire.”
Then he added, almost as a whisper dissolving into air:
“Empires do not only redraw borders. They redraw meaning.”
In that moment, the room felt less like a space and more like a threshold.
The conversation between Pakistan and Israel, if it is ever to move beyond abstraction, can not be built on denial or romanticization. It must confront reality without surrendering ethics. The Qur’an reminds:
“And these days, We alternate among the people.” (3:140)
Power is not static. History does not freeze for any nation. What rises eventually rotates into what falls, not as punishment, but as structure.
Western thought echoes this instability of meaning. As T. S. Eliot wrote, between idea and reality falls the shadow. That shadow is where modern geopolitics exists — not in slogans, but in the distance between belief and consequence.
“BaBa Tal” had returned to silence. The bells on his robe moved gently as he stepped toward the door. His presence, however, did not leave; it only changed form.
Before disappearing completely, he spoke once more.
“Fear can unite nations temporarily. But only truth can sustain them permanently.”
The door closed softly behind him.
I remained seated for a long time, listening to the absence of sound rather than sound itself. Outside, Islamabad continued its ordinary existence, unaware that inside one small room, the world had briefly been rearranged into questions rather than answers.
Israel remains powerful yet psychologically burdened. Pakistan remains ideologically confident yet strategically uncertain. Palestine remains historically central yet politically fragmented. And between them all lies a world still struggling to decide whether it wants peace as a slogan or peace as a structure.
Perhaps that is the real question history is asking now.
Not who wins.
But whether anyone still knows how to see reality without turning it into myth or denial.
And somewhere in that unresolved space, the bells of “BaBa Tal” continue to echo — not as sound, but as a reminder.