Jamsheed Kaikobad Ardeshir Marker, from a distinguished Parsi family of Quetta, first became known as a cricket commentator, together with Omar Qureshi, during the 1950s. His diplomatic career began a decade later, in 1964, when Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed, under President Ayub Khan, offered him an ambassador's post in Africa. Marker chose Ghana because he thought he could get to know Kwame Nkrumah, the charismatic new pan-African leader.
In his book Pakistan: A dream gone sour (1997), Marker's friend and fellow civil servant Roedad Khan recalled that they had both been attracted to Marxism while studying at Lahore's Forman Christian College. If true, the process of disenchantment in Marker would have begun in Ghana and continued in the years that followed, culminating in the career of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In this new memoir, Marker is scathing in his assessment of Nkrumah's legacy: 'Nkrumah's policies, an amalgam of dynamic idealism, vainglorious self-promotion and ruthless repression, constituted a vivid enigma whose early impact continues to resonate on the African continent.'
His description of Nkrumah was to fit a lot of the other socialist leaders of Africa, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Julius Nyerere, and, of course, Bhutto, under whom Marker would serve later. Bhutto took over Pakistan after the 1970 elections, whereupon he nationalised the economy, declaring socialism his political ideology. Without making too much an issue of it, Marker lays down the thesis for Pakistan's early crisis when he surveys the Foreign Office he joined, with Bhutto as foreign minister: 'The policy orientation of the Foreign Ministry was more than a few points to the left of the centre, and … it was being pushed further in that direction by Bhutto, despite Ayub's reluctance and disinclination, and notwithstanding the undisguised suspicion of the Americans.'
After Ghana, Marker was sent to Romania and, thereafter, was given his first major mission in Moscow in 1969. The following year, elections led to a national campaign for independence in then-East Pakistan, in which Moscow sided with India. In Quiet Diplomacy, the chapters on the USSR show Marker in his true colours under pressure, standing up to the Soviet leadership and defending a dictator back home who had mishandled the uprising in East Pakistan. Indeed, Marker was the best ambassador to have in Moscow while losing the war in East Pakistan. His circle of diplomatic friends was wide and his personal conduct was immaculate, complete with a well-known admiration for Russian literature and music. Everybody in the embassy thought he would be drummed out, but just the opposite happened. When he left the Soviet Union in 1972 for Canada, he was made a permanent citizen of Moscow by a visibly moved Soviet bureaucracy.