So why the long face, Mr Ahsan?For one, rather like Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) in the film Gladiator, Mr Ahsan may have made himself a little too popular for his caesar's liking.
A throng of thousands presses in from the sides, waving Pakistani flags, PPP flags, the flags of all Pakistan's put-upon political parties.Mr Ahsan suffered that day.
Related: Three Muslim students dead in North Carolina shooting as suspect arrested Ahsan Zahid told Reuters that earlier in the week a man with his face covered was seen behaving suspiciously on the premises, and on Thursday someone drove by the centre and shouted mocking phrases in Arabic.
Ahsan Zahid, son of the mosque's imam, said that he was told the fire was started deliberately.
Speaking from a secret place, Ahsan Iqbal, the mouthpiece of Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) party, claimed that as many as 2,400 of his party workers had been rounded up.General Musharraf calls this a state of emergency: a constitutional provision that allows for the suspension of some rights.
So why, sitting in his charmingly chaotic chambers in Lahore, amid stacks of paper smelling faintly of mildew in the monsoon air, does Mr Ahsan look so glum?First, some background.
Mr Ahsan acted for Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, in a legal stand-off with General Pervez Musharraf that may have changed Pakistani history.
This week the widow of a Muslim politician called Ahsan Jafri, whose limbs and genitals were hacked off and the rest of him burned alive, was due to file a petition in the Supreme Court, accusing Mr Modi of mass murder.
What is certain, however, is that even as Mr Ahsan was denouncing the "dictatorship" of General Musharraf, Ms Bhutto was negotiating a power-sharing deal with him.Here is a glory of Pakistani politics.
It was slow to recognise the scale of the disaster and to respond to it, and was guilty, says Mr Ahsan, of "colossal mismanagement" of aid distribution.Samina Ahmed, of the International Crisis Group, a research and lobbying organisation, says the army has only itself to blame, having centralised the relief and rehabilitation efforts under its own command.
