Marion Molteno - The festival that nearly didn’t happen
Easter Sunday in
Lahore, Pakistan – families out for a day in a park … then the world
changed. Yet another set of tragedies, for a society that already has had
so many. People don’t know what to do with their anger. My friends’
FaceBook pages echo their misery. Don’t pray for Lahore, says
one, fight against hateful religious ideology. Someone
puts up a photo of a little boy – her child’s son, gone. Another is
visiting the children in hospital, struggling for their lives. She is giving
them toys her friends have donated; hugs and smiles in amidst the
suffering. There’s a photo of young men crowding a hospital
entrance, wanting to give blood.
Five weeks earlier I
was in Lahore for a literary festival, along with a hundred thousand other
people. Now, when we remember it, it will always be in the
shadow of what came after. But I am putting up the reflections I
wrote about the festival as a tribute to the remarkable people who created
a space for tolerance and debate, and will continue to do so. I am
posting it just as I wrote it before that bomb exploded; including the
prophetic words from the poet Faiz with which the blog ends.
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I sit on the platform
of the Lahore Literary Festival, looking out over the faces in this packed
marquee – maybe 700 people? In the UK if 20 people come to hear me talk about
my books, that’s a modestly good turn out; I’d be delighted with 40. Here the faces
crowd before me, there’s a buzz of animated talk, waiting for things to begin.
What will I say, to reward the attention of so many people?
The festival is free –
this too is different from any I’ve been part of in the UK. Over the course of
a weekend a hundred thousand of Lahore’s people have come to listen to writers
and artists, journalists and political figures, older people reminiscing and
younger ones arguing. People have had the date in their diaries for months.
It’s more than a book festival, it’s a celebration of all that books can open
up to us. Debates range from highly charged geo-political issues to novels
about personal relationships, from innovation in art to the need to preserve
Lahore’s architectural heritage. There are film actors, museum curators, a
drama production, an evening of Qav’vali singing – sufi-inspired music, a
tradition that goes back 700 years. In the grounds of this hotel that acts as
venue bookstalls have been set up, groups of people browse, families sit on the
grass, young friends meet. Volunteers from local schools are everywhere in
their t-shirts with the festival logo, guiding people, offering help. Speakers
have flown in from 40 countries apart from Pakistan, there are 123 altogether
who will take part — And it nearly didn’t
happen. Back track —
It’s two days before
the festival is due to start, with participants already flying in, and the
government of the Punjab tells the organisers to cancel it. Speakers who have
not yet arrived must be asked to cancel flights. The official reason? The
authorities cannot guarantee security. Well, no one doubts that Pakistan has
security issues but it’s hard not to believe there are other agendas here –
political differences? personal jealousies? The festival organisers come from
influential families and have secured wide sponsorship from businesses, media
corporations, some international cultural sources. The arts need patrons – they
always have done – and you don’t run a free-to-all festival without someone
having to pick up the bill. Many who have helped inspire the festival are
active citizens also in other ways that might have got under the skin of the
authorities, like protesting the bulldozing of heritage buildings to make way
for a new metro line. Is this a ploy to demonstrate who really holds power?
By evening – who knows
what negotiations it has taken – a compromise has been reached. The festival
organisers are told they can hold a reduced festival: two days instead of three
and they will have to find a new venue. This is bizarre – if security cover can
be provided for two days, why not three? And if not in the arts centre
where it was planned to happen, why in a new venue, which turns out to be a
hotel just across the road? Later Mohammed Hanif, author of A Case of
Exploding Mangoes, says, To be a satirist in this country you don’t
have to make anything up. You just tell it straight.
I can just about
imagine what the organisers are going through. For myself, I am just grateful
that I was already here so no one could tell me not to come.
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So now – while the
festival team work into the small hours adjusting the programme, those of us
already here have a couple of days’ unplanned holiday, in an interesting city
and in excellent company. I share a breakfast table with Muneeza Shamsie, who
has edited collections of Pakistani women’s writing in English, and Claire
Armitstead, literary editor of The Guardian in the UK, women whose writing I
know but had not thought I would ever meet. There’s nothing we can do to help
sort out the problems so we just go with the flow, and this particular flow
carries us through a series of delightful encounters. Claire and I happen to be
in the foyer when one of the festival organisers comes in, checking lists. She
is about to go to the museum where an art historian from India is giving a talk
about Pahari miniature paintings – would we like to go? Sure we would! But by
the time we get there the talk is over and everyone is having tea and delicious
snacks and mingling to chat.
We mingle too – and I discover that hosting the
event is the artist Salima Hashmi, whom I have met some months ago in London.
She is the daughter of Faiz, Urdu’s best loved 20th C poet, and I had contacted
her because I wanted to use my translation of a poem by Faiz in my novel Uncertain
Light. Salima says she is about to take Dr Goswamy, the art historian, to
visit a family museum of Faiz’s letters, books, photos – would we like to come?
So off we go in her car and spend an absorbing hour wandering through Faiz-ghar
(ghar means ‘house’.) The archive of photos give a sense of Faiz’s
wide international contacts – he was not just a great poet but a left-wing
political activist who travelled, met writers elsewhere, addressed trade union
conferences. He was at odds with the Pakistan authorities and spent years in
prison, from where some of his most moving poems were written; and later more
years in exile. I come away with a complete edition of his poems and a
DVD documentary of his life.
We have been here
hardly a day and already we are experiencing that complex mix of
characteristics that strike a new-comer— the easy warmth of hospitality, the
cultural richness, the background of political tension. There’s singing coming
from one room – a tabla player, children learning Hindustani classical music.
Faizghar is a cultural project that tries in a small way to uphold the values
that Faiz believed in – specifically, they are producing children’s books that
teach a respect for human rights and tolerance of diversity. In Pakistan today
people have paid with their lives for upholding these simple values.
Five years
ago Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab, was murdered for speaking out against
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that have been frequently used to persecute
Christians. The story hit the world’s headlines, along with the almost more
shocking fact that many feted his murderer as a hero. Now – looking at old
family photographs – I discover that Salman Taseer was Salima’s cousin; and the
story didn’t stop there. A few months after his murder, his son Shahbaz was
kidnapped. As we stand here looking at pictures of them all as children,
Shahbaz is still missing. The hostage-taking
which is the pivotal event in Uncertain Light might seem to
readers elsewhere to be melodramatic. Here it is a constant possibility; in
this family, an ongoing reality.
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Friday. This should
have been the first day of the festival, and the new programme has arrived in
my email inbox. Of the planned 99 sessions, 45 are no longer there. Some have
been combined, many more have disappeared. The devastating reduction is not
just because of losing a day, but because the new venue can’t host as many
simultaneous sessions. I scan quickly to see what has become of my sessions. I
was originally down to do three – as a novelist, on translations of Ghalib, and
chairing a panel on education. Which of these have made it into the new
programme? None. A stab of disappointment – to come all this way – but the
feeling is momentary. How gutted the organisers must be feeling at watching
their months of preparation unravel. My own loss seems not particularly
consequential. At least I am here.
With all their
logistical challenges, the organisers are still giving thought to looking after
us, and two young women arrive with drivers and cars to take us to see whatever
we want of Lahore, and the day proceeds like yesterday, a series of unexpected
and delightful encounters. A petite, lively woman in her 80s comes out of the
hotel to join us: it’s Madhur Jaffrey, whom the programme describes as
’The Woman Who Took Curry Global.’ With her is a tall American, her husband.
He’s quiet, and I wonder if he is slightly overwhelmed by being with so many
chatty women. As we wait to set off I ask about his own line of work. He says,
self-deprecating, ‘I guess you could say I spent a lot of my life trying to
master the violin.’ I sympathise – I’m a late starter on the violin and it is
the most difficult instrument. I discover later that he was in the New York
Philharmonic.
Rishm, one of our
guides, is co-ordinating volunteers for the festival. In her day-job she is a
manager in a group of independent schools, trying to inculcate a love of
reading at an early age. It’s the basis of everything in education, she says –
and it’s older pupils from her schools who will be volunteers at the festival.
With Rishm is her friend Saba, co-opted for the day to help take us around. She
is a professor of art in Dubai, back visiting Lahore where she grew up. She
points out buildings to us as we pass – there’s the Art College where she
studied, one of the few places where they teach the skill of miniature painting
– with techniques developed centuries ago to achieve the incredibly fine
detail. You start by catching a squirrel, she says, and laying out a few hairs
from its tail in length order, to end up with a one-hair fine brush. Now she
and Madhur are talking about the merits of different kinds of shawls, and I
realise that too is a science in itself. Later when I read Madhur’s memoir of
childhood, Climbing the Mango Trees, I will find a vivid
description of her mother taking hours to choose a shawl from the array that
the shawl-wala had spread out on the verandah of their house in Delhi.
We arrive at the Shahi
Qila, a vast 16th C fort-cum-Mughal palace, where we are adopted by a guide. Do
we need a guide? Saba and Rishm are doing such an excellent job. But his
persistence vanquishes them, so he comes with us and plies us with memorised
dates and names of rulers that we can’t take in, while we wander looking at
timeless views framed by stone arches. Saba and I look regretfully at the
decaying tile-work and murals. There’s no culture of preservation here, she
says. I have heard there’s been a wonderful restoration done – with Norwegian
funding – on the Shahi Hamam, the 17th C public baths in the old Walled City.
We fantasize about what we would do if we were the custodians of this
fort-palace, and had some funding.
A call comes on my
mobile from Shamain, who has the unenviable job of reorganising the festival
programme. They’ve been trying to work out the best slot to put me in. What
about one of the panel discussions on fiction – ‘The Passion for Love
Literature’ – would that fit my novel? Perfect.
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Saturday morning – the
logistical miracle has been achieved, the revised programme printed, and people
start streaming in. Through the security checks they come, tens of thousands
crowding the hotel foyers and grounds. You would hardly know the festival team
have had a fraught time and are probably sleep-deprived – they are everywhere,
welcoming, making sure everything happens according to the constantly
having-to-be-revised plan. Crowds jostle to find a place in the opening
session, where the Indian actress, Sharmila Tagore – at 71 looking still
serenely beautiful – gives a thoughtful retrospect of her career in film,
starting with Satyajit Ray films & becoming Bollywood’s most loved heroine.
Then the stimulus multiplies – there are four simultaneous sessions, two in the
hotel’s large reception rooms, two in marquees in its grounds. There are full
audiences in each, and still the crowds mill about in all the spaces in
between. The conversations I overhear among the young are in a lively mixture –
English with Urdu words thrown in, Urdu with English words. I have learnt
Urdu but have never lived in an Urdu speaking society and it’s pleasurable just
moving around the crowds, listening in.
I dip into sessions,
greedy to get a taste of it all. There’s an international flavour even among
the Pakistani presenters, reflecting the globalised pull of education and
professions. Most have had a period living in the US or UK; some are still
based there and have come back specifically for this event. There are ten
sessions on aspects of Urdu literature but the primary language of the festival
is English. Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world but all
those with positions of influence are fluent in English, and for many it is
their effective first language. Probably a high proportion of the people
milling about here have had their education through English-medium.
This is a deeply
polarised society, not just in life-chances, but in religion, politics,
attitudes to those outside one’s own group, to women’s roles. All of these
intersect. Few women in the crowds here wear head-scarfs, but without exception
the women in the security teams do, staffing the x-ray portals we all have to
pass through to get in. There are soldiers with guns in the mini-buses that
bring the speakers daily to this hotel, and more standing around the entrance,
looking – frankly – bored. There’s the world moving by in the streets outside,
cars, motorbikes, three-wheelers, and probably none of the people in them are
interested in the issues we’re getting into here. We’re in a bubble of time and
space, removed not just from their world but – for these few hours – from our
own daily concerns, indulging in the luxury of being able to listen, reflect,
enjoy, respond.
In its themes, the
festival faces out to the fractured world we all inhabit. There are sessions on
feminism, a rightwards lurch in South Asia, the effect of politics on
literature, the rich/poor divide. The cross-cultural range presents unexpected
treasures. A Chinese Muslim calligrapher, Haji Noor Deen, plies his art in
Arabic. The Iranian-Azarbaijani-French photographer, Reza Degati, shares what
his observing eye has captured – as someone tweeted, he ‘finds spirit and
humanity in conflict zones around the world.’ Razia Sultanova, an Uzbek
ethnomusicologist, is bringing to light women’s traditional songs which they
kept going through the Soviet era and which male musicians didn’t know existed.
Her writer husband, Hamid Ismailov, talks quietly about the image of railways
in his novels, cross-cutting the vast distances of the steppe, and linking
stories of Central Asia’s complex range of peoples. His books appear in
Russian, English and French but are banned in Uzbekistan. Someone asks why. He
says, ’To an authoritarian government even something written with humanity can
seem subversive.’
He and I were to have
been on a panel called ‘Writing on Exile’ – but that has disappeared. Never
mind, we talk about it anyway, and now we have met we will read each other’s
books. Several younger writers here have exile experience in their backgrounds.
Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian-American author of Mornings in Jenin, had
parents exiled by the war of 1967, and a childhood moving between the US,
Kuwait and Jordan. The parents of Anita Anand, a British journalist and BBC
presenter, were Hindus in what is now the North West Province of Pakistan, and
had to leave at the time of Partition in 1947. Her mother was a baby when they
arrived in a refugee camp outside Delhi. Zukiswa Wanner’s parents were South
African/Zimbawean exiles; she was born in Lusaka, Zambia, the year I left it to
come to Britain.
In a panel on ‘Whose Narrative is it Anyway?’ there’s
a question tossing between her and Mohammed Hanif about which was a
comedian and which a satirist. ‘I couldn’t be comedic,’ Zukiswa
says, ‘I was born under apartheid!’ Later I see her at the bookstall.
She has no idea who I am – why would she? Nor had I heard of her until we both
landed here, half-way across the world from where we started. I introduce
myself – ‘I was also born under apartheid!’ She laughs and immediately sends
the ball back – ‘Why aren’t you buying my book?’ So we agree to buy each
other’s.
When I can take in no
more stimulus, I retreat to the speakers’ quiet zone on a verandah overlooking
the pool. Razi Ahmed, founder of the festival, moves among us, checking
everything is fine, introducing people to each other. He is the perfect
courteous host, and keeps thanking us for being here, which makes me laugh –
the privilege is all ours. This is an easy place to start conversations. I
watch people discovering each other, groups coalescing.
We are sharing this
experience, but each of us is making of it our own story. I introduce myself to
the poet Zehra Nigah. Years ago my Urdu teacher and friend Ralph Russell took
me to meet her when she was in London. Now in her seventies, she was one of the
first women poets in Urdu to become well known. Radical, feminist, steeped in
the classical traditions of Urdu poetry, she yet uses the forms to say things
that are new. I remind her that she gave me a signed volume of her poems. My
Urdu wasn’t then good enough to be able to read them; I will go back now and
see if I can do any better. It’s eight years since Ralph died, and a pleasure
for me to be with people who remember him.
Another is Nuscie Jamil, a member of
the festival’s advisory board – she studied with him when she went to SOAS as a
mature student. ‘He was a lovely man,’ she says immediately, ‘always interested
in everyone.’ Nuscie seems to be the original multi-tasker – feminist,
activist, grandmother, runs her own successful business. She starts telling me
about an outstanding school for children of the poorest communities, of which
she is a trustee; and the moment she hears that I am an educationist she is on
the phone to the head teacher, arranging for me to visit after the festival
finishes.
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Pakistan lies on a
geo-political fault-line, with a deadly nexus of issues that link Afghanistan,
Pakistan, the USA, fundamentalism, and regional security. Ahmed Rashid,
journalist and authority on the politics of Afghanistan and Central Asia,
chairs a session entitled ‘Contemporary Great Games’. I have used his books in
researching for Uncertain Light, and it is to him I owe the
invitation to be here. Looking out for him, I see him taking care of a frail
elderly woman. At eighty-nine Nancy Dupree is one of the oldest people here,
but intellectually still vigorous, an archaeologist with a passionate
involvement in Afghanistan’s history. She is on a panel on how to preserve
national heritage in stressed societies. A young Afghan archaeologist on the
panel says, ‘Don’t dig any more. Leave it in the ground. That’s the safest
place.’
Conflict is written
deep in the history of this city. Lahore lies close to the border with India,
and during the Partition in 1947 – within living memory of the oldest people
here – it was the setting for a tragic history of mass migration and communal
killing. Many prefer not to dwell on it, but the festival opens up these
painful chapters too. Older people are interviewed, remembering those times.
Others critically reexamine the hopes with which Pakistan was founded. One
session is devoted to a leading Urdu writer who chronicled the effects of
Partition, Intizar Hussain. He was to have taken part in the festival himself,
but died just weeks before.
But more significant,
the festival celebrates the culture that Pakistan and India share. Several of
the high-profile participants are Indians who have achieved eminence in
different cultural spheres, and they all get an enthusiastic response – the
film actress Sharmila Tagore, the cookery guru Madhur Jaffrey, the eminent
lawyer and historian A G Noorani, C M Naim, the Urdu scholar. An
estimated 1000 people come to listen to B N Goswamy as he shares his insights
from a lifetime of studying miniature painting. Now in his 80s, he was born in
Sargoda, in Pakistan, 100 miles west of Lahore, and a boy at the time of
Partition. His wife was born in Lahore itself and this is the first time she
has been back. They were invited to the festival by FS Aijazuddin, a fellow art
lover and life-long friend from this side of the border.
And poetry – Poetry is
the most universally loved art form among Urdu speakers everywhere, and any
powerful Urdu poet speaks equally to them all. The depth of this cultural
passion is constantly surprising to outsiders – it’s rare to find an Urdu
speaker who doesn’t know by heart swathes of poetry. There is such a crowd
wanting to hear TV personality Zia Mohyeddin reciting from the great 19th
century poet Ghalib that security guards have to handle potentially unruly
young men, desperate because they can’t get in. The organisers look worried.
Rejoice, I say – in how many countries do young men almost cause a riot because
they can’t get to hear a poetry recital?
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Day two, Sunday
morning – and here I am on the platform in the larger of the two marquees,
waiting to begin. Few in this audience will have heard of me. The others on the
panel are much better known: Adaf Soueif has come from Egypt – novelist,
political commentator, activist. Kamila Shamsie is the one the audience are
sure to know about, for she is one of their own – she grew up in Pakistan and
now moves between here and the UK. Both Adaf and Kamila are published by
Bloomsbury, and it’s Bloomsbury’s editor-in-chief, Alexandra Pringle, who is to
interview us. The three of them have worked together for years – it was to be
an in-house event, now here I am, an outsider thrust in among them. Muneeza
Shamsie, Kamila’s proud mum, comes to the front of the audience to get a photo
– it makes us laugh, so that’s how the camera catches us. Good start.
I’ve only once before
spoken to a group as large as this. That was at a celebration for Nelson
Mandela in London, where I was one of twenty-seven lucky people (representing
his twenty-seven years in prison) invited to honour him in a three-minute
piece. However different the circumstances, I feel once again the weight of
this moment – being given the chance to share thoughts with all these people.
Our session is called
‘The Passion for Love Literature’. It’s obvious why love is so central in
fiction, because it is central in life. When it is my turn to speak I find
myself saying that though there is a love story in each of my novels, what
matters more to me is that they reflect love of all kinds – for parents,
children, friends, people who inspire us. Uncertain Light is
as much about loss – for when we give ourselves in love we make ourselves
vulnerable. Long after we have lost someone close to us, the love still
infiltrates our lives in complex ways … Looking out over the faces obscured by
light, I am thinking of a woman I met yesterday – young still, but struggling
to get past the loss of her husband. Or Saba, our companion walking around the
Fort – she is back in Lahore after a whole year; it took that long because her
brother was murdered here, for being from a Shia family. Are they perhaps here,
knowing I am thinking of them?
Alexandra moves us on
to talk about ‘transgressive’ love – a theme in all our novels, she suggests.
It’s not a word I have thought to use but I see immediately that she’s right.There’s
a built-in tension between the power of individual love and the constraints of
society, and the central love story in Uncertain Light raises
moral issues that it does not resolve. How to talk about this, here, with this
audience? I find a way through the ghazal poetry that runs through
the story. The love poetry everyone here has grown up with reflects
a being-in-love that was almost always illicit, and frowned on by society. It
is about feelings that won’t be neatly packaged, and there are few happy
endings. Lovers can seldom have what they long for. I quote Ghalib –
hazaron khahishen
aisi ki har khahish pe dam nikle
bahut nikle mere
arman lekin phir bhi kam nikle
Pleasure ripples like
warmth across the hundreds of people in the marquee. They could have completed
the couplet themselves after the first two words. For the few who don’t know
Urdu, I give Ralph’s translation –
Desires in thousands,
each so strong it takes away my breath anew
Many longings have
been fulfilled; many, but even so, too few.
Everything comes
together – Urdu poetry, Uncertain Light, this audience. When
the session is over, I go to the bookstall to sign copies. Within a short time
it has sold out.
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Back now in London,
and a month later, I see still pictures of those days in Lahore, of
thousands of young people coming to listen, talk, & feel connected to ideas
& issues. I am remembering my last day, after the festival was over, an
early morning walk through narrow streets of the old walled city, expertly
guided by Lucy Peck who has mapped it all. Her session talking about all this
was, sadly, one of those cancelled – how lucky for me to have this personal
guided tour. In the 17th C Wazir Khan mosque we admire the exquisitely painted
walls, stepping carefully past an old man who sleeps on the floor.
We visit an
arts centre that trains people in traditional arts including kaghazi pottery: kaghaz is
paper – this pottery is as thin as paper. I buy a bowl, which sits now on my
desk, a small portable part of a vivid craft culture. That afternoon I visit
the school that Nuscie Jamil insisted that I see. We drive far out to an
industrial suburb; the children are from the poorest communities, and are
getting an inspiring education. Two of the young teachers are themselves
graduates of the school, and their faces shine as they talk about how they love
working here.
The big issues of
politics and security continue to flare in Pakistan, exposing the polarisation
of attitudes. A week after the festival an announcement is made that Salmaan
Taseer’s murderer has been hanged. The road from his prison to the capital is
thronged with protesters, and he is hailed as a martyr. One week later, Shahbaz
Taseer – Salmaan’s kidnapped son – is discovered, and freed. He has been gone
five years with no news, now suddenly he is back. Political analysts are busy
trying to make sense of it all. I am thinking of that family, trying to
recover. Everything connects.
I took a half-empty
suitcase to Lahore and have brought it back filled with books by people I have
met. Now I will spend the months ahead getting to know them. I find on my
shelves the collection of poems that Zehra Nigah gave me over thirty years ago.
Opening it springs open a small door of memory – I told her it would be slow
work for me reading them, and asked her to recommend one to start with. She
suggested Samjhota – ‘Compromise’. It’s about a chaadar -
a traditional woman’s blanket-like shawl that can cover her from head to toe:
Warm and soft, this
blanket
Of compromise has
taken me years to weave
Not a single flower of
truth embellishes it
Not a single false
stitch betrays it
It will do to cover my
body though
And it will bring
comfort too,
If not joy, nor
sadness to you
The most beautiful
book I have brought back is by B N Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian
Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works. As I slowly turn the pages
I remember the atmosphere of total absorption in the vast audience that
listened to him talk. There are few written sources on which he has been able
to draw to uncover the background to the paintings; he has done it by close
attention to detail, and a kind of studied intuition – that appeals to me. But
the diligence is awe-inspiring. In an interview with an Indian newspaper he
says he must have scrutinised about 150,000 miniature paintings in his
lifetime, and can clearly recall more than a thousand. ‘You need to absorb a
painting,’ he said in his talk, ‘the way you absorb a poem,’ and he began
quoting poetry. The sounds circled around me. I couldn’t follow the sense; but
everyone else seemed to.
After we had both been
at Faizghar, Goswamy told me of his youthful passion for Faiz’s poems. Once as
a young man he saw on a bookstall a magazine which had printed a new poem by
Faiz. He had no money to buy the magazine so he pretended to be browsing until
he had memorised the poem, then he put it back. He told me that he knows by
heart at least ten of Faiz’s poems. I asked if he would send me a list of them,
and within days after getting back he has done so. Three I already know; the
others I will get to know. Like the greatest poetry, they are both a reflection
on Faiz’s own times, his own spirit, and yet universal. I see in some of them
strands of the lives in Uncertain Light:
mujh se pahli si
muhabbat, meri mahbub, na mang …
Love, do not ask me
for that love again.
Once I thought life,
because you lived, a prize -
And time’s pain
nothing, you alone were pain;
Your beauty kept
earth’s springtimes from decay,
My universe held only
your bright eyes -
If I won you, fate
would be at my feet.
It was not true, all
this, but only wishing:
Our world knows other
torments than of love
And other happiness
than a fond embrace.
Dark curse of
countless ages, savagery.
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Thank you to Razi
Ahmed, Ahmed Rashid, Salima Hashmi, Nuscie Jamil, moving spirits behind the
festival, and members of the team that made it happen against the odds: Rimmel
Mohydin, Shamain Haque, Aadil Malik, Rishm Najm. Also to Alexandra Pringle,
Adaf Soueif and Kamila Shamsie for our shared session; Raheela Akram of Sanjan
Nagar School, Sarah Qureshi of Faizghar; Saba Qizilbash and Lucy Peck for the
guided tours; Salman Haidar for a gift of a facsimile of Ghalib’s early
ghazals; all the participants for stimulus and company; and B N Goswamy for
inspiration. The translation from Zehra Nigah is by Rakhshanda Jalil; the one
from Faiz is by Victor Kiernan. The photos were taken by Muneeza Shamsie and
Rishm Najm.
Also see
dil ke phaphole jal uthe
seene ke daag se
is ghar ko aag lag gayi ghar
ke chiraag se
सत्य की हत्या
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
