Daily Times

The Faiz centenary year is an open season for writing on or about Faiz and of making some claim about one’s proximity to him. I find it difficult to resist the temptation, although I must make a telling personal disclosure at the outset. Despite having been an admirer of his poetry and politics and having known him rather closely towards the last years of his life, I can hardly pretend to be savvy in his poetry or in poetry in general or to be very knowledgeable about politics.

I had three substantial encounters with Faiz sahib in my life, all of them abroad — first in the UK (during my studies at LSE in the late 1950s), the second in Bangkok and the third, which was of a considerable long duration — almost a year — in Beirut. It is that last encounter that I cherish most.

My rendezvous with Faiz in Beirut was a bit serendipitous. I had gone there on a short visit from Bangkok in early 1980 for a UN meeting on “brain drain”. Dr Ayub Mirza, our common friend at whose home in Rawalpindi we met Faiz and Alys frequently, had told me that Faiz sahib was in Beirut as chief editor of Lotus, an Afro-Asian literary journal hosted by the PLO, and that I should visit him. Faiz sahib’s apartment was within walking distance of the hotel I was staying in and so I dropped by. Alys and Faiz sahib greeted me warmly. I told them that there was a possibility of my transfer to the UN regional office in Beirut, but I was hesitant because of the security situation. They dismissed my apprehensions and encouraged me to come to Beirut. It took a year for the UN to finalise the transfer.

When I arrived in Beirut in 1981, Alys was about to return to Pakistan and was glad that since my family had remained in Pakistan, I would be able to spend some time with Faiz sahib in the evenings and take some edge off his loneliness. For me this was a God-sent boon as I had little to do after I returned from work to the hotel in the afternoon and despite feeling overawed, I greatly enjoyed his company. I had the pleasure of spending many interesting conversations with him, although I confess many were punctuated with rather long pauses from both of us — his, because of his sudden immersion in poetic epiphany and mine because of the fear of disturbing his train of thought.

Although I stayed in a hotel about 15 minutes walk away from his apartment, Faiz sahib suggested I move into his apartment building where there were several vacant apartments. The security situation was getting worse by the day. The first day I arrived at the UN office for work, there was an air raid siren as the Israeli jets bombed parts of Beirut and repeatedly broke the sound barrier and we all huddled in the basement of the building. I called Faiz sahib at his office and told him what was a harrowing experience to me. Faiz sahib asked me not to worry and to come to his apartment in the evening. He was absolutely unperturbed when I met him. After chatting for a while we went out to the neighbouring shopping market to get some cheese, bread and liquids for the evening meal, as it was unsafe to go out.

After that evening it became a pattern for us to meet at Faiz sahib’s apartment or at the Commodore Hotel lounge and chat about Pakistani, Arab-Israeli and Lebanese politics or listen to ghazals on a cassette player — the pre-internet survival kit. I remember I played my favourite ghazal of Makhdoom, “Aap ki yaad aati rahi raat bhar” (All night long, I kept remembering you), sung by Chhaya Ganguli, which he asked me to play repeatedly. Faiz sahib told me that he had written a ghazal on Makhdoom’s death with the same starting lines. Despite the tensions in Beirut, it was a great place to have an evening dinner and we invariably went to one of the many restaurants in the city, serving Arabic and European cuisines — his particular favourite being a fondue joint in Al-Hamra.

As Edward Said, who spent some time with Faiz during his exile in Said’s native Beirut, wrote after meeting him: “To see a poet in exile — as opposed to reading the poetry of exile — is to see exile’s antimonies embodied and endured.” Said also relates how Faiz seemed to “overcome the estrangement written all over his face”, when Eqbal Ahmad, Said’s fellow exile in US, together with him visited Faiz in Beirut. The impact became more inescapable in the last year of his exile.

It can be said that most of Faiz’s life after independence (whose bona fides he was the first to question) consisted of a series of exiles — first as an internal exile in Pakistani prisons and later as an exile abroad. A salient theme of his poetry has been the pangs of separation of his beloved friends and family and, when abroad, of the country itself, despite all its faults and sorrows of its people: “Zard patton ka ban jo mera des hai, Dard ki anjuman jo mera des hai” (The forest of yellow leaves which is my country, the congregation of pain which is my country).

And yet every now and again, he had to leave his beloved country and tell himself: “Mere dil mere musafir, hua phir se hukum sadir, ke watan badar hon hum tum, dein gali gali sadayein, karein rukh nagar nagar ka” (My heart, my fellow traveller, it has been decreed again, that you and I be exiled, go calling out in every street, turn to every town).

Both Faiz sahib and I had to travel frequently out of Beirut and when we returned we would invariably get together and exchange notes. Faiz sahib frequently travelled to London and many other places for meetings. On one such trip to the Far East, Faiz sahib made an unscheduled stop in Karachi and decided to meet his friends for a few days and then went back to the airport to resume his journey. When he checked in at the immigration counter, he was detained as his name was on Zia’s exit control list (ECL). After considerable efforts, his long-time friend Mr Ali Ahmad Khan Talpur, then defence minister in Zia’s cabinet, managed to let him resume the journey and withdraw his name from the ECL. In the meanwhile, his office in Beirut, particularly his young Lebanese secretary, were very worried and called me up to help find out his whereabouts.

Faiz sahib was very affectionate to me and my family and met them when they came for a visit in Beirut. Once when he was going to visit Islamabad, I requested him to carry a few things for my daughter, Saba. He called my wife to collect the things from Mrs Iqbal’s house. When my colleagues from Islamabad University heard Faiz was in Islamabad, they requested my wife, Zarina, to arrange a get-together with him at our house, which was largely attended, despite Zia’s repression.

I left Beirut in May 1982, shortly before the Israeli invasion, Faiz sahib managed to leave Beirut with the family of a Pakistani UN colleague, K M Azam, soon after. My last meeting with Faiz sahib was in January 1984 in Karachi when I had come from Bangkok on my father’s death. Faiz sahib was visiting Karachi and was staying at Sarwar’s house. He offered me his condolences and promised to revisit Bangkok where I had relocated — alas, that was not to be.

The writer can be reached at smnaseem@gmail.com