I had access to email from Victoria Schofield, London to Maqsooma offering condolences on the demise of her mother Farkhanda Bukhari.
I did not have a chance to meet or know Farkhanda except through her autobiography titled ‘Yeh Baazi Ishq Ki Baazi Hay’. Her reputation was of that of staunch supporter of Bhuttos and was referred to as jaiyali. In this email, Victoria disclosed to Maqsooma that Farkhanda had come to her life a long time ago, not by usual channels of introduction but by association with an Italian lady Maria Salvatore, with whom she was practicing learning Italian language. During exchange of conversations that were many, when the names of Bhutto and Benazir appeared, Maria stopped Victoria taking a plea that she too had a Pakistani connection. That turned out to be that of Farkhanda Bukhari.
Maria also worked for Amnesty International offering help to those people who came to England when they were in distress. In 1980s Maria had come across Farkhanda Bukhari who was allegedly involved in PIA high jacked plane, in 1981. To the surprise of many, on the protest of Al-Zulfiqar, 54 political prisoners were released, out of which Farkhanda was the only female detainee. She was abducted from her home and exiled abroad.
She arrived first in Syria and finally ended up in London. The details of these events have been elaborated in her autobiography ‘Yeh Baazi Ishq Ki Baazi Hay’. In the words of Asha’ar Rehman, editor of an English daily, ‘the book is the latest addition in a series about the relentless persecution of progressive forces by General Zia, the one man Pakistanis cannot quite avoid, whatever route they take, however far they may have travelled since those horrifying times’.
Asha’ar Rehman adds that in between was hectic political activity in the face of a regime that is at its most oppressive, including a mysterious visit to Libya. Involving a senior Pakistani military official and his sister, an educationist, the small group of which Farkhanda Bukhari was part, was linked to an attempt to bring about a revolution in Pakistan. In her autobiography Bukhari chooses mostly to react to the little literature available on the Libya trip and refrains from telling her story in full.
The only information she conveys is that she had been trapped and didn’t know where she was headed and why.
In her autobiography, Bukhari has only blamed the non-availability of any literature available during her Libya trip and has refrained from telling her story in full. In the year 2011 an old gentleman was blamed for an incident from the fading 1970s, when he was working for the management of Musawaat, the Pakistan People’s Party daily in Lahore. The long-overdue censure from Farkhanda Bokhari, a certified PPP jiyali was awaited.
The autobiography was the answer but falls short of expectations. It only established the fact that how a purdah-observing wife of a famous poet Shuhrat Bukhari, Professor in Islamia College, Lahore was transformed to a rebellious daughter who headed on to head-on collision with a martial law regime. The transformation looks natural; its protagonist, a girl from the old city inclined to do things differently from an early age, going with her own sentiment and the force of events around her.
Bukhari was a diehard fan of Bhutto’s doctrine of running a State. As the time passed, the Party was gradually taken over by opportunists.
I come across Aslam Gurdaspuri during my evening walks at Bagh-e-Jinnah in Lahore. I knew Hassan Lateef, music composer par excellence for many years. Dr Mubashar Hassan created and supported Nespak, an idea of Pakistani engineers going the consulting job that was given to foreigners to save Pakistan’s valuable foreign exchange. Presently all such stalwarts have either joined the Almighty or are not considered ideologically close to the present leaders of the Party. Farkhanda Bukhari was last of the icons of this bandwagon. May she long live in the Heavens. Ameen.
The writer is the recipient of the prestigious Pride of Performance award. He can be reached at [email protected]