India 5: An Uncanny Tale - The Epilogue

Well, not quite. Just sharing a few things.

The response to my Gupta Cha posts (Part 1 and Part 2) was overwhelming and completely bowled me over. And having them featured on ATP was fantastic, given the number of visitors who visit that remarkable site.

Then, just as Indian and Pakistani comments and emails about it began to understandably dwindle with time, the dreadful Mumbai Massacre struck. I blogged on the morning of December 2nd about it. The post got a few visits and drew one comment by the end of the day. After all, it wasn't a unique post. Millions were - once they got their eyeballs off their TV screens - reading the news, live accounts, conflicting reports, seasoned analysts, and far better blogs than mine. The sole comment had come from a Sarah Islam, who, I think was a first-time visitor to my blog. This led to an exchange in the comments section that ended on a warm note. The next morning, I received an email from her ... and the few exchanges that followed are being reproduced here - with her permission (she probably succumbed to my 'threat') - as I think her story is worth sharing and contains much food for thought.

 

==================== Dear Mr. Kidvai I have just read your blog entry entitled 'An Uncanny Tale...' about Gupta cha. This is absolutely beautiful! Are you seriously working on your novel "Ships and Shoes and SealingWax"? Are you then looking for a publisher or have you already spoken to someone? I could help you look for one here in India. You keep saying that you are a non writer, but I assure you that your writing has really touched me. I am dying to read the rest of your story and I am sure that a couple of thousand other people would be too :) I was born in Libya in 1971 to a Punjabi mother from Lahore and a Bangladeshi father whose family had fled to Dhaka (Dacca as it was called then) from Calcutta (now Kolkata :) ). My family and I lived in Lahore in the 90's and moved back to Dacca in 1998 after the death of my father. I met my husband there and now I am happily married and live in Calcutta! So you can say that life has now come full circle for me! My husband Sukhendu and I struggled with all the prejudices that people in all the three countries live with and also certain opinions that we had been brought up with. Now I am proud to say that we have reached a peaceful stage where the blinkers have literally been taken off of our eyes :) Sukhendu and I read your story about Gupta Cha together and cried when we reached the end. Please let us know if we can help in any way for you to finish your book and publish it so other people can also read your story. Peace! Sarah ==================== Dear Sarah (and Sukhendu) I am very touched by your comments and also thank you for sharing your own past, briefly, with me. Ships and Shoes and SealingWax is not intended to be a novel - I would not even dare undertake such a venture. It is being written, mainly, in response to pressure from my daughter and my almost-adopted daughter, Sabeen (both of whom you will encounter if you go through my blog archives). The book will, in all probability, be almost blog-like: anecdotal and all over the place! Though I hope to bring some continuity into it. Do write back and tell me more about yourselves and your family. Where do you live? What do you do? Why not share stories on a blog about your own unique experiences and difficulties that you defeated to reach today's peaceful life? Peace! Zaheer ==================== Dear Mr. Kidvai I am so happy to hear back from you! We live in Lake Gardens which is beind Jodhpur Park in South Kolkata. I wonder if you know the place? My husband and I both worked in advertising, he is now creative director (art) at Ogilvy & Mather and I used to be a copywriter but am only writing freelance pieces for magazines now. We met in 1998 in Dhaka where we both worked for McCann Erickson. I had a huge chip on my shoulder as I had just returned from Pakistan and him being Indian was enough reason for me to contradict everything he said ... hahaha :-) My family had returned from Libya in 1989 and decided to settle down in Dhaka. But after a few years, my mother packed off my brother Amber to Aitchison College in Lahore and my sister Reema and I to Lahore. So that is how we landed up in Pakistan. My parents joined us for a while but for most of the time, my sister and I lived with my nani amma on Nisbet Road. After we got married in 2004, my mother was very unhappy with my decision as she had seen the carnage in Amritsar and, later on, on the train to Lahore. She was only 6 at the time but she can recall certain events very clearly. I can understand that, as the events must have been pretty horrible and must have been burnt on her brain. She met my father Dr. Nurul Islam in Benghazi (Libya) and their marriage in 1970, too, was quite controversial as there was talk of East Pakistan asking for independence from West Pakistan. Anyway, I was brought up in a house where both cultures, Punjabi and Bengali, were very much in evidence and I was very happy as a child and most of my time was spent chasing after butterflies, making mud pies and reading from the ancient books that my grandfather had left us and the newer books that we bought every now and then. My mother was adamant that we should learn Urdu as she is of the opinion that having Urdu as our first language would help us speak beautifully and articulately. She was and still is a stickler for the right pronunciation:-) So we went to the Pak Libya School that was run by the Pakistani Embassy in Benghazi. For nurturing our Bengali heritage we were dutifully packed off for singing, dancing and Bangla lessons at Hafiz uncle's house. So at school we spoke in Pidgin Italian, a bit of Arabic and Punjabi/Urdu, at home we spoke in Urdu and English and Bengali for some of our guests and in front of my father (especially when he was cross) :-) I was brought up in a liberal household but after my father's death in 1998, my mother suddenly discovered her Pakhtun roots (my grandfather had settled in Lahore but was originally from Swat) and started attending Quran classes and sympathizing with the radical Islamization of Bangladesh. This was a shock for me and I rebelled. Over the years my distance from my mother and her views became considerable. Now we are talking again and things are getting better :-) In the beginning, I would get very defensive with Sukhendu whenever something like the BJP used to come up in conversations but then I was reminded of a story that I think has largely shaped my thinking. At school I learnt from textbooks that one Rashid Minhas was the recipient of the Nishaan-e-Haider and a brave and valiant soldier who had grappled with the Bengali flight Instructor, Flight Lietenant Matiur Rahman who was a traitor. I grew up hero worshipping Minhas. When I came back to Bangladesh, I was shocked to learn that for the Bengalis it was Matiur Rahman who was the hero and not Rashid Minhas, who they considered the enemy. I realized then that the history of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is so intertwined and so full of passion and extraordinary circumstances that it is impossible to take sides. Both men as I see it today were heroes and valiant soldiers who just happened to be on opposite sides of the cause. It was an accident of birth. This realization has, on one side, liberated me and, on the other side, saddened me beyond imagination. This means that we will always be at each other's throats and no one will see the person but only the flag that he is wrapped in. Of course I am exagerating, but I am telling my story fully for the first time. I think you will understand the confusing identities that I live with and also that there will always be people who will rise above pettiness :-) Thanks for listening to me. God bless! Sarah ==================== Dear Sarah Wow! And you want me to write [down] my stories? Blog this just the way you've written it to me. At the moment it's a request but can be used as threat by saying I'll publish it on my blog ;-) It's real tales such as yours that will ensure that the only things we all really need to burn is not each other's flags but our own if peace is what we want. All the best. Zaheer PS: I hope you won't be offended at my saying this, but as an anti-nationalist, I would not accept that both RM & MR were heroes. They were just simpletons, brain-washed into committing such acts. But that, of course, pre-supposes that the story, itself, is true. There are some in the Air Force[s] who have, since, cast doubts on the veracity of the entire tale and think it was a crash that the PR-minded in Pakistan decided to use to advantage and the BD people, naturally, made the best of it. Who knows. So it goes ... ====================

I just LOVE the technology that has made all this possible, so here's to Doug Englebart, Alan Kay, the two Steves, Bill (huh? who he?), Tim-Berners-Lee, and hosts of others. May the FSM bless you all. Oh, and Sarah now has a blog :-)

The 'Other' Heresies

Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer is as renowned for his powerful and provocative photographs as he is for his pioneering work with digital imaging. Meyer’s photographs consistently test the limits of truth, fiction and reality. With the advent of digital photography in the early 1990s, Meyer evolved from a documentary photographer who created so-called “straight photographs” into a digital-documentarian who often combines photographic elements from disparate times and places to arrive at a different or higher truth. Pedro's oft-expressed contention that all photographs — digitally manipulated or not — are equally “true” and “untrue” has been labeled “heretical” in the orthodox documentary photography community.

While fellow Apple-user Pedro Meyer (one of the first to adopt this platform and launch the very first intearactive CD-ROM!) may have his exhibition - Heresies - opening in 60 museums in almost as many countries (we are thrilled that T2F, where the exhibition opens on 21st October, has been selected as the Pakistani venue).

There are others, like me :), whose photographs have also made it to some of the greatest (virtual!) halls in the world. Here are just 2 of my examples.

"Happy viewing", as the Senator said!

;-)

Nuzhat

Sabeen

See you at the real Heresies, where a selection of large original museum quality prints of Pedro's works will be displayed and changed almost weekly!

Please do keep checking out the schedule at T2F's website for the exciting related events, like workshops, talks, discussions, and presentations during the weeks that this unique exhibition is on, unless you're on FB and already visit T2F Pages for updates.

Oh ... did you know that you can also subscribe to T2F's Events RSS Feed so you get the news automatically? And, as the icing on the cake, sign up for SMS alerts and get timely reminders too. This saves you the task of 'remembering to remember' to go to the website and saves me answering calls - usually when an event is actually happening - Maddy, please note ;-) - about when and what time it's happening.

Sabeen: A Letter and a Tribute

An old letter from Sabeen on one of her birthdays

Page 1

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Click on the letters to see them in readable size

•

'You refused to cower in silence': A letter to fallen Pakistani comrade Sabeen Mahmud

Beena Sarwar  · Yesterday · 08:15 am

Dear Sabeen,

Photo: Zaheer A. Kidvai

Old friend, comrade, upholder of all kinds of freedoms, lover of tehzeeb, Faiz, Eqbal Ahmad, qawwali and stray animals…

Must we write about you in the past tense?

I'm trying to remember when we first met: Karachi, in the late 1980s after I returned from college. Ammi’s friend Zaheer Kidvai who I had a rapport with introduced us. He refused to be called “uncle”. He was always just Zaheer (later Zak) – not just for me, but also for you, ten years my junior.

Zak, the maverick former merchant navy techie brought new ideas about education and technology to Karachi. He introduced Apple computers to Pakistan and took you under his wing. He saw your potential and roped you in to his zany, maverick world. You and Zak: my two die-hard coffee-loving Mac junkie friends – Zak is Zakintosh in some social media accounts.

On Saturday, his own frail health notwithstanding, he attended your funeral, the funeral of his adopted daughter. Zak’s wife Nuzhat, a fiery activist herself, has been solidly by your mother’s side in hospital as they operate to get the bullets out. A single mother with an only child. It was too late before they even got you to the hospital.

The funeral, appropriately enough, left not from your house but the place you made a home for yourself and so many others: The Second Floor, community space, coffee shop, bookstore and art gallery.

How many initiatives have we been together in since the 1990: Peace Action Karachi, People’s Resistance, Citizens for Democracy, Citizens for Free and Responsible Media, to name some. You were on the board of Madanjeet Singh’s South Asia Foundation, and among the Young Leaders network of Asia Society. I remember our excitement when South Asia Foundation invited us to Srinagar – and then the letdown when we didn’t get the visas in time.

I had fun filming my Kashmir documentary Milne Do at T2F’s old premises, with Asim’s mural on the wall: you, Basharat Peer, Saad Haroon.

There was that amazing Social Media Summit you organised in Karachi a couple of years ago, for which you flew in Indian participants. Uncomfortable with being in the limelight, you pushed me into introducing the first session and the last-minute concluding press conference with interior minister Rehman Malik. How it amused you were when people assumed I had organised it. You never wanted the limelight or to take credit – a rare quality especially in an age where everyone wants to be a star.

A numbing shock

News about Sabeen Mahmud being shot dead hit like a bolt from the blue on Friday. Friends around the world, particularly in our home city Karachi, are shell-shocked.

“How many will they kill?” asks one person after another. Many cry uncontrollably.

I call Jibran Nasir, the lawyer-activist who is in the US addressing campuses and communities around the country. Sabeen was his mentor and friend, and one of the founders of Pakistan For All with him. They had formed human chains around churches after the bomb blast at a church in Peshawar in 2012 and were fighting for an inclusive, democratic Pakistan.

Jibran was in the middle of a presentation at Columbia University in New York when texts started coming in about Sabeen. Although shocked and grief-struck, he is resolute about taking forward Sabeen’s legacy of speaking out. He plans to start all his upcoming talks with Sabeen so “Pakistanis in America can see what a gem we lost”.

Some hours later, I speak to Zak – by then it’s early morning in Pakistan. He’s just come home from the morgue and the hospital. “I haven’t cried yet,” he says. Or slept, obviously. He's been dealing with all the formalities, including police reports.

According to some reports, the police are trying to pass the attack off as a robbery attempt. No one’s buying that. Five bullets – in the chest, neck and face – the last one going through and hitting Sabeen’s mother Mahenaz, who was hit with other bullets too.

She’s numb too, says Zak. She’s been operated upon, and all but one bullet removed which they couldn’t find. She knew that Sabeen was no more when she called out to Sabeen and took her hand after the bullets hit.

They were in their car at a signal from where Zak and his wife Nuzhat had just turned left, going ahead for dinner somewhere. “We’d barely reached the next signal when Mahenaz called saying, ‘Come back, we’ve been shot,’” says Zak.

Two clean-shaven young men on a motorbike had pulled up and fired at Sabeen, who was driving, her mother next to her, the driver at the back.

Driver at the back? Why?

“Sabeen se koi kaun poochta kyun,” says Zaheer. I can hear the smile in his voice. “She did what she wanted.”

Mercifully, Sabeen died instantly. As she slumped over, they fired another shot into her back. Then they took off.

Passers-by helped get Sabeen into the back seat. The driver took them to the nearest hospital. Zak and Nuzhat reached a minute later. Nuzhat took Mahenaz to the Agha Khan hospital across town. Zak stayed with Sabeen, pronounced dead on arrival.

Engage, always engage

They had been on their way back from a well-attended event on Balochistan at the arts-café-community centre The Second Floor – a project of Sabeen’s non-profit Peaceniche started in partnership with Zak. The idea was “to promote democratic discourse and conflict resolution through intellectual and cultural engagement”.

T2F has over the years become a hub for the arts, “a community space for open dialogue” with a coffeehouse, bookshop, an exhibition gallery and a staff that adored Sabeen. It didn’t matter what religion they were or how young or old. Though straight-talking and direct, refusing to suffer fools, she treated everyone with the respect and courtesy, especially those at a social or economic disadvantage.

How many writers have had their first readings or launched books at T2F, filmmakers premiered their films, artists displayed their works, singers, musicians and playwrights shared their talents.

And political discussions. T2F was a hub for discussions about the political dissent that grew around General Musharraf’s Emergency imposed in 2007. When Sabeen learnt that a young, unknown lawyer named M. Jibran Nasir was running as an independent in the 2013 elections, with just Rs 50,000, she got in touch, heard him out, then put her full faith in him. For the next five weeks, he could use T2F for her corner meetings and campaigning – at no charge.

Most importantly she gave him a voice. Just as she gave a voice to anyone who needed it – Ahmadis, Shias, and Baloch – to anyone who felt oppressed or needed to vent and “to let out their anger”, as Jibran puts it.

For him, “Sabeen was a guide, mentor, teacher, facilitator, enabler, catalyst."

As he reminded me when I called him, “Sabeen’s legacy was to speak out. Her legacy was not to cower in silence.”

That is why she agreed to host an event at T2F on Balochistan, featuring activists like Mama Qadeer, Farzana Baloch, and Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur. They’re among those who have been highlighting the case of the missing persons of Pakistan’s least-developed province, but richest in mineral resources. A province wracked by a separatist uprising stemming from a demand for equitable treatment and a share of their own resources; resources that Pakistan has recently signed an agreement with China to develop. (Besides the $485 billion, a bonus is that “China knows how to curb insurgents”, as a brigadier told a friend recently).

Holding open discussions on Balochistan is pretty much a no-go area in Pakistan. Geo TV’s Hamid Mir was shot at last April after he had been speaking out about exactly this. The fallout from the episode led to Pakistan’s largest media group being brought to its knees.

Just a month ago, one of the country’s premier educational institutes, the Lahore University of Management Sciences cancelled a seminar titled “Unsilencing Balochistan”, featuring the same speakers who attended and addressed the T2F event, citing pressure from the government.

And yet when the young organisers approached Sabeen to hold the event there, she agreed despite the risks, the threats, the misgivings, all of which she was very aware of. She knew the risks she ran:

Another discussion on Balochistan is scheduled on May 6 at Karachi University. Will it take place now, is the question.

Already the disinformation campaign and character assassination has begun from those I call the Dirty Tricks Brigade (#DTBPk), just as it did after the attack on Hamid Mir and the cancellation of the LUMS seminar.

After Sabeen’s murder, “those who feel scared and cowed, and feel they should not speak out because it’s too dangerous, there would be no greater insult to Sabeen’s legacy if you do that”, says Jibran. “If you loved her, loved her work, loved the issues she loved, keep speaking out and raising your voice. We must do this to fulfil the dream of the Pakistan that Sabeen dreamed of, a country where there’s no discrimination in the name of religion, language, ethnicity or any pretext.”

The bullets pumped into Sabeen may have silenced her physically, but her legacy lives on. Her many admirers, friends and fellow-travellers will not let it die. For a start, here’s the link to the Tumblr site created as a tribute to Sabeen by friend and fellow techie Sabahat Ashraf that friends and followers can contribute to.

Photo by Rez

•

Four Years …

and not a day passes without your thoughts!

Please stop these idiocies …

Please use the right pronunciation.

(Otherwise you'll be treated like Mumtaz Qadri fans!)

And what a man he was …

Marvin Lee Minsky

(August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016)

•••••

My friend, Roger Schank - many of you have heard him at Education Conference's in Pakistan - said about Minsky in John Brockman's Edge years ago.

Marvin Minsky is the smartest person I've ever known. He's absolutely full of ideas, and he hasn't gotten one step slower or one step dumber. One of the things about Marvin that's really fantastic is that he never got too old. He's wonderfully childlike. I think that's a major factor explaining why he's such a good thinker. There are aspects of him I'd like to pattern myself after. Because what happens to some scientists is that they get full of their power and importance, and they lose track of how to think brilliant thoughts. That's never happened to Marvin.

****

My interest in Marvin Minsky started with this amazing book:

The quote on the cover is from Isaac Asimov:

"270 brilliantly original essays … on how the mind works"

•••••

Marvin's writing was always easily understood in this collection,

(but I found him difficult in some later writings).

Here is an example from the book I've read twice.

•••••

This was soon followed by the

wonderful interactive Voyager CD of the book

(for the Macintosh). Sadly those CDs don't run any more.

•••••

It was 1997 and I attended Nicholas Negroponte's conference for a Young Generation that were going to be Citizens of A New World. Minsky was there, too, and I talked with him very briefly. He was leaving in the next few hours for a trip somewhere.

Later that night many of the participants had dinner together and I bought the Extended Edition of Perceptrons there. This was Marvin Minsky's book written with my hero Seymour Papert.

I had met Papert earlier (having attended two of his lectures, including one in Pakistan), and had gotten to know him well.

My young colleague, Farhat-Said Pervez, attended his lectures at MIT and I met him with her (and her husband, Anjum Pervez) that night again. I got him to autograph my copy of the book but, sadly, Minsky had left, so I didn't have his autograph.

After dinner we moved to a party dance floor at MIT and I met Gloria Minsky, Marvin Minsky's wife, wearing her fabulous red eyeglasses. I had a lot of fun talking to her. We danced, ate some Samosas during our break (they were cooked by the Indian students with one token Pakistani!), and chatted for quite a while. I said to her that I had missed getting Marvin's autograph for the book … and she said I should come over the next morning to his office and she'd meet me there. I said surely he won't be back tomorrow, and she said "No — but bring the book."

I arrived the next morning and she took the book and handed it to Marvin's Secretary, asking her that when Marvin gets back she should get this book autographed and posted to me. I gave them my address but kept wondering if I'd ever get that book back.

In 3 weeks I got the book by post. Wow!

We then sat in his office and had Coffee. She told me about her family. Her work. Her daughter's work at MIT. Then she asked about my life. I spoke to her about running away from Education. My life at sea in the Merchant Navy. And my recent Multimedia work. I mentioned to her at some point that my original family years ago was Jewish. She laughed and said, "You must have been a Minsky, originally." I asked her why did she think so … and she said when you are old you'll see how closely like Marvin your looks are. I just thought that was a crazy thing to say …

•••••

Now two of my friends from MIT tell me I look like him.

Here's Minsky at a Conference.

 •••••

(It was an amazing experience to attend this Conference: Apart from spending time with Nicholas Negrponte, I also met Alan Kay and had a rather long conversation with him — and 18 years later I interviewed him at Beaconhouse School of Tomorrow Conference in Karachi last year. Another wonderful person I met, who is now a close friend of mine, was Shahidul Alam, the brilliant photographer, who is on the Board of National Geographic. Finally, I was also a partner at the student sessions with John Perry Barlow, an essayist, a writer, a human rights activist, and founder of EFF, who was the Lyricist for the Grateful Dead!)

Its all going to be online now …

Starting with my very first cartoons (and I mean my very first, coz I had never drawn one before) that started being published in The Friday Times, I did a few other things: A few cartoons for The News; A few Photos or Book Covers or Contents, suitably altered; a few Fake-Ads. And maybe a few more items.

Sadly, my dear friend, my adopted daughter, my mentee … and then my mentor, Sabeen Mahmud (Sab), is not here any more. And I can't even try to tell you how many of us feel about this. There are nothing but tears that flow out. Every few hours. Every day. And there are many silent sobs in between.

Sab had asked me to print quite a few of the cartoons and put them up at T2F for 3 days, beginning with my birthday. (I'll be 75 on the 2nd October this year). The cartoons & similar stuff is now being put up on Tooniyaat. If you go there, start with the oldest post (Howdy) and then move up. This way you'll get the chronological order in which they were published.

There was her idea of having me appear on a program at T2F, on the 2nd & 3rd October, where I'd be asked questions by her about my crazy life and crazier ideas. She mailed me a long list of questions that she'd ask. Yes, Sab. I will answer them, too, in Koee Mayday Dil Say Poochhay, a recent blog that I have started. The posts on these may be written, pod-casted, or video-casted.

Among things that Sab thought T2F would print some day would be my poetry book, and a collection of my father's stories, essays, and poems. My poems are now put up every Sunday, (though not in any chronological order). You can see them on Alam Zadah.

My father, Abi (or Azhar Kidvai), has a website now - and it is being added to every few days. It will have his entire collection, including all his verses in his own handwriting. There are some memories and some pictures, too.

Bye.

Take a look at another blog …

This blog will continue, of course.

But there is another blog I have started.

Its called Koee Mayray Dil Say Poochhay.

Visit it and see if you like the stuff there.

Thanks.

Sab: See what a friend says. Twice.

Jawwad Farid wrote these lovely pieces

The first was written following Sab's assassination

Karachi is an insane city. A true Karachiite can never live anywhere else. A visitor can never understand why that is so.  The fascination is irrational and does not compute. Some think it is an asylum gone wild, others feel that the patients have taken over the administration.

Sabeen Mahmud was the head of our administration, the chair person of our union, the flag bearer of our mental asylum. In a crazy city designed for crazy people, Sabeen was our wildest flame. If she captured you in her orbit, it wouldn't be long before you would be wearing that crazy gleam in your eyes. 

When the city went mad in 2007, Sabeen and Zaheer Kidvai came up with The Second Floor (T2F). When you had more than your daily dose of work, family, neighbors, KESC, traffic and Karachi, you could escape to T2F to listen to Tee-M sing Suji Ka Halwa or play Jazz, expose your musical ear to some exotic qawali or equally exotic drinks. T2F was the only drinking hole in town where you could hear Muhammad Hanif read a case of exploding mangoes, in a cozy, intimate, friends only evening. It was a space for Karachi's citizens. An oasis of sanity in a city filled with angry men and women, bearded, mustached and otherwise.

I had heard of Sabeen, we had met a few times but it was only when I saw T2F in 2007, that I realized that Sabeen was just as crazy as the rest of us. Only a certifiably insane person would try and feed a dose of culture to these wild Karachiites or put up a reading library next to a kitchen. 

Boy, did we lap it up. T2F became the place you would go to when you had some time to kill, when you were thirsty for a green apple chiller or a corned beef sandwich, when you wanted to feel normal; the normal one can only feel when surrounded by like minded fools and fruit cakes. And because of Sabeen and T2F's magic, because of her orbit, because of the mad gleam in the eyes, there was never any shortage of fruit cakes.

T2F was my space, our space, Sabeen's space.  A corner where you went for a bit of quiet and a dose of hope.

But T2F and feeding Karachi culture was the sanest of Sabeen's idea. She had quite a few that were really out there.  From taking back the city and the country from angry bearded men who favor burqahs on fashionable occasions and photo opportunities;  to giving voice to those who would never be heard otherwise. Her most remarkable contribution was testing the thesis that a politician can only be born and associated with a political party and a lineage going all the way back to the British, the CIA, our feudal lords or the Army.

She joined hands with a young lawyer from Karachi who became a test case for proving the established political thesis wrong.  He lost the local elections in May 2013 but gave us hope that a quite young man can change our city; one day perhaps even our country.

Mohammad Jibran Nasir was certainly a big step for Karachiites but the real payoff for Sabeen's many friends were her Facebook conversations.  To say that Sabeen was politically active is an understatement.  She was self professed anarchist and experience junkie and she really believed in spreading and sharing that message. Her recent experiences side by side with Jibran made for entertaining, sometimes scary reading.  From taking on the Lal Masjid gang in Islamabad to getting arrested in Karachi; from organizing events, protesting at rallies and dharnas, attending jalsas and commentating on both organizational abilities and content of parties irrespective of their ideology. Boldly going with Amma, to places, locations and events where I wouldn't dare to go without four double cabins.  From death threats that were not funny to distasteful verbal abuse that was shrugged off and turned into Facebook posts and jokes; most memorably her running commentary on one exceedingly handsome heartbroken police javaan, off do-talwar; and of things that could have been, but will never be. 

I didn't consider myself a friend of Sabeen, because I didn't do anything to earn that title. I loved her work, her intellect, her curiosity and her stance. I admired her wicked sense of humor and her desire to question overzealous authority and self righteousness. We had great conversations on political king makers in the city.   To me she was a symbol of what this city could be if my fellow fruit cakes took it over.  In a town where everyone talks in double speak, where empty grand expressions use cheap lyrics from Bollywood songs, where we invoke the depth of oceans and the height of mountains at every opportunity we get, Sabeen spoke plainly and simply.   

6 years ago, post a conference that we both spoke at, Sabeen said, "You made me cry two days in a row Jawwad Farid."

Right back at you, Sabeen Mahmud.

Ps. Don't give Steve a hard time about Cook's follies. 

The second was written after Sab's funeral

I think she had the most fun today, she had had in a while.

 

Sabeen Mahmud, a fluent speaker of colloquial French in many languages, would have had a field day with words today.  Starting off with "the bastards never showed up in such large numbers when I was alive".

The second floor was an amazing sight this afternoon. As soon as Zaheer Kidvai posted that Sabeen would come one last time to T2F to say farewell at half past three, a crowd started gathering outside.  

There was no way to describe the mix at 5th Sunset Lane this afternoon. In attendance were beards and wild hair, lefties and righties, two little girls with small handmade placards, three babies carried by their dads, young men and women; guests from Lahore; clean shaved teenagers, sons and daughters; silver grandmothers dressed in white; grayed grandfathers with their walking sticks; founding members of the original men and women student congress that ran the first civil resistance campaign in our history in the fifties and the sixties.

Sabeen bound all of us together.  That was her magic. We were her lost cause.

Also flowers, tears and silence.

We parked without getting in each other's way; we left in a procession of cars aligned in a single file. 

When she finally came to Sunset Lane on her way to the Masjid, we walked with her to T2F and back one last time.  

Sabeen was buried in a tree line graveyard by her family and her friends, this evening. We stood still, row upon rows of men and women, underneath neem trees with our silent goodbyes. 

Shahjahan said it, "I am not crying for her."

I brought my son with me. Told him I want you to remember this day, this crowd standing around, alive yet still; I want you to remember the grief, your father crying in the open in front of a thousand men.  Don't you forget that silence has a price that we have already paid.  

"Ulloo ke pathon kee tarha itnay saal se hum sarkon par nikaltay rahay haen. For every marginalized, oppressed group. And for years, people have mocked us and laughed at us for our small numbers. You doubted our motives. You questioned our agendas. You bastards. If you had joined us, we wouldn't have been so pitiable. We would have had a movement by now. We would have had strength in numbers. But no, you sat behind the comfort of your monitors and made fun of us on Twitter and Facebook and in your newsrooms. You said, give us something new. Give us something different. Theater karnay thoree nikaltay haen hum aap logon ko khush karnay ke liye. Maana ke Press Club ke baahar kharay honay se kucch naheen badalta laykin jo aek se aek aqlmand haen aap log, jo tanqeed karnay mayn itnay tez haen, yaar aap log kahaan they? Sind Club se fursat ho tau kabhee aa jaen aap log bhee, koee innovative soch le kar jo shaed aap ke Harvard aur Columbia ke professors ne sikhaee ho aap ko. Ya kiya aap ke mummy daddy aap ko nikalnay naheen dayn ge?"  

Sabeen Mahmud, March 2014.

•••••

— a Translation —

For years, like idiots we have been protesting on the streets. For every marginalized, oppressed group. And for years, people have mocked us and laughed at us for our small numbers. You doubted our motives. You questioned our agendas. You bastards. If you had joined us, we wouldn't have been so pitiable. We would have had a movement by now. We would have had strength in numbers. But no, you sat behind the comfort of your monitors and made fun of us on Twitter and Facebook and in your newsrooms. You said, give us something new. Give us something different. We are not in it to put on a show for your benefit or pleasure. Understood that protesting outside Press Club in Karachi is not going to change anything but where were you when we needed you; the intelligent ones, the so quick to criticize crowd. If you could find some time from your busy schedule at Sind Club, please join us, with your innovative ideas, ideas that your Harvard and Columbia professors may have taught you. Or is that your mummy daddy won't let you come outside and play.  

Sab … again!

There's still nothing I can say …

… and it would never be as well written as

Shahjahan Chaudhry's message on her assassination.

•••••

Dear Friends of Sabeen,

Sabeen was a fearless spirit - perhaps the bravest woman I have met in my life. If there was a cause that deserved a champion, if there was a group that needed a hero, if there was a person with a story that needed a voice - Sabeen would not just raise her hand but also stand in the sun, walk a dangerous mile and push the cause or group or person beyond what they ever imagined.

But she was not ordinary in her approach. She was defiant, original and artistic - she would protest with taste and eloquence. With passion and perseverance. With commitment and focus.

So one wonders, with such originality and passion and commitment and unconditional service - how is it that instead of hundreds of thousands of people coming together to celebrate her as she leaves us, why were we just a few hundred? Instead of every TV channel running stories on her life, why do we see a negligible mention of her in the news?

She deserved a million people to see her off, she deserved front page stories in every newspaper, she deserved 24 hour coverage on every channel - but it didn't happen. It didn't happen because we as a nation don't deserve people like Sabeen. Because she was too good for us.

While you might look at her art exhibit - Dil Phaink - or at her Valentines Day campaign - Fasla na rakhein, pyaar honey dein - or the discussions she would host about Salman Taseer and the Blasphemy Law, or her interest in Science and Qawwali, or her struggle against discrimination of all sorts - whether against Christians or Ahmedis or Baluchis - or her belief in protesting instead of sitting at home; or her love of art and music and culture and freedom - you might conclude that all this is unfocused chaos of an artistic mind; a renaissance woman maybe, but definitely confused.
I see something different. I see an uncelebrated saviour of a nation - a spark in a sea of darkness. She pinpointed every wrong, every mistake, every injustice that we continue to perpetrate in this country. She did what she could to fix things - and when she couldn't change something, she made it a point to take a stand. She might have felt alone at times, she might have felt scared - but she believed what she believed and she was willing to die for it.

Pakistan is a mess, and everyone has their take on the situation. From the Army to the politicians, from wise old generals to patriotic journalists - but Sabeen is someone who instinctively got it right.
We need more science, more music, more poetry and more art in our life. We need to take a stand when anyone - especially the weakest among us - are persecuted and oppressed. We must give our voice to every just cause, every fair demand and every true story. And we must do it consistently, repeatedly, passionately. Failure is when we give up. Success is when we keep trying.

Sabeen was my friend - she would get passionately angry at a 'wrong' being committed against anyone anywhere. But in the last 1 or 2 years, her anger became more gentle. She was still as passionate about her causes, but her anger did not perturb her as much. She had found a new inner strength that allowed her to smile while fighting for what she believed in. She had come to accept things as they were, while struggling to make them better.

As a friend said, she must be laughing her heart out while watching us. After all, she left us with a bang and not a whimper. The artist in me appreciates her final act: its defiance, its timing, its beauty. But what can I do, I am also her friend so I can't but have tears in my eyes as I write this.
She also left a lot undone. I can imagine myself looking back thirty years from now and wondering what else she would have done. I am already missing all of that.

So if you want to keep her legacy alive, if you want to experience the spirit of Sabeen here and now, and if you love her - be more like her. Be defiant, artistic, original, authentic, crazy, funny, kind, brave and honest - and take up her causes.

She is my hero and I hope yours too. In a different Pakistan, in a better and more beautiful nation - she would be our national hero and a giant inspiration for future generations.

I wish Sabeen a beautiful journey home.
With gratitude,
Her friend,
Shahjahan Chaudhary

•••••

See, Sab. How much your friends love you!

You will be in our hearts forever!