My Nānihāl … 3

As I had written earlier (and am repeating it again in this post) Nana Jan's and Nani Jan's children were: Shamim (died young) -  Vasim, Married to Asad Ali Qidwai (No children) - Kishwar. Married to Azhar Kidvai (they had Kehkeshan died as an infant, and Me) - Syed Arif. Married to Safiya. (No children) - Syed Asaf.  Married to Sarwar (Amir, Khalid, Nuzhat, Tariq, Belal, Shariq).

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Abi, Ammi Jan (my Khāla), Me, Abbu Jan (my Khālü), Ummi

My parents and my khāla/khālu have been mentioned several times in this blog as well as in my other blogposts in Koee Mayray Dil Say Poochay so you can look at those posts there.

Arif & Safiya (Mamooñ Sahab & Mammi Jan)
Sarwar & Asaf (Jan Mammi & Mamooñ Jan)

Mamooñ Sahab was my favourite Mamooñ probably because I had always seen him even after coming to Pakistan when he'd visit us or I would, occasionally, go to his house after school. He was a classmate of Syed Mohammad Jafri and Shaukat Thanvi and often came to our house with Jafri Sahab whose poems I always loved.

Mamooñ Jan lived in India so I was not in touch until he finally shifted to Pakistan a year after Mamooñ Sahab died (on 19th March 1955). That was the day when Aqeel (Kirmani) Bhai (son of Shahabuddin Kirmani) was to get married … but the wedding had to be postponed. My father took Mamooñ Sahab to the military hospital and was asked (strangely) to sign the death certificate as a Doctor because the doctors there refused to sign it. This has been a source of worry to me, always.

Mamooñ Jan came here after his elder brother died and Ammi Jan (mainly) insisted that he come here. So he arrived here in 1956 and lived here. Mammi Jan always remembered India and they all used to travel to Delhi where her family was … until perhaps it was no longer possible.

Amir, Khalid, Tariq, Shariq, Nuzhat, Belal

Amir married Nuzhat (aka Nukki and was always called that because Amir's sister - my wife - had the same name). His children are Ali bin Amir and Ayesha binté Amir.

Khalid married his cousin, Sajeda, She left for India fairly soon after Khalid's death. No children.

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Our Wedding

Nuzhat and I got married on May 8th 1970 … and had a really quiet 50th Wedding Anniversary this year, thanks to COVID-19 :) Maybe we'll have a party some day if this problem ever goes away.

Shariq, Mufti Sahab (Me!), Tariq, Belal, Amir, Khalid
Nuzhat, Mamooñ Jan, Jan Mammi, Ali bin Amir, Nuzhat Amir, Sajeda Khalid

Here is our whole group. Because I had long hair, Ghulam Farid Sabri - the elder brother of our wonderful Qavvāls, the Sabri Brothers group - always called me Sufi Sahab.

Khalid who died early - Missed by all of us!

Khalid died on December 10th, 1977

He was in and out of the hospital several times with a constant pain in his head. His Brain Biopsy (the piece had to be sent to UK to test) had said he had a Tumor that was not touching his Brain. There was no reason to worry. Medication would put him right.

Dr. Juma, a brilliant Brain Surgeon, was his Doctor, initially. He had soon left JPMC and was replaced by Dr Bhatti, who didn't agree to the Brain Biopsy result and decided that he was going to operate.

Dr Juma came back and visited his old patients. I was there and Khalid spoke to him. Dr. Juma said to me that there was no need for an operation at all and he would talk to Dr. Bhatti.

Two days later, while I was bathing at Mamooñ Jan's home, Shariq came and said Khalid was very ill and we should get there. The rest of the family was already there. Nuzhat and I left with Shariq.

I jumped over the wall at JPMC and entered his room. I was told that his feet were turning blue. I looked around. There was Dr. Bhatti, a couple of nurses, and two assistants there. I noticed that the breathing tube that was going into Khalid's mouth had a doctor's foot covering it. I shouted and said this ... but no one listened. I was then told a few minutes later that Khalid had passed away.

The next morning Dr. Juma phoned up and said that Khalid had been killed but we should not go to court as they will go through this several times and Khalid's parents will have to listen to all this and cry all the time. We'd never win the case because people will say parents always worry. There will be nurses, assistants, and Dr. Bhatii who will be there to deny that all this ever happened. 

We never said this to his parents, because it would hurt them a lot more. Throughout their lives they lived thinking how terrible it was to lose a son.

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Tariq is married to Zarafshan. His children are Summaiya and Onaisa.

Belal is married to his cousin, Nusrat. No children.

Shariq was married and is now divorced. His son is Rayan.

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Newborn Daughter

Our daughter now lives in Brooklyn and has a child who is just over 6 months old. We were there when they was born. Now we get to see them only on the screen. He is named Meka Elijah and his nickname is Beanz (because of his mother's great love for Sabeen Mahmud who had that nickname).

Meka Elijah Beanz on his First Eed

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My Nānihāl … 2

Syed Iftikhar Husain was my Nana Jan. His father was Afzal Ali who traced his roots back to Hazrat Ali's son, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyah. He was the third son of Hazrat Ali', and was born to his 6th wife, Khaula Binté Ja'fariya, who was the daughter of Jafar Hanafiyah. 

Muhammad's surname was taken from his mother's family of Banu Hanifa. When I was helping edit Ziauddin Kirmani's book on the Prophet ('The Last Messenger with a Lasting Message') he mentioned that a group among some Muslims did not like Muhammad at all. This is because he was sent by Hazrat Husain to Khalifa Yazeed after hearing that Yazeed was very immoral and extremely nepotistic. He came back and told Hazrat Husain that while Yazeed was nepotistic, he was not - otherwise - an immoral person. In addition, when Hazrat Husain wanted to go to Karbala, Muhammad advised him to not go. But Hazrat Husain did go and was killed at the Battle of Karbala.

While all the sets of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyah's children write Syed before their name, considering that Hazrat Ali's children should all be Syeds, many people agree that word 'Syed' was only applied to Hazrat Ali's children from Bibi Fatima, since she was also the daughter of the Prophet. This, certainly, is also a controversial notion: Hazrat Usman (written in Arabicized English as Uthman) was married to two of the Prophet's daughters. His children most generally don't write Syed.

(I have really no idea what all this means because the Arabic News when Gandhi died mentioned him as Syed Gandhi and also mentioned Nehru Ji as Syed Nehru when he met their King.)

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Afzal Ali had three sons (Ba∂ay Abba, Altaf Ali, Iftikhar Husain) and three daughters. The daughter's names are not mentioned in the shajrah that I have. They were called dukhtar here (and bibi in their husband's shajrah). Not much use: All names must be written, if you decide to write your shajrah on the net or on paper!

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Ba∂ay Abba … that's what Ummi and Māmooñ Jan called him! I couldn't remember his name. I now know from an old shajrah that he was Riaz Husain Alvi and was born on 5th April 1848.

He was a really strange person and stayed separately in an outhouse that he preferred. He was also a bit of an Afeemchi (=Opium taker). Apparently he gave up before his later life, well before he was married. He did travel for Hajj with one of his maternal aunts but came back to his outhouse.

Ba∂ay Abba did go out often for a walk … and fell in love with a Mughal neighbour's daughter (who didn't know about this, of course). He would walk past her house where she used to swing in the garden.

One evening - imagine this is just over 150 years ago!!! - he was walking past her house and 'grabbed' the Mughlani from her swing and took her to his outhouse. Her servant informed her father who came to Nana Jan and was terribly upset and angry.

Nana Jan said that he is my eldest brother and while I apologise to you here, there is very little I can do. Nana Jan finally put his cap on the father's foot (an old tradition of respect and pleading) and said if you agree I will ask him to marry her right away. This was agreed upon.

Nana Jan went to his elder brother's outhouse and said that he has to marry the girl right away. I am sure Ba∂ay Abba must have been thrilled and agreed … so they were married. Wow!

Ba∂ay Abba had a son by this wife who was named Agha (to make sure that her Mughal relationship was confirmed somehow in the shajrah). His first wife gave birth to Moonis, Mateen, Musharraf. He also married again - after his first wife's death - within his own biradari, and had three children from his second wife: Murtaz, Murshid-un-nisa, Mursil-un-nisa.

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Altaf Ali (another Deputy Collector!) was very disturbed at his father's death. He lived peacefully until his own death. He was a wonderful person and a blogpost about him will be put up soon.

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Nana Jan had three older sisters. 

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The eldest sister, Ummé Mumtaz, had a son, Qazi Iftikhar Ahmed, who was married to Wasi-un-Nisa. Among her children are Shakeela, Jalees, and Saghira. They will be mentioned in this series on another blogpost.

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The second sister, Umme Ahmad Ali Alvi, was married in to a rich family who settled in a large gāuñ where a train stopped. She had two sons: Mumtaz Ahmad (Kallan) and Iftikhar Ahmad (Chuttan).

The story that we heard was that her sons would go to the station when a train came in. They would see if there was someone whose family or friends hadn't arrived to receive them. If there were people like that, they'd be brought to their home for dinner. Later they would trace their families/friends and leave them there.

The family was extremely strong Muslims. After the cooks had prepared their meal they'd serve it and then join them and eat with them.

When her husband died there was a battle over property. Finally the sons agreed to divide it 'in half' , and, as a result, almost everything was halved 'properly'. If for example there was a teapot, it had to be cut in half and divided. To me this sounds like a legend but some members of my family believed this to be true. This part of the story was always told to the children so that they understood how not to behave :)

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The third sister, Umme Shafique, also Nana Jan's favourite sister, was married to Maqbool Hasan Alavi. Children: Nisar-un-Nisa, Inam-un-Nisa, Shafique Hasan.
— Nisar Fatima was married to Shahid Husain Kidwai, a close friend of Nana Jan. Children: Zakia, Razia, Reshad, Attiya, Fuad.
— Inam Fatima was married to Sheikh M Habibullah, another close friend of Nana Jan. Children Ali Bahadur, Inayat (once written as Enaith), Isha'at, Tazeen.
— Shafiq-ul-Hasan was married to Asrar-un-Nisa (aka Saira). Children: Qamar, Shams, Suraiya, Najma (aka Safia)

This sister's children will be on another blogpost.

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Nana Jan's children were: Shamim (died young); Vasim. Married to Asad Ali Qidwai (No children); Kishwar. Married to Azhar Kidvai (they had Kehkeshan, a daughter who died in infancy; Me); Arif. Married to Safiya. (No children); Asaf. Married to Sarwar (Amir, Khalid, Nuzhat, Tariq, Belal, Shariq).

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My next blogposts will focus on my immediate family
followed by my cousins and their children.

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Aisha Amir Ahmed

Farhan Hafeez Kermani

 Muneeza Shamsi

Shama Habibullah

Tanveer Fatima,

Iram Ansari

Tauqeer Kirmani

Sami Ansari

Roohi Abbasi

Thank you all for your help.

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My Nānihāl … 1

Syed Iftikhar Husain
(s/o Afzal Ali)
was my Nana (= Maternal Grandfather)

Born: Allahabad 10 January 1868
He was also called Junaid Ahmad (his Aqiqah name) 

Died: Lucknow 24 April 1932 

Buried at Shah Karamat Ali's Dargah in Kakori

From Ummi (My mother: Sohail Fatima Iftikhar aka Kishwar Jehan) all I learnt about Nana Jan was that he was very particular about food and spoke very little. 

From my khaala (Vasim Fatima) I heard only that Nana Jan was very affectionate.

I know very little about him. What I have heard about him come mainly from my Mamooñ Jan (and father-in-law) … Syed Asaf Husain, and three of his children who must've heard many stories from him. MJ was a tremendous story teller with a brilliant memory … and he loved his father. He always said that Nana Jan was brilliant and very honest.

Nana Jan learnt Law but was never a practicing Lawyer. He was in the Indian Civil Service. However, he refused to obey the orders of his Commissioner in Lucknow (which said he was to convict all the people brought to him during the Khilafat Movement). He was then transferred to the Judicial Services. He became a Registrar of the Lucknow High Court. Later on he became a Judge of the Rajestan High Court.

A story that MJ told us all (and was also something that Ummi had said to me) was that Nana Jan was a FreeMason once, but had left the organisation and was no longer one.

My elder mamooñ, Mamooñ Sahab (Syed Arif Husain) was a person that I loved immensely. I used to spend time with him often when I left school. One day I asked him, "FreeMasons can't really leave, can they?" … and he laughed and said "Asaf says this because that's what our father may have said to calm him. Of course they can't leave." Sadly, MS died on 19th March 1955 of a heart attack.

Nana Jan and Nani Jan had an eldest daughter, Shamim, who died very young (14th June 1912). Akbar Allahabadi, a friend of Nana Jan, wrote her Tarikhé Vafāt:

شمیم خلد شدہ گفتِ فضلِ رحمانی

A newborn daughter, Tasneem Fatima, died in infancy.

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Nana Jan died much before I was born … and I am older than my cousins. So none of us have any real memories of him except through our parents. (While I refer to him as Nana Jan in this post, in real life I called my wife Nuzhat's nana Nana Jan).

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Nani Jan (Haseen Fatima) died when I was less than 3 years old but I remember her extremely well. I used to tell her stories that I insisted were real but they were really children's fantasies with family characters thrown in as birds.

Her death scene I remember so well about who was at her bedside: Abi (my father) reading a verse from the Quran; my aunt weeping. There were many people around at the time that she died.

One day, when I was around 11, I drew a map of who was sitting where. Ziauddin Kirmani (Māmooñ Abbu is what I called him) was visiting us and he had been there at Nani Jan's funeral. He was astonished to see how I could remember almost everyone and where they sat outside.

I was sent to Abi's cousin's house and when I got back they had buried her. I went into the bedroom and saw an empty bed. I asked and was told that Angels had taken her away to cure her. For a full year I thought all deaths meant that Angels had taken the person away.

Nani Jan passed away on 29th August 1943 and is buried at Takia Sharif next to her father, Muzaffar Husain Sahab, who was a Deputy Collector.

(My wife and I have always wondered why 

there were so many Deputy Collectors those days.)

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Nani Jan had an elder brother, Mustafa Husain, who was the first Bar-at-Law from Kakori. She had a younger brother but I can't find his name so far. If I do, I will post it here.

Etymology - 1 (Kind of …)

OED 2 Volumes with Magnifying Glass
Contains the full OED Compacted.

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time … and I am in love with it. If I ever had the chance to choose a career for life, Etymologist would be it.

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Of course, I never did choose a career for life.

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I started wanteing to be a doctor, like my father (Abi) - but not because of his real influence. Born in 1940 to a doctor - who had been recruited in late 1943 to the British Military Service in WW2 - I travelled to several cities (in and outside India, and to parts that later became Pakistan) with him until the war ended. 

There were no children in camps but Abi insisted that Ummi (my mother) and I had to go along … and was granted permission to do so by the Army. So I was the only child around. The first trip I went to was when I was 4 years old.

With Abi I went fairly often to Hospitals where he treated several soldiers who were injured, some almost beyond belief. I saw nearly dead soldiers and even saw a soldier die before my eyes. I never seemed to fear death. In fact the oldest memory I have was that my Nani (maternal grandmother) died when I was 3 … and I remember that event so clearly. When she was gone, I was told that the angels had taken her to a place to cure her. That was what 'dead' meant to me for years.

In the middle of the war we went to Calcutta for a few days holiday with my Khala (Vaseem). It was there that sirens announced planes coming down (Japanese, I was told) to bomb us. We hid under tables. I was told not to pick up sweets that they may drop, because eating them would cause us to die. Don't know if that was to scare me or it was real.

There were two things I did remember from the camps: One was the day we were celebrating Victory. A young soldier climbed up a long set of stairs and jumped into a pool of water underneath. He missed. Fell flat a couple of feet away. And was dead. On the spot!

Before that death, I remember my father and his colleague discussing a man whose head been pierced by some bullet marks. His colleague, perhaps his senior, had said that they couldn't treat him as it was too close to the brain and there was no way that he would survive the surgery. I often thought of that. I even asked my father, who drew weird pictures on a piece of paper to show what a brain was. But I couldn't really understand.

Later on, just before the 1947 Partition, I was in Budge Budge where my Khalu (famous Indian hockey-player, Asad Ali) had been posted by the Customs.  I saw a few dead people floating down the river because of Hindu-Muslim riots. The river was just across the street. My childhood friend, Sattar, a servant 3 years older than me, was playing football with me and he kicked it so hard that it went across the street, right into a winding part of the Hooghly River. He rushed and bent down the floating bushes to pick up the ball and threw it right back after showing it to me. It was the head of a dead child he had picked up by mistake.

So I wanted to be a doctor as I grew up. A brain surgeon was what I wanted to be. Life at colleges were tough. I got thrown out of one; I walked off the exams in the second one. That'll be in another blogpost that I write. 

Abi was getting severe heart attacks during those days and I couldn't have lived off his money for long. Another year at college. Five years at Medical School. Two years of Internships. Several years of setting myself up as a Surgeon. No way!

I told Abi the only one of two lies I remember telling him: I had done well at my exams and was going to get a First Division. (The second lie I won't get into.) I then said I was going to sail away on a friend's father's ship to Chittagong and meet my cousin there … and come back. I wrote to him from Chittagong that I had actually joined a ship and was in the Merchant Navy now. He was most upset. Again, that'll be in another blogpost, too.

Abi died in 1963. Didn't even live to see me pass my exams and get a reward for having topped the International Navigation marks. Then they suddenly decided to stop giving the official awards, so my Merchant Navy College Head, Captain Safdar, gave me a TimePiece-cum-StopWatch as my gift.

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Many of my loves and passions come to me from Abi: Classical Music, Eastern and Western; becoming a voracious reader in English and Urdu; love of and the writing of Urdu Poetry; watching Cricket & Tennis; being totally in love of Science; a passion for correct languages; fighting for Human Rights; loving the truth; even crying in movies :(

We were poor, too. My father had left the Army after Partition, had serious medical problems himself, had a few odd jobs but coudn't continue at his clinic so there was really no money in the house. Ummi was amazing at how she managed to make the loveliest dishes with what little we had - and kept not us but every visitor asking for more. She knew how to make the food we loved out of everything she could get. I used to always tease her about how she managed to put water into everything and make it expand into a lovely, large, edible dish.

Abi's love of books never died. On days when he did go to the clinic and made some money, he'd give most of it to Ummi … but he always bought another book. For himself; for Ummi; and for my birthday gifts. He said to me that if I were really hungry I could tighten my belt and survive another day when food would somehow arrive. But a book was a book. "It gives you pleasure whether your stomach is full or empty …".

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One of his loves was Dictionaries. We had many of them. Farsi, Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. Old and new. He loved words. … and that, too, came to me.

Which is why I really should have been an Etymologist. 

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From the Merchant Navy, after 25 years of service, I came back to Karachi (Ummi's illness and the birth of my daughter after 14 years of marriage) and set-up an educational computing company, Interface, the first of its kind in Pakistan. This arrangement, bad as it was, moved me (with a lot of difficulty) into opening Solutions Unlimited - a consultancy that now runs with my wife heading it. I founded Enabling Technologies, which produced the best Multimedia Software including CD-ROMs in Pakistan. As an Apple-only company we even produced our first CD-ROM for IBM! (That's going to be one of my blogpost, I promise.)

In the meanwhile I also joined Hamdard University and taught for three years until the first Masters came out. Jehan Ara and Sabeen assisted me at some lectures, too. My best student was Syed Ali Hasan, who is now one of our great animators and now also runs a 3D Printing company.

While this was on, I began drawing cartoons for The Friday Times. You can see them here. Do see the first few, anyway. I'll add more as soon as they become available.

My companies — when they started — had my wife Nuzhat, Sabeen, Jehan Ara, and myself … and none of us had taken Computer Studies in our lives, except Sabeen at school. And she had come to my company for further studies. Her KGS Computer Teacher hated her. From Sabeen's exam papers some pages removed when they were sent to UK … so she failed the subject. Efforts by her father, Tallat, proved that this had happened. An act on his part (probably bashing up the Principal!) was probably stopped by Sabeen's mother, Mahenaz, who was teaching at KGS Kindergarten.

The remaining three of us learnt computers on our own, using a BBC computer and then moving on to a 9" Mac. Nothing comes even close to these two systems.

Later on, Sabeen — who'd joined us when she was 14+ as a student and stayed on until she formed PeaceNiche-T2F — and I decided to open Beyond Information Technology Solutions (BITS), partly in association with the Kasuris. They soon left, dedicated as they were to Education, and I owned the company.

Jehan Ara - who had joined us when she had come back from Hong Kong - said she'd rather not be part of this. So we split half of the company: She continued Enabling Technologies and is now the head of Nest I/O and P@SHA.

Sabeen soon became a Director at BITS (as a gift for her years of service with me) and continued with me as a Consultant to some ventures that we occasionally took online (including our work at Tehelka/India and a leading paper in Afghanistan), despite running her new organisation extremely well. In fact T2F is now considered a standard here and elsewhere.

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This ended with Sabeen's assassination on 24th April 2015.

Like me, Sabeen was never afraid of death.

Listen to a TV Program about her.

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I am sorry I have bored you with this rather long drawn-out preamble. I promise I will move on to Etymology - 2 as soon as I have the time. If you like what I write, you'll find it enjoyable.