Khalid Hasan

In the summer of 1976, Qayyum Nazar arrived in London, keen to find out whether Noon Meem Rashed, who had died a year earlier, had been cremated at his own wish or if it was his Italian wife Sheila’s decision. He told me that Rashed’s cremation had shocked everyone in Pakistan and he wanted Rashed’s name to be honoured and a memorial raised in his memory at Government College, Lahore. But he wanted to know the truth first.

This conversation took place at the embassy where I then was. Qayyum Nazar wanted to ask Rashed’s son Sheheryar, who was in Brussels. I called Sheheryar and handed the phone to Qayyum. When he finally put it down, he looked crestfallen. “It was Rashed who wanted to be cremated,” he told me. “That was his will and his wish.” Sheheryar, who tragically died in the prime of his life of a heart attack, told Qayyum that his father had once witnessed a cremation and felt that fire alone could bring true extinction. He found purity and power in the act of cremation. His wife respected his wish. Qayyum returned to Lahore, carrying his unfulfilled dream with him.

The other day I picked up Rashed’s last collection, Gumaan ka Mumkin , published in October 1976 by Naya Idara, Lahore. The book, in Urdu type, like his three earlier collections that Munir Niazi pubished, carries a fascinating introduction by Ijaz Batalvi, whom Rashed assigned the task of publication. Those who have read what Ijaz wrote will have their memory refreshed; others who have not will gain a new perspective on Rashed’s state of mind in his last days.

Ijaz captioned his foreword, “Last collection, last meeting” (though the word mulaqaat is poorly rendered by “meeting.”) When Ijaz phoned Rashed from London, he insisted that Ijaz come to Cheltenham where Rashed and Sheila had settled down after Rashed’s retirement from the United Nations. I have heard it from those who knew that Rashed wanted to return to Lahore but Sheila wished otherwise. Rashed let her have her way, but his heart was in Lahore (which is what makes Lahore Lahore). Ijaz asked Rashed why he didn’t come to London instead. “I am an old man, you come,” he replied. He was only 64. Ijaz, being the persuasive man he was, talked Rashed into taking a coach to London, where he received him at Victoria. Rashed, Ijaz writes, was the last to get down from the coach. He said he had come just to meet Ijaz but, being in town, he might as well obtain a “ zindanama ” from the embassy, which was Rashed’s translation of “life certificate.” Since he received a small pension from the Pakistan government, he was obliged to obtain a certificate every now and then saying he was still alive.

After being officially declared alive, the two of them sat down in an Italian coffee house on Brampton Road for a chat. Rashed, Ijaz wrote, spoke of his “old age” several times, which made him quip, “But Rashed sahib, you are not old, neither in years nor in appearance. And the country where you live is such that you are not considered old unless you are at least 80.” Rashed replied, “You are right, but I am not an old man from here. The way I spent my childhood, what I heard about life and living from my elders, the ideas that formed the framework of my youth, my material and spiritual feed, are all quite different from what governs the life of those who belong to this place. How can I be an old man from here?” Ijaz asked how life was treating him in Cheltenham. Rashed replied that the place was full of retired old men, especially British military officers. “I run into them on my morning walk, touch my cap to them, and sometimes it comes to an exchange of ‘Good Mornings’ and even a brief conversation. Most of them talk about their time in India and the names of Patna, Poona and Peshawar come up as if they were the cities of the beloved. Many say that if they could, they would spend the rest of their lives out there. I listen to them and say to myself, ‘My dear friends, you are wrong, it is not Poona or Peshawar that you are nostalgic about; those cities are just an excuse to remember your youth and the streets where it was spent.’ ”

Ijaz and Rashed finally landed at Paddington where Rashed was to take a train for Cheltenham. Since it was leaving in an hour’s time, they sat down in a noisy station cafeteria to drink tea and talk. Rashed, who was carrying a large envelope, asked Ijaz if he would slip it into his briefcase and take it to Pakistan. Ijaz said of course he would, but he was curious to know what it contained. Rashed replied that it was the typed manuscript of a collection of his poems. He wanted Ijaz to take care of the book’s publication and the two went into great detail as to how the book should be set and what it should look like. Ijaz wanted Rashed to read a poem, which Rashed did after a good deal of reluctance. The lines he read close Hasan Koozagar , one of his most beautiful works. “Now that I read that poem and think of our last meeting, I begin to understand why he chose to read it to me. I also understand why he wanted the book to end on that poem,” Ijaz wrote. Rashed told his son after Ijaz had returned to Pakistan that he did not want to live beyond his time and he did not want to repeat himself. Ijaz arranged for the book’s publication in Lahore and at the precise moment he was handing over the manuscript to Salahuddin Mahmood, who had volunteered to oversee the publication, his phone rang. It was Radio Pakistan. “Rashed died in a London hospital last night,” the caller said.

It is only appropriate, therefore, to end this memory of these two remarkable men on a few lines from the poem that Rashed may have chosen as his epitaph. Jahanzad, I, Hasan the potter, have borne the pain of my message / from wilderness to wilderness / Thousands of years from now / how will they who pick up these shattered pieces of my work / how will they know / that with this base clay / I fashioned these pots / borrowing colour from your delicate body / transposing my pots into the realm of eternity / Through every pore of my body / I have absorbed in them the mystery of your nearness / as an offering to those who are to come / They may build on these shattered pieces that I leave them / But how will they ever count the drops of perspiration that went into their creation? / How will they touch the shadow of art’s birth /that joins era with era/autumn with autumn?

Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 9:28 am .