Pak Tea House

by Akmal Aleemi

In all the years that I have lived in America – 35 to be exact – and in the four years since Ahmed Bashir died at the age of 81 from liver cancer, I never once dreamt about him, except some days ago. I dreamed that I was walking out of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. with my wife, Mumtaz. I ask her to wait for me in an area where there are several food outlets and to meet me in half an hour at the main entrance. I go out looking for my car which I had parked at some distance. I notice a group of people sitting out on a kind of porch. Among them, I see Ahmed Bashir, the intellectual, journalist and novelist, whom I used to call Lala. I was a friend of his talented younger brother, Akhtar Aksi, who died in his youth in Lahore in the 1950s.

In the dream, Ahmed Bashir sees me, smiles, but says nothing. I sit down in front of him and ask, “Lala, I have read Dil Bhatkay Ga . You call it a novel but it is a mix of journalism and fiction. Why?”

He seems to want to answer my question but fails to do so. I suddenly realise that he cannot talk. Then with some difficulty and much effort, all he says is, “Master Madan.” Master Madan was a boy prodigy who died in his teens but whose voice continues to haunt us through the few recordings he left behind. I remember that Mumtaz is by now waiting for me and I leave. (more…)

by S Adil Shah

It was a prominent private hospital where people from every nook and corner of the country would come to seek a cure to their ailments. The news of Mr. Abdullah’s kidney transplant surgery spread in the area like a wild fire.

On the day of the operation the hospital was filled by a multitude of people, notwithstanding the efforts of the security personnel to check their inflow. Complete disorder prevailed in the hospital. Relatives, intimate friends, acquaintances and business colleagues of Mr. Abdullah rushed towards him to embrace, hug and encourage him not to lose heart just when he was heading from ward towards the operation theater.

“Don’t worry man! It’ll be a matter of minutes and Dr. Tariq’s genius in such cases is known the world over,” a friend tried to encourage a paling Mr. Abdullah who was further disturbed by a paging voice coming out of the roof right above his head.

(more…)

FOLLOW HOLLOW

Characters in the play:

Hollow

Cribage

Filmy

Fulmee

Bearded Fuelus

Shaven Fuelus

One bunk bed lies along right wall, one along the left one. The former is slightly higher than the latter. One closet lies next to the right bed, one next to the left one. The latter is slightly higher than the former. One small dressing table lies next to the left closet, a small looking glass and refrigerator next to the right one. The center of the stage is bare. Cribage is sleeping peacefully on the left bunk. Hollow is sleeping restlessly on the right one, shifting about uneasily, as one having a bad dream. He stirs, tosses, turns, and finally falls, screaming. Lands with a thud.

(more…)

posted by Soniah

David Plotz knew religion in ‘bits and pieces’ –he knew a bit of this, he remembered a piece of that, the rest he picked up along the way. Then one day in adulthood he attends a Bar Mitzvah and picks up the Good Book and opens it and reads it and what he reads startles him enough to read more and record what he comes away reading. This record makes for a hysterical series called Blogging the Bible. Here’s an example:

“Moses leads the Israelites into the wilderness—Day 1 of their 40-year trek. They immediately complain that they’re thirsty and the only available water is bitter. We’re a grumbling people, aren’t we? Freedom after 430 years of captivity, and nothing to do but grouse. The Israelites had crabbed to Moses when Pharaoh made them gather their own straw. When the Egyptian army pursued them to the Sea of Reeds, they had griped to Moses that they would rather have stayed in Egypt as slaves than die by the sea. Now they’re fussing that they’re thirsty. God gives Moses a piece of wood that cleans up the water—the world’s first Brita filter. “

The whole series is laced with laugh out loud Brita filter moments, yet it never compromises on the serious subtext. How nice if the Quran/hadith/ Prophet Mohammed were explored in this fashion, moreover in my life time. But in my lifetime that might possibly continue to mean fatwah and who in their right mind would be up for that? Even if such an exploration wouldn’t necessarily mean a death sentence, it could never the less spell censure from family and friends. After all most us grow up being drilled with the instructions to obey God, obey elders, obey your parents, obey your teachers, obey Aunty, obey Uncle, obey everyone until obedience and conformity are the only thing one knows to do and feels very ill doing otherwise. In this case ‘thinking for one self’ amounts to which mosque to pray in and ‘individuality’ to which bag to carry with which dress, or music to listen to. Though non-conformity can come with its own headaches and individuality can be carried to extremes in its own right, as long as a herd mentality is encouraged by Mummy-Daddy-Society most will continue to ape the group with which they best identify, or are ‘herded’ into identifying with. But here’s cause to rejoice– a team of reformist Islamic scholars at Ankara University is breaking through the boundaries of what they should and shouldn’t do. They’d like to see Islam reformed and so are working towards reinterpreting the Koran and the foundations of the Sharia Laws.

“Turkey is engaged in a bold and profound attempt to rewrite the basis for Islamic sharia law while also officially reinterpreting the Koran for the modern age. The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence, sponsored by the modernising and mildly Islamic government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is being seen as an iconoclastic campaign to establish a 21st century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and western philosophical methods and principles…Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, described the project as an attempt to make Turkish Sunni Islam “fully compatible with contemporary social and moral values. “They see this not as a revolution, but as a return to the original Islam, away from the excessive conservatism that has stymied all reforms for the last few centuries. It’s somewhat akin to the Christian reformation, although not the same.”

rest here“

The chances of Islam being explored Plotz style in my lifetime just got one step closer.

by Daniyal Mueenuddin - published in the New Yorker (August 27, 2007 )

by Aasem Bakhshi

Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a classic by Ibn Tufail - a Spanish Muslim philosopher, physician and scientist from 12th century. Simon Ockley’s translation can be found here in pdf. A better and modern translation is by Lenn Goodman but it is not available on the internet unfortunately.

Its a story of a boy, the nature of whose existence was shadowy to an extent that there are two completely rivaling accounts of his origins. One account ascribes his origin to spontaneous generation, deducing from intricate details of matter that eventually evolved into life. The other account is necessarily a legend, a human drama in which a royal infant grows up away from society and culture. The boy represents an ideal man with an innate desire to ‘know’. Being totally isolated from ‘intelligent’ life he gradually becomes morally conscious. He discovers shame, jealousy, aspiration, desire, eagerness to possess and practical reasoning with time and as his doe foster mother gets old, he learns to love and realises death as she dies.

Its an extended (but not tediously protracted) philosophical narrative, encompassing all forms of knowledge and discovery. To know is necessarily an obligation for Hayy ibn Yaqzan. He desperately seeks to understand his being in time and locate his space in cosmos. His search guides him through various disciplines of knowledge; for instance anatomy, physiology, metaphysics and spirituality. Discovering the unity of cosmos and its boundedness through reasoning, he discovers God and through his self imposed [quasi] ascetic ‘code of conduct’ he finds a way of his salvation and felicitousness.

At the age of 35, when he had not communicated with anyone except himself, he meets Absal; an anchorite refugee from a land of coventional ‘true believers’. Absal is a perfect model of a religious man, a zealot who has learnt many langauges to gain mastery of scriptural exegesis. His first reaction is a deep sense of fear for his faith as he encounters an exotic being i.e. Hayy. But his fears are dropped soon as he comes to know that Hayy do not have a clue of any langauge. In good faith he tries to teach him to speak and communicate in order to make him aware of knowledge and religion. However he soon discovers that Hayy is already aware of the ‘truth’; to envision which, his own (Absal’s) intellect bears nothing except revealed symbols.

Hayy formally proselytizes judging Absal’s good intentions and the veracity of his message and as the duo associate with one another, Absal introduces Hayy to his culture and people. As Hayy gets familiarised with this civilisation, two basic questions continue to puzzle him in great deal. Firstly, “Why people must need symbols to assimilate and express the knowledge of the Divine?” and continue understanding matters of Divine world literally. Secondly, being completely oblivious to ritualistic sense, he continues to wonder why there is an obligation to indulge one’s self in rituals of prayer and purity.

Though he never regrets submitting himself (in good faith) he kept on wondering why people of this ‘religion’ consume more than their body needs, possess and nurture property diligently, neglect truth by purposefully indulging in passtimes and fall an easy prey to their desires. He finally decides to accompany Absal to his land, thinking that it might be through him that people encompass the true vision and ‘realize’ truth rather than ‘believing’ it with their seemigly narrow kens.

What follows is a tale of a neophyte philosopher teaching people to get above their literalism and open another eye towards reality. His audience on the other hand, recoil in their apprehensions and being intellectual slaves to their prejudices close their ears. He consequently realises that these people are unable to go beyond their usual appetites and proclivities. He also grasps that masses of the world are only capable to recieve through symbols and regulatory laws rather than being receptive to unstained and plain truth.

Both men return back to their isolated world but this time Hayy as the teacher and Absal as his disciple. They continue searching their ecstasies until they met their ends.

Besides being a surpassingly great philosophical romance, its a unique story told by a philosopher who characterised himself as an autodidact. It was a fictional thought experiment to bridge gaps between reason and revelation, struggling to make it known that rejecting any of theses would mean rejecting a part of truth and trying to laydown a perpetually self evolving construct where reason is necessarily the caliph of revelation. A must read for all the times and a tradition that should always be kept alive.

temporal 

The first ever-commissioned play to be telecast in the subcontinent in November 1964 was written by Enver Sajjad. He was bestowed with Pride of Performance in 1989 for his valuable work in literature. And he got the ECO Award of Excellence 2004 in history, literature and culture. His screenplay are so deftly written that a prolific writer like Ashfaq Ahmed once confessed that he learned to write screenplay from Enver Sajjad

I was at Riaz Rafi’s studio apartment one evening. Rafi as he likes to be called is an artist with a nagging conscience. I was in the midst of doing an in-depth profile of him. (project shelved indefinitely–cannot get permission to use some quotes.) (more…)

A short story by Pervaiz Munir Alvi

PurDil Khan had been under a lot of pressure lately. Even before the month of fasting had started his wife was nagging him on a number of issues. She wanted his help to stock essentials like sugar, rice, flour and ghee before the prices would shoot up for the holidays. She also wanted him to send for their elder daughter Gul Jan and her three little children to spend Ramazan and Eid with them. (more…)