I first heard of Faiz Ahmed Faiz when Arjuna Parakrama gifted my mother, his English literature teacher at school, a copy of ‘Rebel’s Silhouette,’ a collection of his poems translated into English by Agha Shahid Ali. I can’t remember the year but it must have been more than 25 years ago because I still remember reading out a poem that I had translated into Sinhala to some undergraduates at the University of Peradeniya. They attended that university in the late nineties.
Faiz became a source of inspiration, confidante, teacher and friend. He taught me or rather inspired Agha Shahid Ali to teach me that it’s alright not to know Urdu and that even as we are separated by time and space, we are one in sorrow and hope.
So his lines stayed with me. And was comforted and strengthened by his assertion, ‘your feet bleed, but something surely will bloom in the desert simply by walking across it.’ Or words to that effect; I’m sure the line Ali came up with is better and that the original in Urdu probably far more effective.
So I’ve walked as others have, do and will, with Faiz as a companion. And we met in strange places, sometimes unexpectedly. He would walk into conversations. He would drop into my mind just to leave behind a word or two. He painted landscapes that were political and economic, always taking care to place in true dimensions that are incurably human, in pathos, in guilt, in redemption and in integrity.
One day I would share his detention and he would show me how to bend the iron bars of a cage. One day he would arrive as a book mark or as a page in the book of resistance. There were times we discussed love and hard choices.
Once, towards the end of the last century, I met him at a demonstration somewhere in Pennsylvania. We listened together to Robert Meerapol, the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who were executed at the Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York on June 19, 1953.
I would later meet Faiz in Islamabad. This is how I noted the encounter that took place in July 2011.
‘He was plastered on a windowpane. It was a shop that had been shut down, perhaps for repair. There was no sign over it. The windows were covered with pages of newspapers, neatly pasted on the inside. He was singing yet another anthem of resistance, using the voice of someone called Beena Sarwar. I don’t know if the person who placed Faiz in the middle of news reports about terrorist attacks, political scandals and news gone stale was making a statement. I don’t know the name of the newspaper that carried the article. All I know is that I didn’t expect to meet Faiz in Islamabad that afternoon.’
And I am glad I did. More than 11 years later, in the serendipitous republic of literature, Faiz returned. I met him in a residence for writers which Beena Sarwar had helped create. I had forgotten the name. She was just Beena Sarwar of ‘Sapan,’ South Asia Peace Action Network. Our mutual friend Marlon Ariyasinghe had suggested that Sapan invite me to take part in an online celebration of love where South Asians scattered all over the world and yet citizens in the Republic of Literature that the likes of Faiz had forged could read, sing and discuss things close to their hearts. A serendipitous post in the WhatsApp group created for expected participants brought it all together. Someone posted something on Faiz and I looked for what I had written about the Islamabad encounter. And that was when I re-met Beena Sarwar.
She had been the founding editor of the paper in which that article I commented on appeared: News of Friday (which later became News on Sunday).
‘[Faiz] was a friend of my parents and his daughter Salima is one of Sapan’s founder members and advisors,’ she said.
And today, I am in awe at the ways in which deserts are made to bloom simply because bleeding feet are ignored by those who are determined to walk the desert. And today, I am convinced that the most exquisite perfumes in this world are made from the fragrances extracted from poetry, the resolute hearts of poets and the fingertips of those they inspire and empower.
Faiz had been silent for years, but that’s how it is. Poets arrive when needed. That’s all we need to know.
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