Tuesday January 14, 2015
Dear Najma,
This is what one of the papers had to say about you recently:
“Prominent human rights activist, journalist and environmental writer Najma Sadeque passed away in the early hours of Thursday. She was 72. As a journalist, Ms Sadeque worked with Dawn Group’s eveninger The Star and The News International….”
Wow! When I read about The Star I remembered you encouraging me to write for them. You probably also encouraged the editors, Zohra and Saneeya, to print my first pieces. You did this sort of thing for many of us, as naturally as you cooked twelve vegetarian dishes for the “finicky females”, as you called them, who came over to your flat in the Zia days.
At your funeral I was reminded of Dylan’s words: “Behind every beautiful thing there is some kind of pain.” You were a beautiful person, Najma. And you carried the pain for sure: the pain of the poor of our developing world but mainly the pain of your own two countries. For Bangladesh, like for your mother, you had this nostalgia and for Pakistan, always the intelligent protest well-lit with angst.
We met when we with our friends created the Women’s Action Forum. At the first meeting in 1981 you sat askance from the rest of us as if to say, “Show me what you will do to make a difference.” You seemed to have maintained that stance for as long as I can remember.
But some of the pain that you carried was your own. Like many children of the old empire you took very long to resolve your losses. You had seen two partitions. Only five years old at the first one, what did you see? What did you remember?
A Bengali in Pakistan, after 1971, you spoke intensely of the massive cultural broadside that severing had meant for you. But ultimately Najma, your life was a triumph over the pain and disruption of two partitions. Yes you complained continually about the state of this country and its increasingly harsh terms of reference. But Najma many of us knew you loved more deeply than your tirades suggested.
Already in the eighties it was no longer fashionable to express over-the-top warmth and affection for friends. But you could never deny or control this love for friends you had learned to trust over time. An ancient, deep, and perhaps Bengali way of feeding and cajoling is now gone because you are gone.
And your death has reminded me of a thousand travesties upon this land and opened wounds that had closed perhaps because I went away from “…the scenes of so many crimes...” as we once called Pakistan. But it seems to me you remained on deck, a solitary protestor. So I regret teasing you thirty years ago, about standing on the other side of a dangerous protest, photographing instead of facing “…Zia’s truckload of goons.” That day, I learned later, you were worrying about your children, “…in case something happens to me.”
But those times we shared most closely, the eighties, seem innocent because of the cruder nature of the oppression we experienced. In these times of subtler lies and generic subterfuge, I suspect I will miss your righteous outrage poignantly.
Najma, you left us too quickly. There I was talking to Deneb about when I can come to see you and you were already dying. So I have to replace this regret and recall one top memory: of the sea breeze in your Bath Island-facing apartment and of the typewriter half out of your balcony in the early WAF days, and of your anger at Zia’s laws. And then your charming contradictions like when you turned up with “Umra in English”, late at night, before my trip. “Better know what you are saying to Him”, you muttered.
Some might say you hit a blind spot when it came to things you hated and people you loved. But how else does one concentrate on what matters except by shutting out all else? Always though, you fitted your vulnerability under the hood of your steely determination. Rickshaws to interviews of dubious reliability; long train rides to Sukkur jail to visit Zia’s prisoners: what were you thinking, Najma?
I loved your stories. Curious about the naval officer’s picture in your book shelf, I didn’t ask. “Shall I tell you a story?” you asked me one day. A series followed: like the one about how easily tomatoes and flowers and fruit grew on Bengal’s soil and the many endless rivers you had seen.
I loved driving you up and down Chundrigar Road at all hours to deliver press releases we wrote for WAF. Reuters, APP, and PPI: they all knew you and you smiled benignly at their glares of respect. You talked of reams, bindings, and presses and publishing. You wore shell pink nail polish and smelled of pencils and paper those nights.
After one of our interminable WAF meetings, we discussed Martin Niemöller’s (1892–1984) chilling poem:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me…and there was no one left to speak for me.”
You wanted to ‘fix’ the poem to fit WAF. Furiously you grumbled the words don’t fit because the collective is not together as yet. You mourned the absence of a true sisterhood back then. You mourned it, thirty some years later, and again last year. But Najma, face it; in death, somehow, you actually and finally won the fight, as only you could have. You spoke it like you saw it, with your unblinking soft eyes.
You can write to the author at sindhari@gmail.com
Dear Najma,
This is what one of the papers had to say about you recently:
“Prominent human rights activist, journalist and environmental writer Najma Sadeque passed away in the early hours of Thursday. She was 72. As a journalist, Ms Sadeque worked with Dawn Group’s eveninger The Star and The News International….”
Wow! When I read about The Star I remembered you encouraging me to write for them. You probably also encouraged the editors, Zohra and Saneeya, to print my first pieces. You did this sort of thing for many of us, as naturally as you cooked twelve vegetarian dishes for the “finicky females”, as you called them, who came over to your flat in the Zia days.
At your funeral I was reminded of Dylan’s words: “Behind every beautiful thing there is some kind of pain.” You were a beautiful person, Najma. And you carried the pain for sure: the pain of the poor of our developing world but mainly the pain of your own two countries. For Bangladesh, like for your mother, you had this nostalgia and for Pakistan, always the intelligent protest well-lit with angst.
We met when we with our friends created the Women’s Action Forum. At the first meeting in 1981 you sat askance from the rest of us as if to say, “Show me what you will do to make a difference.” You seemed to have maintained that stance for as long as I can remember.
But some of the pain that you carried was your own. Like many children of the old empire you took very long to resolve your losses. You had seen two partitions. Only five years old at the first one, what did you see? What did you remember?
A Bengali in Pakistan, after 1971, you spoke intensely of the massive cultural broadside that severing had meant for you. But ultimately Najma, your life was a triumph over the pain and disruption of two partitions. Yes you complained continually about the state of this country and its increasingly harsh terms of reference. But Najma many of us knew you loved more deeply than your tirades suggested.
Already in the eighties it was no longer fashionable to express over-the-top warmth and affection for friends. But you could never deny or control this love for friends you had learned to trust over time. An ancient, deep, and perhaps Bengali way of feeding and cajoling is now gone because you are gone.
And your death has reminded me of a thousand travesties upon this land and opened wounds that had closed perhaps because I went away from “…the scenes of so many crimes...” as we once called Pakistan. But it seems to me you remained on deck, a solitary protestor. So I regret teasing you thirty years ago, about standing on the other side of a dangerous protest, photographing instead of facing “…Zia’s truckload of goons.” That day, I learned later, you were worrying about your children, “…in case something happens to me.”
But those times we shared most closely, the eighties, seem innocent because of the cruder nature of the oppression we experienced. In these times of subtler lies and generic subterfuge, I suspect I will miss your righteous outrage poignantly.
Najma, you left us too quickly. There I was talking to Deneb about when I can come to see you and you were already dying. So I have to replace this regret and recall one top memory: of the sea breeze in your Bath Island-facing apartment and of the typewriter half out of your balcony in the early WAF days, and of your anger at Zia’s laws. And then your charming contradictions like when you turned up with “Umra in English”, late at night, before my trip. “Better know what you are saying to Him”, you muttered.
Some might say you hit a blind spot when it came to things you hated and people you loved. But how else does one concentrate on what matters except by shutting out all else? Always though, you fitted your vulnerability under the hood of your steely determination. Rickshaws to interviews of dubious reliability; long train rides to Sukkur jail to visit Zia’s prisoners: what were you thinking, Najma?
I loved your stories. Curious about the naval officer’s picture in your book shelf, I didn’t ask. “Shall I tell you a story?” you asked me one day. A series followed: like the one about how easily tomatoes and flowers and fruit grew on Bengal’s soil and the many endless rivers you had seen.
I loved driving you up and down Chundrigar Road at all hours to deliver press releases we wrote for WAF. Reuters, APP, and PPI: they all knew you and you smiled benignly at their glares of respect. You talked of reams, bindings, and presses and publishing. You wore shell pink nail polish and smelled of pencils and paper those nights.
After one of our interminable WAF meetings, we discussed Martin Niemöller’s (1892–1984) chilling poem:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me…and there was no one left to speak for me.”
You wanted to ‘fix’ the poem to fit WAF. Furiously you grumbled the words don’t fit because the collective is not together as yet. You mourned the absence of a true sisterhood back then. You mourned it, thirty some years later, and again last year. But Najma, face it; in death, somehow, you actually and finally won the fight, as only you could have. You spoke it like you saw it, with your unblinking soft eyes.
You can write to the author at sindhari@gmail.com