The autograph I’ll never have

I could not get Abdullah uncle’s autographs on his novel Udaas Naslain despite him having been my father’s closest friend. Among the authors who were compatriots of my father, there are very few that I admire for both their literary stature and their personality traits. Abdullah Hussein is one of them. This resulted in a desire to obtain his autograph, but sadly I decided to do so only this year. Perhaps it was too late. Often, it so happens that people like Abdullah Hussein are simply taken away, when they are part of your family and are supposed to be there for you.

Much was written about at his death early this year in July. He is one of the most influential Urdu fiction writers of our times. He wrote his magnum opus Udaas Naslain – a novel about Pakistan’s independence – which today remains as popular and important as it was upon its publication fifty years ago. His other works, novels and short stories are no less extraordinary: Nashaib, Qaid, Bagh and Faraib. Aside from literary accolades, his obituaries painted him as someone who was not very social or a late-in-life people’s person, which he enjoyed towards the end of his life. My experiences with him – and consequently my views on him – are different.

I recall him from my childhood as a friend of my father, who visited from England every year or so.

Abdullah uncle was a tall, lanky, fair man with a neatly cut, sharp beard. He always dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, which sometimes hung out from his thin waste. He smoked a pipe, with a tobacco tin placed next to him. One of the things I often did for him as a child was to fetch him a matchbox. I would stand with the matchbox as he skillfully crushed tobacco and placed it gently in the tobacco chamber. I would engage him with small talk about siblings or school, his response being his signature hearty laugh. And as the match lit up the tobacco in the pipe, my job was done.

Abdullah Hussein would place himself on a seat like a giant octopus

To settle on a piece of furniture was always a challenge for him.  He would place himself on a seat, like a giant octopus folding his tentacles, slowly landing on the ground. It looked as though the man was not at ease because of his physical stature, but that was not actually the case. He would often say, in a gentle voice, “lao jee main uthe gya faer” (“Well then, I got up!”), interspersed with his signature laughter. His engaging stories would go on and on. After all, what else would one expect from a master storyteller?

Part of his one-day visit rituals – after having eaten a family lunch at our home – was an outing with my father to visit common friends, attend literary activities or to visit their friend and publisher Niaz Ahmed, owner of Sang-e-Meel publications.

He was always a simple man, requiring fewer creature comforts, and always very independent and dignified. His wife, a doctor working in England, arrived in Pakistan in the late 1990’s to build their home in Lahore’s Defence housing society. We quickly became friends with her too. She was a strong woman who personally supervised the construction of the house, with three units: one to rent out, one for themselves and one for their son Ali. Both intermittently moved between Pakistan and England, until Auntie decided to move back to England and Abdullah uncle stayed in Pakistan. His children Ali and Noor, who had taken after their father in their tall, Caucasian looks, were for me very “glamourous kids”. I only met Ali earlier this year in January, when I decided to go see Abdullah uncle and ask for his autograph. Armed with copies of Udaas Naslain and Nashaib, my brother Sumair and I rang the doorbell and Ali came out, sleepy and with an Einstein-like hairdo. We were informed that Abdullah uncle was unwell and asleep. Later, I got a call from Abdullah uncle, asking me to come to meet him right away. Busy as I was, I decided to postpone the autograph project until a later visit.

My father and Abdullah uncle’s friendship was unique: they were in regular contact through letters or whenever the latter visited Lahore. Selective in making friends, Abdullah Hussein only met people recommended by my father. The founder of Sang-e-Meel publications wanted to publish Abdullah uncle’s books and asked my father to request him to have his books published there. My father had earlier requested Shafiq-ur-Rehman and Quratulain Haider to have their books published by Sang-e-Meel – at that time the only publishers in the country who actually paid royalties to authors. Upon my father’s request to Abdullah uncle, Sang-e-Meel started publishing his books. The first was Qaid, his latest novelette at that time, for which my brother Sumair painted the cover. And this was the beginning of their common friendship with Niaz Ahmad at Sang-e-Meel.

Abdullah Hussein was diagnosed with leukemia but was more concerned about my father

Theirs was a friendship of respect and equality. Both cared little for the so-called ‘literary critics’ and cliques. They remain authors of timeless, bestselling Urdu literature.

In June, I returned to Pakistan because of my father’s surgery. I had also learned that Abdullah uncle was diagnosed with leukemia, but he himself was more concerned about my father. Abdullah uncle would call every morning to ask about my father. He lived close to the hospital and went there for chemotherapy. One day, he turned up barely fitting in a wheel chair, to meet my father. His presence brought a great smile on my father’s face, as if he had been longing for this one visit. Abdullah Hussein called everyone – writers, friends and fans, asking them to pray for my father. Many were surprised at how Abdullah Hussein’s concern for my father’s health seemed to trump his own ailment.

When my father recovered, a day before my departure, I asked him to call Abdullah Hussein so I could go get his autograph. After repeated attempts, someone else answered the phone. It was his driver. Abdullah uncle had been admitted to the same hospital. His lungs were filled with water.

On Friday, the 26th of June, I went to see him at the hospital before returning to New York. His driver found me and took me to the room of an “M. Khan”. It later struck me that he was admitted under his real name. I knocked and entered a cream-coloured, damp, windowless room. He had been sleeping and seemed happy to see me – or so I believe. The first subject was my father. He plunged into a long conversation, with his familiar body language, using his long arms and folding himself like an octopus in the small hospital bed. He was agitated about two good friends who were suddenly ill and described it as an “afat” (tribulation). In my father’s illness, he saw his own ailment. It was strange for him that the two fell ill at the same time and instead of treatment for their original diseases, had to be treated for other complications.

He expected the doctors to discharge him that very evening after treatment and hoped to resume his chemotherapy in two weeks. I did not have the courage to take him some of his books for autographs or even to ask for it. I wished him a recovery by the time of my next visit home and told him that we must become friends on Facebook.

Back in New York, a week after, I was told that he was totally unconscious. According to his daughter Noor, his last conscious day was spent agonizing over my father’s health. He passed away on the 4th of July. My copies of Udaas Naslain and Nashaib remained unsigned and he never recovered enough to go online and to my Facebook friend.