KARACHI:
“Say not in grief ‘he is no more’, but live in thankfulness that he was.”
The nuclear scientist, Dr AQ Khan who made Pakistan’s defence impregnable by making it the only nuclear state in the entire Islamic world was recently laid to rest in Islamabad in a nondescript graveyard of his own liking as disclosed by his family. His funeral prayers were held in the Capital’s Faisal Mosque where the authorities were also keen to bury him. But that was not to be so as Providence has its own Deliverance and only Allah knows why He selected a forlorn corner amid heavy rain and furious hailstorm for one of His choicest beings. Despite getting a state funeral it was managed in a most unstately manner. Who all were absent from his last rituals may best be consigned to history. Dr Sahab often used to say in his interviews on television that he was often treated shabbily in the country because he was never regarded as a son of the soil. But what he really achieved made him an iconic son of Pakistan. The last letter written by Dr Sahab to the Sindh Chief Minister shortly before his death is heart wrenching and emotionally devastating. Tragically it was not cancer alone that brought about his demise but he died of suffocation, loneliness, disgrace and neglect. I can only quote Ghalib to vent my disgust and utter dismay:
Puchay hai kya wajud o adam ahle shauq ka
Aap apni aag ke khas o khashak ho gaye
Haroon Rashid Siddiqi
Canada
Published in The Express Tribune, October 19th, 2021.
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