Remembering Taseer

Months and years preceding my father’s incarceration in the dreaded dungeons of the Lahore Fort (a Mughal-era torture chamber), he wrote me letters explaining the cruelty of General Zia, and why he must fight against the Martial Law and for democracy. At 12, I did not grasp the motivation for the extent of this conviction and neither of horror of the days that lay ahead. He promised I would understand more as I grew up. I did. 

Oct 1983 the arrest:

It was a chilly pre-winter eve in 1983 Lahore, and Abba as a member of the MRD — Movement For The Restoration of Democracy — was going to the court arrest at Charing Cross Lahore to create a movement against Zia. Lifelong friends like Nusrat Jamil and Ahmad Rashid, and family members had gathered at the site, and Abba was ready to shout anti-Zia slogans. It was evening and we bundled into cars and assembled on Mall Road.

I was assigned to Angie Rashid, the Spanish wife of Ahmad Rashid who was part of our brigade. Mall Road bustled with armed policemen. Abba emerged into the crowd wearing a khaki shalwar kameez. Ready with a slew of slogans and a prepared speech, he only managed to shout an expletive on the trumpet like loudspeaker about three times before he was ambushed by dozens of policemen who rained lathees and dandas on him, grabbed him by the collar and then pushed him into a van.

The episode ended sooner than it started and in a swath of dust Abba vanished, badly hurt. The ground was strewn with anti-martial law fliers and posters. Angie had disappeared into the maddening crowd. Terrified I hugged a massive white dusty pillar. It would be weeks before I knew where or how my father was. People insisted he was dead like Bhutto. I would not believe it. 

The following days:

Silence was all that followed. There was no news for days and weeks. Where was Abba? There was no one to ask, no door to knock on. The family sat outside every police station and jail in and around Lahore. There was no whisper. Finally, weeks later we received a chit he managed to smuggle out via a menial worker that he was incarcerated in the deadliest of torture dungeons at the Lahore Fort. He was being tortured and was kept in a solitary confinement in the dark. 

The fort days that built fortitude:

Recounted as the most difficult days of his life, Abba talked of the six-foot square dirt cell he was held in, while in solitary confinement at the Lahore fort.

A hole in the ground served as a reminder that he was at a slightly elevated level to an animal. No window or light, Abba told of how he marked on the wall with a stick on the ground the passing of days as a tiny glint of light passed through his cell every day. There was no other way for him to calculate the passing of time.

With just the Holy Quran to read, he told how he had read the Holy Quran translation hundreds of times, over and over again.

He was served the same meal of watery lentils and one roti, once a day for months. On his return he had lost south of 40 pounds.

Later on in his incarceration, I recall how we were able to slip a piece of mango pickle through bribing a sweeper. He told how this piece of pickle became his world. He savoured it for days as it was the only thing with taste he had experienced in months.

This was a time of utter horror, where keeping his sanity itself was a Herculean challenge. He later described how the pitiful wailing of other torture victims around him were the only sounds he ever heard.

No option of a bath, mud caked on him like a second skin. The cold months of winter set in brutally, and he slept on the cold hard floor with a jute sack which barely served for any comfort or warmth.

A month into his incarceration he was presented to a local judge who asked him to sign a ‘maafi nama’, basically a letter begging for forgiveness with a promise never to speak against Gen Zia and his rule. In this moment of complete grimness he did not compromise his principles and refused to sign the document which could be his ticket to freedom. The infuriated judge told him if so be it, he would then rot in the Qila till nothing was left of his bones except sulphur. 

Taseer stood firm:

Six months later, Taseer was transferred to Faislabad jail, which he later joked was like the Paris Hilton compared to his time spent at the Qila.

A brave and courageous man Taseer stood firm for his beliefs, not only then but to the day he died. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.