The cultural memory of trauma

In her poem ‘jirga’, Abeda Iqbal Azad puts out a melancholy call to mystic poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. “Shah Latif tumhari sohni aaj bhi dubo di jati hai, aor agar pani na mile to uske apne khoon se darya banaye jate hain. Shah Latif tum aik bar zarur aao,” she writes -- asking him to stand up from his grave to help address the problem of honor killings plaguing Pakistani society.

Azad’s poem, full of sadness and contempt, denounces honor killings as a cruel and insensitive act. The cadence of her prose and the fervor of its message caught the attention of Urdu scholars and critics who ranked her work on par with legendary Punjabi poet, Amrita Pritam. She, too, pleaded with a Sufi poet, Waris Shah, in her poem ‘Ajj Akhaan Warish Shah nu’ to come from his grave to write a new history of Punjab on seeing the trauma of the 1947 partition. Though they lived different lives and took up different causes, both writers call upon Sufi masters with the same human compassion.

Many decades later, the distress signal Azad put out in ‘jirga’ resonates for women in Pakistan who continue to feel the injustice of gender in a patriarchal society. Azad, who became one of Pakistan’s most celebrated activists and writers, remains a celebrated symbol of honest work, praised for being a political, and progressive creator who poured nuanced emotion into both her prose and poems. She is beloved enough to be described by Urdu scholars and critics as having a “heart full of spring” that “sparkles and brightens up our mind with her creative prose and poetry”

Wounds of conflict

Azad is well known for her prolific contributions to the world of literature during the separation of East Pakistan. Pigeonholed neither by Bengali nor Urdu, she used her writing voice and keen emotional insights to write thoughtfully about the distressing events that led to the separation. In her works ‘Aag ka darya hai aor doob ker jana hai,’ and ‘1971 ka tareekhi seyah din’ the author described rebellious protagonists who struggled to break free from the economic and political enslavement of a dictatorial system.

Azad’s writing shows the lives of the people of East Pakistan during the military clampdown in 1971, with her sensitive portrayal allowing her to meld a Bengali and Urdu landscape to form fraternal associations that might act as a salve for the conflict-inflicted wounds. She emphasised the similarities between the cultures – both Muslim – who share the same Quran, along with the poetry of Iqbal in the West and Nazrul in the East.

In her short novel ‘aag ka darya hai.’ Azad took us to her home in Dhaka, where she saw food being distributed at relief camps. Upon seeing the grain labeled Bihari wheat, she asked herself, “Is grain also Bihari-Bengali?” to which she could not find an answer. She then put the question in the hands of the creator, saying only God knows what happens next.

Cultural trauma and reconciliation

Born to businessman and educationist Gholam Rabbani – known himself for the Urdu to Bengali dictionary Farhang-e-Rabbani – Azad was raised in an environment that polished her literary skills. At a very early age, her aptitude for journalism led her to work for the Bangladesh Observer and Bangladesh Times. Completing her MBBS in her hometown of Dhaka, she migrated to Karachi after her marriage to advertising executive Iqbal Azad Syed.

It was in Karachi that her work in fiction, nonfiction and poetry positioned here one of the leading Urdu voices of dissent and critique. She is most remembered for her poignant poems, her book ‘Aasman,’ and popular columns.

In addition to her political and cultural insights, Azad also portrayed a keen feminist understanding of justice. In her poem ‘tahaffuz’, she demonstrates the depth of this feminist insight in describing how curators of law themselves become perpetrators; She also criticized the observance of women’s day, which she believed to be a crime against women, as it and robs them of their freedom the other 364 days of the year.

Her more contemporary works, including a novella about Urdu-speaking families or Mohajirs in Karachi, show an understanding of cultural trauma and reconciliation. Her novella ‘Hijab,’ written in 1995, tells the story of a Mohajir girl, who was repatriated to Karachi after losing her entire family in the 1971 riots. The character goes on to lose her son to Karachi riots in 1992.

Whimsy in poetry

The serious topics in Azad’s work are offset by the whimsical nature of her poetry, in which themes of love and nature refresh and soothe the reader. Her tributes to rain in particular -- like the poem ‘baarish--mujhe aaj is bearish me ji bher bheeg jane do’ – jump off the page with a magical quality of lightness and freedom that hint at Azad’s childlike appreciation for the natural world.

The reader gets a further glimpse into her inner life through her autobiographical style, when she writes about teenage love for a dream character she left behind in Bangladesh, where she was born, grown, and educated. In addition to her political explorations, she dedicated a huge part of her life to exploring the idea of romance, as seen in the lyrical nature of her poems.

Abeda’s relationships were earnest and visible. They were also very well documented, opening up the reader to the extraordinary relationship between this renowned author and poet and her characters. Her love poems, presumably written for her husband, also present profound insights into her personality and the way she approached life as both a sobering and joyous matter.

This may be why after, all this time, her portfolio remains celebrated as a look into her highly creative mind, and for her love of thoughtful language -- stamped into record through her written works.