Remembering Faizan

Faizan will always be remembered for bringing happiness to the faces of our future.

It was about a month back when I last met Faizan Peerzada in Islamabad at ‘Haleem Ghar’ and we both recalled years of struggle against General Ziaul Haq. I was a student activist at Karachi University at the time while Faizan’s brother Salman’s film Blood of Hussain became controversial and all the Peerzada brothers were in trouble at the hands of the Zia military regime. I still cannot believe Faizan is no longer with us. This is not fair ‘buddy’, as we use to call him.

I first met Faizan and the Peerzadas in the early 1980s at the residence of Gul Aunty, the mother of artist Mishi Khan. Those were the years when different segments of society were struggling against martial law. I was working for The Star and was also a member of Dastak, a theatre group formed by progressive people like Mr Aslam Azhar and the late Mansoor Saeed, father of Sania Saeed.

“You must interview him and write about his puppets,” Gul Aunti told me as she introduced me to Faizan. When I became secretary of the Karachi Press Club (KPC), I asked Faizan to arrange a puppet show for the children of KPC members and he did it without charging a fee. The Peerzadas, particularly Faizan, became the regular visitors of the club.

Faizan was also interested in doing street puppet shows to protest against General Zia in those years of suppression. I told him we could provide him a platform but that he could face problems with the police, keeping in mind that he also earned his bread and butter from the acts.

For several years, they successfully went on to do puppet shows in Clifton and attracted many young audiences.

During Zia’s regime, artists faced lots of problems as it was difficult to get no-objection certificates for doing stage shows. The government would hardly allow anything critical of its regime. Poets such as Josh, Faiz, Jalib and Faraz were banned so one could not even use verses from their revolutionary poems in performances.

Faizan and I once arranged a viewing of Salman’s documentary, Blood of Hussain, which revolved around military dictatorship and its persecution of political workers. It was banned in Pakistan. Those were the years when the KPC was the only venue available for the dissenting voices of society. While dictators called the KPC ‘enemy territory,’ other people called it a ‘beacon of democracy.’

Karachi’s law and order situation started deteriorating in the mid-1980s and became worse in 1986-87. At that point, Faizan told me to move to Lahore and I said, “Yaar, I understand your problem but it is very difficult for me as I always want to be at the place where there is news.”

The Rafi Peer Theatre was then shifted to Lahore but Faizan always kept in touch with me. He was just 54 and when I met him for the last time in Islamabad, I said, “Buddy, you and I are of the same age but you look so old now. Are you okay, health-wise?” To this, he responded, “rising extremism and disappointing politics have taken away all the good we had dreamt of together.”

It was shocking to hear about Faizan’s sudden death. His dream of a better and tolerant Pakistan has been shattered but he will always be remembered for bringing happiness to the faces of our future, i.e., the children of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2012.