Book review: The Waters of Lahore - time travels

A three-part historical account peppered with personal anecdotes.

The Waters of Lahore is a memoir of Kamal Azfar, stalwart of the Pakistan Peoples Party, a leading advocate and former Governor of Sindh. The book is conceived as a trilogy and is an autobiography written in the third person. This approach initially distracts but then settles in. It gives the author the freedom to talk about issues and events as they occur to him, flitting from one era to another.

The work consists of three books, each independent of the other. The Transfer of Power is about parting: from Britain and India in 1947, from Bengal after the events of 1971 and from his son, the dashing Omar Azfar, who died after a battle with cancer in 2009.

In the first book, some of the most interesting parts relate to Azfar’s description of his life with his family — his father, a rare Indian Civil Service officer, and the life his family led. It is an honest account complete with interesting details of the way Azfar’s household functioned.

Published by Sama Books and available for Rs1,200.

The second book, Camelot by the Sea, makes and even more interesting read. This book is dedicated to Sanam Bhutto, the only surviving child of the mercurial Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan and a person with whom Azfar associated himself and worked closely.

This portion candidly talks of the personality of Bhutto, with all his strengths and weaknesses. It also recalls interesting anecdotes about the Bhutto family and events of that period — the post 1971 elections, the government that was formed and the intrigues that ensued.

The third part, Asian Drama Revisited, was slowed reading. More so because it was deprived of the nuggets found elsewhere in the book. Azfar did well to remember incidents and events that should be recorded.

Seated R to L: Jam Sadiq Ali, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mir Rasul Bux Talpur and the author, Karachi, 1971.

All in all, it is a captivating read. It keeps the reader engaged till the very end and Azfar does not disappoint with both his style of writing and the richness of the information he presents. Possibly, the only let down of the book is its high price. This makes it too expensive for the very person who should be reading the book: students of History.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, March 16^th, 2014.