Transitions: The author of ‘The Wandering Falcon’ dies

Rich tributes for Jamil Ahmad, who was also a former civil servant.

ISLAMABAD:

Jamil Ahmad, a prolific writer and principled bureaucrat, passed away on Saturday in the capital city after a protracted illness. He would have turned 84 this September. He is survived by his German wife Helga and their three children - Shahnaz, Taimoor Aziz and Murad. “He was not well and was bedridden for the past three months and had become very weak. He had a heart attack on Saturday and passed away,” Taimoor told AFP.

Ahmad’s critically acclaimed book ‘The Wandering Falcon’, shortlisted for Asia’s top English-language literary prize in 2011, brought him fame late in life when it was published three decades after it was written. The collection of stories drew heavily on Ahmad’s enduring interest in Balochistan’s tribes and his civil service career. Ahmad joined the civil service in 1954 and later became commissioner of Swat and Waziristan. He served at the embassy in Kabul from 1978 to 1980, a crucial time for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, coinciding with the Soviet invasion of the former.

Contemporaries have queued up to pay homage to Ahmad for what Kashmiri writer Basharat Peer described as “one of the finest collections of short stories to come out of South Asia in decades”.

“He is a man who should be celebrated. He was a simple man, a loving father-in-law and grandfather,” said Fauzia Minallah, wife of Ahmad’s elder son Taimoor. “He told stories you didn’t get to hear elsewhere, stories about brave women and their role in conflict resolution in tribal areas,” said Samar Minallah, Fauzia’s sister and documentary filmmaker.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2014.