I always enjoy Khaled Hasans' columns in the Friday Times.
He's lived a life that only someone immersed in the meandering, chaotic political milieu of Pakistan can. From reading one of his translations (A wet afternoon, Saadat Hassan Manto) and sporadic readings of the column, I gather he was with the Pakistan Times (A left-leaning newspaper in the 60's that was famously edited by Faiz Ahmed Faiz) and a press secretary of Bhutto during that short lived idealistic dawn of a Pakistani political identity.
I digress, getting back to this weeks column. 'The last warrior' is an epitaph to Ahmed Bashir, another from that fast disappearing breed of men, those with true personalities and the soul to bravely fight the haemorrhaging corruption and decrepitude of a dream that turned all too quickly into a nightmare.
Khalids' translation of an Ahmed Bashir article reads:
I have seen Ayub looting the country. And then Zia-ul-Haq; and Benazir; and Nawaz Sharif. As for myself, I have never auctioned my politics, or my conscience or my integrity. Today I am a tired old man of eighty who is sick, stricken by a plethora of painful diseases. I now lie here waiting for the awesome blast of that trumpet that will make birds fly out of trees. I have no property, no money, no regrets but my soul is at peace because I know I have never done anything bad knowinglyAnd as Kaifi Azmi (who as card-carrying member of the congress party was put in a not entirely different situation soon after independence) wrote for Kaghaz ke Phool (Guru Dutt)
Waqt ne kiya kiya haseen sitam Jaayenge kaha sujhta nahi chal pade magar raasta nahi Kya talaash hai kuchh pata nahi Bun rahe hain dil khaab dam-ba-dam ..Read "Ahmed Bahir, The last warrior" [TFT - Sub required]