Table of Contents
Dahlte Saayee - Part 1
Dahlte Saayee - Part 2
Dahlte Saayee - Part 3
Autobiography of Muniruddin Ahmed
Muniruddin Ahmed (born 1934 in Rawalpindi) is a Pakistani writer. He is a specialist in the history and politics of the Muslim world with emphasis on the Indian subcontinant. He studied Arabic and Political Science at the University of Panjab (Lahore) and the Universitaet Hamburg (Germany). He was associated with Deutsches Orient-Institut, Hamburg, as research scholar and taught at the Universitaet Hamburg.
He has lived in Germany since 1960 and is regarded as one of the pioneers of Urdu Literature in Diaspora. His work encompases five volumes of short stories and seven books of translations from German Literature into Urdu and one volume from the literature of different Pakistani languages into German. His autobiography Dahlte Saayee has been serialized in the literary journal "Savera", Lahore and was been published in book form in October 2006. His correspondence with Sayyid Ahmad Sa'id Hamdani was published from Delhi in 1999. Lately another book of his correspondence with Agha Babur is due to appear in Pakistan.
He publishes in German, English and Urdu.
Articles.
Literary works
1. Muslim education and the scholars' social status upto the 5th century Muslim era (11th century Christian era) in the light of Ta'rikh Baghdad. Zuerich 1968. (Translations have been published in Arabic and Persian).
Urdu Short Stories
1. Zard sitaara - Lahore 1988. Hamburg 1991.
2. Shajar-i mamnu'a - Lahore 1991.
3. Bint haraam - Delhi 1999.
4. Bichri hui koonj - Delhi 2001 - Lahore 2002.
5. La faani ishq - Hamburg 2005.
Translations from Pakistani Literature
1. Pakistanische Literatur. Uebersetzungen aus den Sprachen Pakistans. Herausgegeben von Munir D. Ahmed unter Mitwirkung von Annemarie Schimmel. Hamburg 1986.
Translations from German Literature
1. . Ma'asar Jarman Adab. Numa'inda adab aproon ka majmu'a. - Hamburg 1986. 2nd edition. Lahore 1994.
2. Jiwan saayee . jarman sha'ir Erich Fried ki aik sau nazmaiN - Lahore 1993. 2nd edition. Lahore 2001.
3. . MaiN usee dhundta phira. das jarman sha'irooN ki aik sau nazmaiN - Dehli 1999.
4. Doodi darwaaze. jarman sha'ir Wolfgang Baechler ki aik sw nazmaiN - Dehli 1999.
5. Aadami jis nee apne aap ko bhula diya. jarman kahaniyaN - Lahore 1995.
6. Peter Bichsel . kahaaniaN - afsaane - khubaat-i bootiqa - Lahore 1995. 2nd edition Lahore 2001.
Correspondence
1. Hadeeth-e yaaraaN - Maktoobat - Dehli 1999.
1. Agha Babur se murasalat - Lahore 2007.
Autobiographical
1. Dhalte saayee - Zindgi naama - Lahore 2006.
External links
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muniruddin_Ahmed".
Categories: Pakistani people stubs 1934 births Living people Pakistani writers Urdu writers
Going to Germany and staying there
By Ashfaque Naqvi
RAWALPINDI-born Muniruddin Ahmad went to Germany after graduating from the Punjab and obtained a DPhil from the Hamburg University. In 1960, he joined the German Orient Institut in the same city as a research scholar. Later, he was appointed a professor of Islamic history at Hamburg University from where he retired in 1999. He continues to live in that country.
He is the author and translator of several books including two research works in English and Persian and one on Pakistani literature in German. He also writes short stories in Urdu and has four published collections to date, including Zard Sitara, Shajar-i-Mamnua and Bint-i-Haram. His stories are based on life in Germany. In weaving a story he follows the German pattern which is different from what we have copied from English. In 1966, Maqsood Hasni wrote a full book to make a critical appraisal of Muniruddin Ahmad’s stories.
The Urdu translation done by Muniruddin Ahmad of Peter Bichsel’s German short stories was published a long time ago by Siddiqa Begum in her monthly Adab-i-Latif. She has now devoted a full issue of her magazine to Urdu translations of Erich Fried’s poems who died in 1988. He was a personal friend of Muniruddin Ahmad’s and a disciple of the famous German dramatist and poet, Bertolt Brecht (d. 1956), who sought to develop a Marxist ‘epic theatre’. Although living in England, Fried had the courage to condemn the ills prevalent in the Western system and its harmful effects on the world around. He did not even spare the high-ups of his native government. He served on the staff of the BBC for broadcast to East Germany and gradually developed a liking for socialism. This led to his writing a book on Vietnam which was published in 1966. It was welcomed by the students of German universities who were leading an anti-establishment movement. Those days his poems against the US were on the lips of everyone.
To give a feel of Erich Fried’s poetry, I reproduce an English translation of one of his poems:
The democracy Where no one is allowed to sayit is not true democracy Can it be worthy of being called a democracy
It may sound strange, but Fried’s work has not been translated into English and probably remains unknown to non-Germans. I understand that Fried has left behind 25 volumes. The Urdu translations by Muniruddin Ahmad, are in seven volumes. It was in 1995 that the Adab-i-Latif selected 100 poems out of these translations and published them in book form under the title, Jeevan Sa‘ey. Since Siddiqa Begum thinks that the book did not reach all those who wanted it, she has thought it fit to reproduce the poems in an issue of her magazine instead of producing a second edition of Jeevan Sa‘ey.
Of Deers and Does
By Intizar Hussain
A FEW words about deers and does, whom our poets like to call Ghizal. Gazelle in English may be seen as a corruption of this Persian word. Muniruddin Ahmad while presenting the new instalment of his auto-biography in the latest issue of Savaira has provided me a pretext to talk a little about this soft eyed innocent animal. But perhaps it is not so innocent as it appears to be. One can only marvel at the deceptive role it has been playing in the life of princes, hunters and lovers of good old days.
Our literary journals are in general a miscellany of short writings, gazals, nazms, short stories, and short critical articles. They all are very much there in the present issue of Sawaira as edited by Muhammad Salim-ur-Rehman and Riaz Ahmad. But the journal has also managed to present in its pages two long writings in instalments. One is an account of Arabic literature belonging to pre-Islam period written by Khursheed Rizvi. The other is the auto-biography of Muniruddin Ahmad. In the present instalment he tells us about his experiences while on a visit to Saudi Arabia and Yemen. What he saw and experienced during his visit to Saudi Arabia is far from being something pleasant.
His visit to Yemen is markedly different from that of Saudi Arabia. It is there that he hears to his pleasant surprise a more imaginatively rich version of Queen Bilqees, the legendary queen of Saba, who had won the heart of Hazrat Sulaiman. This version is as follows:
The king of Maa’rab, while on a hunting expedition, saw a frightened doe being hotly pursued by a ferocious wolf. He with his bow and arrow took aim at the wolf and killed it. In the meanwhile, the doe fled away leaving the king in a state of surprise. He, while searching her, found himself at the gate of a strange, almost a magical city. The man, who met him at the gate, was a genie and was the ruler of that city. Just at that moment he saw a damsel with dazzling beauty passing by him.
Wonder struck he asked, “Who is this girl?”
“She is the same doe whom you rescued from the clutches of the wolf.”
He instantly fell in love with her and presented himself as a candidate asking for her hand. He was told that she in fact is a fairy and deserves to be treated as such. After being married to the king she gave birth to a daughter. As the girl grew up she surpassed her mother in beauty. She was destined to be queen of this land and to be married to Hazrat Sulaiman.
So Malka Bilqees was the daughter of a fairy. But what about this fairy. Was she originally a doe turned into a fairy or a fairy, who had developed a fondness for transforming into a doe so as to be able to roam freely in the jungle. And was it for the sake of giving birth to a human child, half-human half-fairy, that she appeared in the form of a damsel and got married to a human king. But the doe in Mahabharata did not care to turn into a damsel. She, while roaming as a doe, somehow managed to have a son from a rishi. And, lo, this son with a horn on his forehead grew up as a human being and gained the status of a rishi.
As for their males, the deers, they have been so fond of attracting the attention of princes and adventurers so as to entangle them in some trouble. Every dastan seems to be warning against the intrigues of the deers.
AUTHOR -- BOOK REVIEW:: Life story without frills ::
Nadia Anwar
Title: Dhaltay Saaye (Zindagi Nama)
Author: Muniruddin Ahmad
Pages: 599
Price: Rs 600
First Edition: 2007
Publisher: Qausain, 15-Circular Road, Lahore
What is it that makes an autobiography so fascinating for many readers? Its web of deception or its transparency? It is transparent only in a relative sense. The autobiographer often seems to imply that this is all you will learn about me and my life. An entire dimension of my personality and existence would remain out of your reach. After all, you can expose your person only discreetly.
Unfortunately many autobiographers are anything but transparent. Many are attempts at turning one’s life into palpable fiction (‘pulpable’ fiction would be a more appropriate phrase). Many are exercises, often in vain, in self-aggrandisement. However, now and then, one comes across a life story which by its very sobriety, by the absence of attitudinizing, makes for pleasant and rewarding reading. Muniruddin Ahmad’s Dhaltay Saaye (Lengthening Shadows) belongs firmly to this category.
Muniruddin is already well-known as a short story writer and translator with several collections of short stories to his credit. His fiction, appreciated by discerning Urdu critics, sparse and to the point, a sort of condensed realism, is immediately recognisable. He probably takes chunks out of real life and, by deft additions and deletions, transforms them into fiction. The sense of somber reality is rarely lost.
As his short stories never stray far from life, observed and interpreted, he has been able to carry over much of his fiction’s straightforwardness into his autobiography. It has obviously worked to his advantage. There are no rhetorical flourishes in the book under review, no romantic effervescence, no beating the drum for himself.
Muniruddin was born in 1934 at Changa Bangyal, a tehsil of Gujar Khan. His was a family that cared for literacy. As a matter of fact, his paternal grandfather, Maulvi Muhammad Fazl Khan, was a renowned scholar who towards the end of his life began to translate Ibn Arabi’s Futuhat-i-Makkiya into Urdu. Unfortunately he died before he could finish the job. Muniruddin’s family was Qadiyani and so was his paternal grandfather, who, however, during the last days of his life, publicly disassociated himself from the Qadiyanis. Muniruddin also became gradually disenchanted with Qadiyanism and no longer belongs to it.
About his childhood, boyhood and youth, his education and the way of life in general, first in Qadiyan and after the partition, in Rawalpindi and Rabwah, he writes as an insider. We learn a great deal about the Qadiyanis and their activities and aspirations. He turned his back on Qadiyanism a long time ago and therefore, in his autobiography, he writes about the past objectively. His observations and remarks concerning the Qadiyanis are revealing, and lay bare the failings and anxieties of a minority uncertain of its place in Pakistani society. It also appears from his experience that the Qadiyani organisation was run somewhat along dictatorial lines and quite harm-handedly at that. Unlike the outsiders who often take a malicious glee in reviling or victimising the Qadiyanis, Muniruddin writes about the shortcomings, internal splits and dissensions of his former collegues, or call them his co-religionists if you will, without a show of rancour and perhaps with a shade of sadness. This part of his book is particularly worth reading.
To be fair to Muniruddin, there is much else on offer in his book. We see glimpses of an era which now, in a fast changing world, seems so remote and unfamiliar as if belonging to another planet.
Whatever has eventual differences with the Qadiyani Jamaat, his association with it did completely change his life. In 1960 he was sent to Germany as a Qadiyani missionary, and soon after his arrival there realised that the man he was supposed to work under was thoroughly incompetent and exceedingly jealous. Wrongly accused of misconduct, Muniruddin was ordered by the Jamaat to leave for Nigeria. He refused to comply with the order, said goodbye to Qadiyanism and decided to go it alone. Determination and diligence always pay off. He continued to live and study in Germany, prospered and married a German woman, and is now well-known as a scholar specialising in Islamic studies. He is one of the few Pakistanis completely at home in German language.
Halfway through, the book undergoes a strange metamorphosis. It becomes a travelogue, albeit an interesting one. Unlike most travel writers in Urdu, who betray either their lack of knowledge or are inclined to mix only with Pakistanis abroad, Muniruddin is a very well informed and perceptive traveller. You are not bored in his company. His account of visits to Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Yemen and Chile are particularly interesting. I would single out the days he spent in Yemen as remarkably entertaining. The book has been well produced and several pages of photographs in colour add to its attractiveness.
Published in: Weekly Magazine "Vista" of the daily "The Post", Lahore. 22.5.2007.
Comments by Dr. Tahir Qazi
I have gone through good part of it and what a delight to read it. The story of great life well told. Congratulations. Beautiful style, simplicity of language and what a narration of the events. It does not feel like reading it; it feels like being at various places with you and being an old friend to all of those who ever you ran into and have talked about in the book. This autobiography should have come out because it is not only a biography but picture of era where an insightful human is part of it and yet a distant observer who is trying to look at every happening from a neutral vantage point of a true scholar.
I think it will serve as a reference to future scholars moving Germany as he/she will be well aware what kind of work is already avialable and would not have to independently dig out material. Your bilgraphy, In its detail and the way you have written it, is very much encyclopedic also.
Those points where there were reasons for being bitter, you have kept cool and you have touched them with grace. It speaks more of you than mere literary expertise. I think it is a great addition to Urdu literature.
On a personal note; there have been times when I could go to various place I chose not to go because I did not want to go somewhere without being able to put the place in perspective. I think, now I'll be confident going to many places because your book has charted out so much for me. Even I feel that you know the US more than I do.
Congratulations again. Tahir
A wonderful piece of literature
awesome simply awesome.
This autobiography is a literary master piece, it also contains sacred historical facts about the corruption and hegemony of the family of the promised messiah (as).
Various cultural, social and historical facts of bygone era are skillfully captured in it.
This historical book also,tells us that on one hand Khalifa e sani (ra) stopped ordinary Ahmadies from entering claims for their properties left in India,but on the other hand family of PM (as) entered claims and became feudal masters of Pakistan and grabbed huge lands in Punjab and Sind and declared whole of the Indian Qadian and five villages around it as their Indian assets.
I am very thankful to the writer and I am looking forward to buy this book one day, and present it for the library of my family.
Khatim
REVIEW: An unusual life
Reviewed by Asif Farrukhi
Sometimes ordinary people come up with unusual and remarkable accounts of their lives. But if somebody writes an extraordinary book, can he be said to have lived an ordinary life? This is the case with Muniruddin Ahmed who has written an unusually interesting account of his life, which is seemingly made up of small details of life, travels, books, growing up, family and friends. He quotes a German writer at the beginning of the book, to the effect that it is a common misunderstanding that only extraordinary people deserve to have their life-story told. For him, there is story in the life of every human being and if it’s a story, it is a story worth telling. The only conditions he imposes are that this person should have the knack and flair of storytelling and he should be aware of the technique of storytelling.
Scholar of Islamic studies and translator of modern German literature into Urdu, fiction writer, traveller and chronicler, Muniruddin Ahmad is a combination of diverse elements and as such his life-story was bound to be interesting. He certainly has the talent of telling a story in such away as to make it interesting.
Ahmad grew up in Rawalpindi, Rabwah and Peshawar and in his book he paints a remarkable picture of his life over there. His portrayal of Rawalpindi is affectionate as he describes the circumstances of his family and some of its salient members. His schoolmates and friends of the young days are remembered. The most vivid portrayal is that of Rabwah and he describes his education and intellectual growth in the circumscribed community. This must surely be the most intimate portrayal that one can lay one’s hands on of a young man growing up in such a community and the intellectual and educational challenges he faces. The author has faithfully recorded his gradual falling out with the people he grew up with, although the final breach occurs after he proceeds abroad for further education. He recalls all this dispassionately and describes his break without bitterness. He has also described well his attempts at entering the literary world as an aspirant writer and this too seems to be another closed circle.
He recalls his schoolmates and friends from his childhood. The most vivid portrayal is that of Rabwah, where he describes his education and intellectual growth in the circumscribed community.
The author lands up in Germany and finally makes it his second home. The description of the immigrants and people trying to find a foot hold in Europe make for interesting reading. The storyteller’s craft serves the author well, so much so that he records certain events in his life-story with reference to the short fiction he would write about those events. The life-story is then recast as fiction, but then what sort of reality would you expect from a storyteller’s life-story? The other craft he can lay claim to is that of a travel writer. A substantial portion of the life story is made up of accounts of various journeys, some made for pleasure and vacation and some made for work. He records his impressions of places and the people encountered over there. From Syria, Turkey and Morocco to the former Yugoslavia, he gives the feel of certain places, and he manages to do so more successfully than some of the well-known travel writers who have won popularity with a large audience.
Growing up, intellectual development, immigration, finding roots and travel are the most interesting features of this life-story. Another distinction is his illustration of the academic life in Europe, especially the Islamic studies circles. Like the other portions of the book, these parts are also described well, with sharply drawn portraits of the people he comes across. The scenes change quickly and there is enough variety to keep the reader interested, although seemingly the life-story does not have events of an adventurous kind. The author has a readable style and he knows how to make his account interesting. This must rank as one of the most interesting autobiographies to have appeared in recent years.
The book is neatly designed and well produced. It is remarkably free from editorial lapses, including composing mistakes which seem to characterise so many books flooding the book market these days.
Dhaltay Saiy
By Dr Muniruddin Ahmad
Quasain Press, Lahore
598pp. Rs600
Published in DAWN, Karachi. 28. October 2007.
*****
BOOK REVIEW:
Muniruddin Ahmad: a life of learning
By Khaled Ahmed
Dhaltay Saey Zindagi Nama;
By Muniruddin Ahmad;
Qausain Lahore 2006;
Pp599; Price Rs 600
His narrative conveys the hardships of the penury he lived in, but his mental toughness seems to tell us to ignore it. His encounters after his doctorate on the educational system of medieval Baghdad and his subsequent life as an academic in Germany are definitely more memorable
Muniruddin Ahmad lives in Hamburg, Germany, but is known in Pakistan for his five collections of short stories in Urdu: Zard Sitara (Lahore, 1988), Shajar-e-Mamnu’a (Lahore, 1991), Bint-e-Haraam (Delhi, 1999), Bichri hui Koonj (Delhi, 2001) and Lafaani Ishq (Hamburg, 2005). He has produced a memoir in his ripeness, which is good because he has lived most of his life away from his compatriots in Pakistan, has seen a lot that is worth telling, and most of what he tells is a biodata of struggle. He writes a realistic style in Urdu which produces a lot of irony and also expresses his personality. And he is a natural story-teller, extracting fiction from life by tinkering with it just a little to retain art as imitation.
Munir was born in 1934 in Rawalpindi in a Potohari-speaking family that came from village Changa Bangial in tehsil Gujjar Khan. Poverty didn’t block high IQ, and religion got the benefit of it first, as was noted on these pages in the case of Abdul Karim Khalid, a cowherd from a village near Gujrat, member Revenue Board Punjab, whose knowledge of religion and his ability to stand first in exams, led to his writing a dissenting treatise on ushr. Somewhere along the line, Munir’s grandfather, a solid Sunni Naqshbandi, converted to Ahmedi faith and genetically programmed the vicissitudes of Munir’s life.
Childhood spent in Rawalpindi, Qadian and Peshawar, following the peripatetic career of his father in military accounts, somehow cut all the romantic frills from Munir’s life and gave him the ability to see through the hazes we create to make our workaday adjustments. The book explains many occasions when he comes across humbug and cannot resist the urge to sift the fake from the genuine. As he grew up in Pindi his short stories began to be published in the local literary magazines. He obtained ‘first division’ in matriculation and later found it quite normal to score distinctions while passing difficult Arabic ‘fazil’ exams. (One is tempted here to comment on his beautifully naturally calligraphic handwriting which impressed the examiners all the time!)
His narrative conveys the hardships of the penury he lived in, but his mental toughness seems to tell us to ignore it. His encounters after his doctorate on the educational system of medieval Baghdad and his subsequent life as an academic in Germany are definitely more memorable. One encounter is with Detlev Khalid, a German convert to Islam, whom he first met in the Rabwa seminary. Detlev Khalid, a dilettante in faith and a philanderer by nature, met him again in 1969 when Khalid was at Islamic Research Centre in Islamabad. He had been backed financially by Asia Foundation. Munir doesn’t say it but in Pakistan he was often referred to as a ‘CIA plant’.
Khalid got into trouble with the police after he seduced a local lady and had to leave. Later his troubles with other women — mostly in the shape of marriages he couldn’t be serious about — in Africa are also faithfully narrated, but somehow the fact that he contributed a paper to the PPP parliament that apostatised the Ahmedis is missed out. Khalid ended up advising against apostatisation but no one listened. He was hounded out of the Islamic Research Centre, not so much out of prejudice as for his sheer lack of character. Munir thinks he actually had no faith but took on the faith of the country he visited.
He found the same kind of thing in Annemarie Schimmel, not in terms of character, but in her avoidance of owning up to being a Muslim, or denying it, after the Islamic world became convinced that she was one. Munir thinks that if she had become a Muslim she should have owned up to it among non-Muslims too. He tells us that Annemarie had married a Muslim Turk in her youth but never revealed it, writing her name as a maiden, Fraulein. One wonders if one can blame the great lady for not labelling herself. She was a mystic and admired mystics; branding herself as a Muslim would have been spiritually unexciting.
When the German rednecks were convulsed by her refusal to condemn Imam Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, she showed the kind of grit Munir admired. Munir himself showed the courage one expects from him as the anti-hero of his narrative when he went public with his disapproval of the Muslim ‘literary criticism’ of death on The Satanic Verses, and faced threats against his life from his expat friends. The problem with being a Muslim is that one keeps being pushed out of the pale by clearly unworthy co-believers. But one can’t even wave it away because one can die as a follower of this internecine faith.
His predictable bad encounter was with the Pakistani ambassador in Bonn, Mr Sajjad Hyder, about whose tough conduct towards his colleagues he writes in some detail. He tells us about the famous Khairi Brothers, mentioned as pioneers of the idea of Pakistan by Pakistani nationalism’s historiography. Sons of Khan Bahadur Abdul Hamid Deputy Collector of UP and cousins of the famous Maulvi Nazir Ahmad of Urdu literature, Abdul Jabbar and Abdul Sattar became footloose and struck out in search of Islamic wisdom in the Arab world.
The Khairis opened a seminary in Lebanon but escaped to Turkey when Lebanon broke free from Turkey, and then escaped to Germany when the First World War caused Turkey to be invaded by the British. They attended the Socialist International Conference in Stockholm where they claimed they had submitted a blue print for the freedom of the Muslims of India. Munir tells us that Socialist International has no record of Khairi Brothers proposing a resolution that India be divided between Hindus and Muslims. The Khairis lived in Berlin which was also home then to Pakistan’s great thespian, Rafi Peer. They attached prefixes of Prof and Dr to their names for which they were dragged to the court of law and had to pay fines.
Rafi Peer married a German lady and an ‘irregular’ nikah was performed by Jabbar Khairi, which came to nothing anyway because Rafi Peer left Germany for India in 1930 and abandoned the wife he had thus acquired. His daughter now lives in Germany and has written a book on the great German humanitarian work Dr Ruth Pfau who became a saint in the eyes of many Pakistanis for looking after the lepers of Karachi. (Rafi Peer’s German daughter has good contact with his children in Lahore.) Jabbar Khairi had also a German wife who gave him three children. Munir has corresponded with one of them called Zainab. The Khairis returned to India after Gandhi interceded for them. During the Second World War the Khairis were sent to jail ‘as German spies’. Only Sattar worked for the Muslim League and died after release from jail in 1945.
Munir has raised objections to the Ahmedi establishment too. One can’t go into that here because of the bad times — including the possibility of a pogrom at the hands of an entire population converted to Al Qaeda — the community is facing these days in Pakistan. But his first cousin Nasir Ahmad Khan alias Pervez Parvazi, who critiques memoirs, may have something to say in reply. *
Published in: The Daily Times. Lahore. 7.9.2008.-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dhaltey saye: a remarkable autobiography
By Mushir Anwar
Three very interesting autobiographies, two of them, self-admittedly, accounts of the authors’ ‘sinful lives’ – Paap beeti as they fondly and stylishly title the respective stories of their gallant days -- and the third (Dhaltey Saye) so very engaging for its candid informality, straightforwardness and sheer avoidance of cant and dissimulation, have appeared in recent months that in their own way not only make a departure from the set pattern of this genre in Urdu literature but give a lead to whoever might be thinking of writing about himself. Write without fear, they seem to be telling the prospective autobiographer.
Saqi Faruqi’s Paap Beeti might remind you of Kishwar Nahid’s ‘Shanasayyan, Ruswayyan’, though on the scale of Mr Saqi’s ten she is around four in what she would have actually liked to say about her friends and foes but, on the other hand, compared to him she appears too demure about her own self. Saqi Sahib, according to his own open-ended values by which he wishes to be known and judged, judges others too. Ashfaq Naqvi Sahib, author of the second Paap Beeti, appears progressively innocent as the list of his profligate adventures lengthens. Saqi’s callous pen blots big and small alike; Naqvi hardly taints himself. But of the two sinners, some other time.
Muniruddin Ahmad’s Dhaltey Saye is a very engaging account of a remarkable life. It is a brave man’s story who rose from ordinary circumstances, surmounting all kinds of hurdles --- economic, religious and cultural --- to become a writer, scholar and traveler and in sum a successful man in terms of a life well spent. One could rightly envy a career so rich in accepting challenges and not shying away from difficult situations and taking on life with full gusto and fearlessness, but above all remaining true to himself and pursuing the path which has appeared to be right to him. Born in a religious family of Ahmadis and trained in Rabwah to become a missionary he walks out lightly when the mission’s material character is exposed to him. He makes no fuss about it and does not look back, neither entertains any hostility towards people who detest him for his act of reneging. And he does that while in Germany where he was under no compulsion of any sort nor any temptation either on that account. In fact what he saw in the character of missionaries of his denomination could probably have been universally true of all preachers in the conversion trade abroad.
Leaving the mission is an important chapter of the book but he narrates the entire episode with the remarkable ease that is seen throughout the book. He doesn’t load you with unnecessary verbosity or rhetoric of any kind in his description. He employs no stratagems to strike a style or makes any effort to appear artistic. This lends an engaging quality to his tale that one reads on without getting bored. But perhaps it is not so much this plain rendition as his ability to convince you of his fidelity to facts. And it is the earlier chapters about his childhood in Rawalpindi, the intimate and unpretentious details of the simple life of those days, family intrigues and later his studentship time in Rabwah which establish his credibility and make his account authentic.
Dhalte Saye is a book full of eventful pages. There is no space wasted in assertions of any kind, there is no didacticism, no moral harangues, no virtuous fervour and no self-righteousness. If there are friends or relatives who he dislikes he says so and tells you why. If there were moments in his life when he could have succumbed to temptation or taken advantage of a situation but did not, he tells you with endearing simplicity how he regrets that. And then he is entirely free of boastfulness of any kind.
The narration of personal life kind of ends with his marriage to Ota ( I may be forgiven for the phonetic spelling of her name from his Urdu script) his European wife, but the story continues in his travels abroad attending international conferences on culture , religion and other related subjects. This could have been a boring or unreadable part of his story but here too he chooses his facts with great care and touches upon only the most human aspects of the experience instead of providing synopses of his talks or lectures as another in his place would. In his trip to Israel while telling us other interesting things, he does not hide the fact that he visited an Arab Ahmadi friend and said his prayers in an Ahmadi mosque. I am sure Ahmad’s book would win him many admirers.
DAWN. Karachi. August 13, 2008
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