June 23, 2002

“Accused Azra Abbas, do you plead guilty?” A magistrate of Karachi’s city court asked Azra, who was standing in the witness box at the time.

“No, I don’t,” replied Azra.

Amused at her temerity, the magistrate said, “Where are those people for whose rights you fought at great risk to yourself?” On the day of the hearing, only two or three people out of the 700, who got their jobs thanks to Azra’s protest against injustice, were present in the court.

Azra is a storyteller by instinct and has been concocting strange stories since her childhood. But in the episode mentioned above, she was one of the leading actors in a story that was true. It was a tale of struggle against oppression in the martial law days of Ziaul Haq, when hundreds of workers, who had been given jobs under Bhutto’s employment scheme, were sacked. Azra was a lecturer in Jinnah College Nazimabad. At the termination of their jobs, she took up the cudgels on their behalf. Along with her colleagues Azra took out a procession that was lathi charged by the police.

As a result Azra and her colleagues decided to go on a hunger strike unto death. When harassment and threats didn’t succeed, the martial law authorities forged a case of suicide against Azra Abbas.

This was not the first time that Azra had asserted herself to win her rights. She had staged her first protest against gender discrimination when she was still at school.

“I remember when we brothers and sisters gathered in the kitchen for breakfast before going to school in the morning. Mother would fill up my brothers’ mugs with milk and ask them to drink it up. The girls would only get tea and I always sulked while I sipped mine. I don’t know what happened to me one day. No sooner had Mother placed the mugs before my brothers than I got up, knocked the mugs over and shouted, ‘You drink milk every day.’ Everybody was astounded at my outburst. I picked up my school bag amid mother’s scolding and dashed out.” (Excerpt from Mera bachpan)

“Memories are like things lying in the dark. You look for them with the help of the torch. Sometimes they appear suddenly as if a 100 watt bulb lights up filling up every nook and corner. Sometimes they are misty and remain in the darkness. I keep groping for them. Some I find just in front of me. I am amazed at their clarity. They help me discover myself.”

This is what Azra writes in her memoirs. It is really amazing how she can recall all those mischievous episodes with fine details of her childhood and put them together in the form of a book. The book is dedicated to those girls who didn’t have a childhood. It also describes the story of the girl child in South Asia.

This was Azra’s first book in prose. Earlier her first poetry book Neend ki musaftain had been published, which consisted of a single long poem. She writes comfortably both in prose and poetry and discovers its significance in every event of her life.

“The feet walking on waters were ours indeed.” This was the opening line of her long poem. According to the author, she was writing and discovering the rhythm of those words.

“How long did you take to complete this poem?” I asked during a meeting with her at her apartment in Karachi with windows overlooking the Arabian Sea.

“Three years,” she remarks.

“This poem was my companion. It would come stealthily to me everyday, telling me about the life that was to be. At times it scared me, yet it was preparing me for the days to come about which I knew nothing. This poem stood by my side even when I was giving birth to my child. It stood by me when I faced the fear of homelessness.”

An event in her life had disturbed Azra immensely and urged her to write this long poem. “I used to attend regularly the literary meetings at Qamar Jamil’s residence. Like many other young poets, he was my mentor. Poetry had always been the subject of discussions and interactions. He was well versed in the poetry written all over the world. One day he declared that I was not a poet, therefore instead of wasting my time there, I should get married and become a housewife. It was a very painful evening for me and I cried my heart out. I told my father about it and refused to accept this verdict since I considered myself a poet. My father tried to pacify me and gave me some sound advice.”

“Qamar Jamil would insist,” Azra recalls, “poetry is like a revelation that descends on you. Yet it’s not just a fantasy. One needs to experience it in real life. And to sustain yourself in literature you need to be true to yourself. Hence the truth that is being narrated by you should have happened to you.”

So when the poem started to unfold in Azra’s mind she experienced the mystery of poetry. The poem was a hit in the literary circles. Azra is very candid in her expression. She may not be a poet of the people and her poetry is also not for those who look for sensuality. She is a woman of the twenty-first century who creates new forms for new sensations.

Azra Abbas doesn’t participate in the conventional mushairas because her poetry cannot convey her message to the common audience. Even the so-called literary critics mistook her and discovered glimpses of obscenity in her poetry.

Once at an informal literary sitting in the Karachi Press Club during one of the turbulent phases of Karachi life, the renderings of young poets were being highly acclaimed. When Azra recited her poem the hall was nearly empty. But the same poem received thunderous applause at a womens gathering in Lahore, as the issues presented in the poem were the issues of the women present at the gathering too. Her voice was their voice. She was articulate and communicative:

Bodies are fastened to petrified dreams

Never to move ahead

Covered by the dust of times

And prayers changed into enraged froth

Of roaring waters.

A few months ago at the launching of her short stories Rastai mujhai bulatay hain the speakers traced the defiant tone of Manto and Ismet Chughtai in her anthology. Azra accepted it as a compliment. She had been doing research on Manto for her M.Phil thesis, which she couldn’t complete. But the in-depth study of Manto’s writings helped her to understand the sophistication in his expression.

“For Manto, the icon of Urdu fiction, sex was not the act of undressing. I picked up where he had left off. Paradoxically Manto was a man, the third person. Whereas being a woman, I have to narrate in the first person,” Azra remarks.

She explored the subject further in her forthcoming novel Mai aur Moosa. She claims that the theme of the novel is not autobiographical. It’s sheer fantasy, yet the character Moosa is her ideal man.

Azra Abbas is married to Anwar Sen Roy, the journalist, novelist and now a broadcaster with BBC, London. They have four grown up children, who are studying in the US and England. Azra recently left Karachi to join her husband.

Writer’s email: ipc@cyber.net.pk

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)