“Is this your first time in Khatar, sir?”, the Indian driver who had almost hijacked me and my wife as we were trying to escape from our hotel, asked me.
“Yes this is our first time in Qatar.”
“Do you like Khatar?”
“Well, we have not seen much of it as yet, but it seems to be a pleasant place. By the way, why do you call it Khatar and not Qatar?”
He seemed amazed “That’s what I call it, Khatar.”
“You mean Qatar?”
“Yes I mean Khatar,” he insisted as he almost lost his patience whereas I was on my wits ends as to why he was pronouncing Qatar as Khatar?
“What is your native city in India?”
“Hyderabad Deccan, sir.”
That explained it, Hyderabadi folks always pronounce Kaf as Khe.
I was in Doha to receive an international literary award along with my wife. Our host Malik Musibur Rehman had almost imprisoned us with his hospitality, so to speak. There was always a car waiting outside the hotel to take us around and we did not want to be taken around. We were dying to explore Doha on our own two feet, roam around the bazaars and walk alongside the beach holding hands, feeling romantic after thirty-two years of marriage.
I knew this holding hand desire won’t be fulfilled as my wife always keeps a safe distance from me and even in her youth considered holding hands rather obscene. However, the rest of our desires were common and were not to be fulfilled easily. But today, after lunch, we planned a perfect escape. We exited the hotel from a side door, crossed the road and started walking towards the beach, feeling free and happy. But our happiness was short lived, as a car zoomed in on us and again we were kidnapped. When we protested the driver declared “Sir, the Khatar sun is very dangerous in the afternoon. You will get sunstroke and you are the honoured guests. You should not get sunstroke. I will take you around and show you the sights.”
He took us around and showed us the brand new hotels, shopping plazas, Ministry buildings and finally the Corniche area, which by the way, we had already seen.
On the promenade strolled ladies in jeans and shorts along with their fully clad sisters. I also saw one very pretty girl laughing her head off which, literally I never heard in Jeddah.
That evening, Natalia Pregarina arrived from Russia who was also a recipient of an award being bestowed on her for her scholarly work on Iqbal and Ghalib. Natalia was well over seventy, but bubbling with happiness and content. She was aware that some of my writings were syllabus of Moscow State University’s Urdu Department and she told me that Professor Galina Deschenko, the Urdu scholar is in good health and enjoying retirement.
Galina and I have been very good friends for last thirty years or so. During the conversation I casually informed her that I was a member of the British delegation, which participated in the youth festival of Moscow in 1957. Suddenly Galina’s face expression changed, she looked at me for a while and then said, “You are not that old.”
“I am that old. I was seventeen at that time.”
“Then you must have participated in the opening ceremony of the festival held at Lenin Stadium.”
“Naturally I did and I had the honour of carrying Pakistani flag and marching in front of my delegation for exactly two minutes.”
Then clapping her hands and brimming with excitement she said, “Do you recall that in the middle of stadium hundreds of girls were performing gymnastics celebrating the opening of festival?”
“There were girls to be sure and I remember that they looked so pretty we could not take our eyes off and stumbled frequently while marching.”
Natalia blushed violently and said, “I was one of them.”
It was a very strange and rather discomforting coincidence. There sat in front of me an elderly matron, blushing, who was once upon a time was a young gymnast performing in the opening ceremony of the youth festival in Moscow and there sat in front of her a not so elderly man who also was once upon a time, youthful and was participating in the same ceremony and both were totally unaware of each others existence.
“Natalia, that establishes you as my oldest girl-friend on this earth” I said laughingly.
She got up and embraced me wholeheartedly “Yes, and you my oldest boy-friend”.
From then onwards, wherever we happened to come across each other, Galina would rush towards me with open arms and naturally I towards her and we will embrace each other, much to the chagrin of my wife.
That evening after dinner we discussed the disintegration of Soviet Union and much to my surprise she said that it was the best thing, that happened to the Russian masses. My point of view was that the Russians could have followed the example of the Chinese who have totally deviated from the path of Mao, but still respect him and consider him as their founding father. Whereas the Russians have totally wiped out Lenin and their communist past which was not lacking in achievements either.
Is it sane to wipe out a big and very vital chunk of your history completely?
Natalia disagreed VEHEMENTLY. “You cant imagine what we have been through. We were exporting revolution, helping the downtrodden and in the process destroyed ourselves economically. Our people were going hungry living miserably under the worst kind of oppression which for you is inconceivable. If Lenin and Stalin along with the communists are wiped out from the pages of Russian history, I say, good riddance.”
When the discussion became too heated I changed the subject,”So you are an anti-communist?”
“Yes I am,” she said cooling down.
I narrated the story of famed intellectual Safdar Mir Zeno who during one of the frequent martial-laws was arrested for his left leaning tendencies and produced before a military court.
“Are you a communist?” the presiding officer thundered.
“No I am an anti-communist” Mir sahib said sarcastically.
“So you are a communist of some sort anti or otherwise,” declared the officer and sentenced him.
Natalia enjoyed the story hugely and smiled, “But I am anti-communist and no otherwise.”
Besides Natalia, there was another charming presence in Doha, Dr Christina Oesterheld from Heidelberg University, Germany. We were well acquainted with each other. About twenty-five years back Christina had come to Lahore to interview a few prominent writers for her PhD thesis on Quratul Ann Haider’s novels. In those days Christina was a ravishingly pretty girl, glowing with exuberance and half of Lahore’s writers fell in love with her; the other half had not met her. She stayed with senior writer Altaf Fatima and roamed in the hot afternoons of Lahore in search of research material.
She was in Doha to present a paper on my novel Rakh which she had previously read in a literary seminar in Columbia University, New York, selecting Rakh as the representative novel of South East Asia.
Beside the award winners there were hoards of poets from Pakistan and across the border to participate in a Mushaira being held in the memory of Joan Alia. From the Indian side some very interesting specimens were witnessed.
I will avoid going in to details as to how interesting they were because my comments may hamper the normalization process between India and Pakistan! Ahmad Faraz was also there with his ready wit which could knock out even Bob Hope, if he were alive. Upon my request Abdul Hamid Muftah deputed his son Majid to take us out of Doha, into the desert for a picnic in his powerful Land Rover. This was indeed a memorable experience. We had the opportunity of witnessing the after sunset effects of the magical glow, on the vast expanse of Qatari desert.
My wife Maimuna and Christina were collecting seashells and strange fish like objects manufactured by the waves out of sea-froth.
The next day we flew to Jeddah to visit our son and to perform Umra. And thus ended, beside the seashore, amongst the sand dunes, our short visit to Khatar.
“Is this your first time in Khatar, sir?”, the Indian driver who had almost hijacked me and my wife as we were trying to escape from our hotel, asked me.
