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IN MEMORIAM: Goodbye Yasmeen
Faiza Qazi , a close friend and part of the Grips team, writes about Yasmeen Ismail
I recall our last conversation — it was the evening before you died. You sounded tired and breathless. You said it was because you didn’t feel like eating. I asked you to sit up, it would help the breathing. You’d slept all day and felt better. You asked me about Marium’s party — the party you had been determined to attend but couldn’t. You wanted to know what everyone was wearing, who looked the most stunning.
You were always so interested in everything and everyone — such was your zest for life. You had the extraordinary ability to touch everyone’s hearts. Your deep passion and intensity, your larger than life personality have made you unforgettable. I can hear your laughter ringing in my ears — laughter that hid the deep fear ever-present in your heart, that this horrible disease would never leave you. Little did I know that this would be our last conversation, that now the empty space left by your absence from my life will be something I must cope with and can only begin to imagine. We spoke of death, knowing it would come, but always pushing it to the back of our minds. You were so strong, surely you would frighten it away, you would bounce back as you always did.
You asked us often how much we would cry when you died. My tears will not stop, even as I write this. Yasmin, the world cried at your funeral. You said you did not want to die. You haven’t. You are alive in each one of us
Now it is as if the colour has faded from our lives. We — Sajeer, Ayesha, Ali, Imran, Khalid and Maria are left desolate, bereft and heartbroken. We were a family — the Gripps family. You expected unswerving loyalty and gave us the same. You taught us to strive for perfection — our lines “should flow like water” you said. There were to be no prompters, no stage hands; timing was everything you said; the audience’s interest must never flag. How we rushed onto stage, lifting props, replacing them, how we depended on you to inspire us. You would fill in a part if someone was sick — “the show must go on”. Do you remember how you would playfully threaten to not be there for a performance, saying we could manage. What a furore that would create. We could not possibly go on stage if you weren’t there to pray before a performance.
Peter Hoschele, director of the Goethe Institut, would watch, amused, by your “spitting” on us, as he called it. Yet the last play was performed without you — it was the most unnerving experience. You lay alone in bed at home, agonizing over how the play would go. I was to ring you up the moment we got off stage. We came back to your bedside, our arms filled with flowers for you.
Remember the time we were practising a dance in our hotel room and the window cleaner nearly fell off his ladder and we laughed till our sides ached. Remember the time we went shopping for shoes up and down Al-Wada street in Dubai and I said if anyone were to say you were ill, they would be lying? How you loved travelling with our plays all over Pakistan — it gave you such a thrill. Remember the time you crowed with triumph having managed to put all your clothes into a mini-sized, overnight case, vowing you would not shop this time; but temptation in the form of Herat glass could not be resisted and clothes were stuffed into everyone else’s suitcases. You loved beauty, exquisite china, antique silver, embroidery. I associate you with the colour red. How lovely you looked in red with your perfectly manicured nails and feet shod in the most beautiful shoes.
You loved children, delighting in their peals of laughter as they watched our plays. You arranged special performances for children from orphanages and felt privileged to add some joy to their unhappy lives. Children’s theatre in Karachi was synonymous with Yasmin Ismail. How proud we were when we learned that the greatest number of Gripps plays performed outside Berlin had been directed by Yasmin Ismail; and when we heard that the director of these German plays, whom you met at the Gripps Festival in Banglore, said he had much to learn from you.
Then we began to produce plays for adults: Imran Aslam’s brilliant gems of social and political satire that sparkled with dangerous wit and created a new genre of theatre in Pakistan, striking a chord amongst audiences that few other current art forms have achieved. They played a key cathartic role in the difficult times this country has faced. These past four years, in spite of the disease that ravaged you, were the most productive. We rehearsed more than we rested.
You were fortunate to have such a supportive family — a husband who cherished you, children who were inordinately proud of you, who never resented the long hours spent away from home in TV studios or rehearsals; your friends who never left your side. You asked us often how much we would cry when you died. My tears will not stop, even as I write this. Yasmin, the world cried at your funeral. You said you did not want to die. You haven’t. You are alive in each one of us.
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