He almost lost her. Like a worthy wife she kept her silence. During those breathless ten weeks when he was heading the Supreme Court bench hearing the reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry filed by Gen Musharraf, Justice Khalil Ramday would travel to Lahore every weekend to be with his family.
When it was all over, she finally spoke up. “Had you ruled against the CJ, I would never have spoken to you again,” Quratul Ain, popularly known as Annie, told her stunned husband. “Why didn't you warn me?” he asked her, “I would have hated to lose the love of my life.” They had been married for 36 years. “That's not part of my training,” replied Annie, daughter of a former chief justice of Pakistan, Justice Yaqub Ali Khan. He too had suffered at the hands of another dictator three decades before. Gen Zia had arbitrarily replaced him because he feared the CJ would not uphold the conviction and death sentence awarded to Z.A. Bhutto by the Lahore High Court.
Today, Justice Ramday has lost her forever. With Annie gone, the bright light at the Ramday household has dimmed. She was the lighthouse that lit up the Lahore skies when darkness prevailed all around during those post-November 3 emergency days. People looked to her for hope when her husband was put under house arrest by Musharraf. She was grace under fire.
“She got gold cufflinks made for me as a token of appreciation for upholding the law in Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry's reference case,” Justice Ramday says movingly. “I wore them when I lead her janaza prayers.” There were thousands of mourners at her funeral prayers. Death may have parted the couple; cancelled all the pain, humiliation and suffering they faced at the hands of Musharraf, but the flame of love, respect and honour for each other will always burn bright.
“Annie was amazing,” continues her husband. “When we married in April 1971, it had only been two years since I got my license to practice law. I was not rich. I could not offer her the lifestyle she was used to,” Justice Ramday tells me. “Annie came from a privileged background. She was only five when her father became the chief justice of West Pakistan High Court in 1955. At the time of our marriage, her father was the senior most judge of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, I was just a struggling lawyer trying very hard to put food on the table.
“Not once did Annie complain of our poverty. There were times when we didn't have enough money to buy powered milk for Amna, our baby girl.”
Annie's last years were sad as well as triumphant. She gave me an interview two years ago when her husband was locked under house arrest. As the chairperson of APWA (All Pakistan Women's Association) Punjab, she was in Islamabad attending a conference at a local hotel. “After the July 20 judgment, a surveillance cell was formed to shadow us wherever we went,” Annie began. The couple flew to Amsterdam few days after the judgment to visit their daughter. “At the Schiphol Airport we were greeted by two slimy Pakistanis with cameras hanging around their necks. We knew they were not genuine journalists but operatives working for agencies in Pakistan. These men followed us like dogs everywhere.” Later when Annie and her husband flew to Geneva to visit her sister, state operatives there too continued to stalk them.
Annie returned to Lahore on October 28. Five days later they were put under house arrest. “We were out to dinner at the Punjab Club on the night of November 3. An hour after we got home, a colonel in uniform walked into our house and invited himself into the drawing room. He called for Khalil who had retired to the bedroom. We were duly informed by the man in uniform that our house was surrounded by Rangers and that nobody could leave. We were told that Khalil's services had been terminated.”
Musharraf's vendetta against the judge who dismissed his reference had thus come full circle. “They tried indicting our son who has his own law firm in anything they could lay their hands on. They combed through his firm's tax records and dug deep to plumb out any wrongdoing. They failed miserably at nailing him,” says Annie who told her son that he should have taped the harassing telephone calls he received every day from the agencies. Annie was euphoric when her husband got back his job last March.
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