KARACHI: Language is a strange medium of communication. It can console us even when we do not want to be consoled. One of the sentences often used to describe a person who is no longer with us in a positive light is: ‘S/he touched so many hearts.’ Today is April 24. It’s been exactly a year since the founder of T2F and PeaceNiche Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead. Her murderers, they say, are behind bars.

It cannot be ascertained exactly how many hearts Sabeen touched. If social media is a yardstick, it merits a mention that there would hardly be any non-public figure in the world whose Facebook wall receives messages even 12 months after their death. Most of the messages do carry the ‘I miss you’ phrase, but essentially they are about a certain aspect of the messenger’s life where Sabeen played a part and now that aspect has either been vindicated or come to light because of her. This is not to suggest that she had the ability to look into the future. It just goes to show how involved she was in the lives of those who were either her friends or sought her advice on any issue that was of her interest. She was an intent listener. She knew the importance of lending an ear to people rather than talking their ears off with information-heavy gibberish.

What’s interesting about some of the Facebook posts that she has been (yes, the present tense is correct in this context) receiving on her wall is that people share their thoughts with her as if she’s physically there, as if she can read her timeline, as if she will respond to their brooding questions, their philosophical musings.

The beginning of the month of April, since it’s the month in which she lost her life, has brought about a series of well-constructed, occasionally bilingual, sentences. Here are some examples: “Difficult to walk through this month”, “thinking of you my love”, “there is no one to talk about the new Apple products and everything else”, “the brain has yet to come to terms with your absence”. The last one was from a couple of months back but has been quoted because that’s the drift of this in piece: coming to terms with her absence.

Why is it so difficult for people to come to grips with Sabeen’s death? Because by creating a space for open dialogue and by engaging people in activities which otherwise were hard to imagine let alone execute, she instilled confidence in them. She created a little world where people could discuss the latest gadgets without sounding pompous, where Urdu became a language in vogue, and where artists who were previously ignored by the mass media (poet Jaun Elia, tabla player Khursheed Husain, underground rock bands, standup comedians etc) suddenly became mainstream.Despite being someone who went to educational institutions which could be termed ‘elitist’, she never looked at tradition disparagingly.

One distinctly remembers the mushaira held at T2F, in which top-notch poets Zehra Nigah, Iftikhar Arif and Anwar Shaoor took part, as a unique experience. Before the event, a list of instructions was distributed to members of the audience telling them how to behave during the mushaira. Hers was a world where the contemporary did not lock horns with the traditional. And this is what endeared her to people who came from a wide variety of backgrounds — artists, technology junkies, writers, businessmen and politicians.

That being said, memory is a two-edged sword. The recalled moments of joy can easily give way to the moments of anguish that we do not want to remember, but can’t do anything about it. Listening to a Bruce Springsteen song, watching Hugh Laurie act and closing the eyes to imbibe the spiritual atmosphere at a Farid Ayaz qawwali session is not the same anymore.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2016