LAHORE: The annual Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) will start on Friday (Feb 22) at the Alhamra Arts Council, The Mall.

The festival’s opening ceremony will be held at 3pm with a keynote address on the life and legacy of Faiz Ahmad Faiz by Zehra Nigah, with an introduction by Nasreen Rehman.

On the same day, the panel sessions will be held from 5pm to 6pm.

A session on ‘Populism and the Future of Global Democracy’ by historian Ayesha Jalal, author Christopher Merrill, political commentator Afshin Shahi and historian Eugene Rogan will be moderated by acclaimed-journalist and author Ahmed Rashid.

In “Securing Pakistan’s Water Future”, Rina Saeed Khan will be moderating a panel with water law and policy expert Erum Sattar and technocrat Shamsul Mulk; the lives and works of Fahmida Riaz, Altaf Fatima and Khalida Hussain – three greats of Urdu writers will be discussed by Asghar Nadeem Syed, Masood Ashar and Yasmeen Hameed.

In “The Balochistan Archives” – there will be a discussion on digitising past to preserve heritage, and panelists will include Sindh’s Ravinder L. Jha and Balochistan’s Hafeez Jamali. The session will be moderated by British Library Lead Curator for South Asian Collections Nur Sobers-Khan.

There will also be two book launches including ‘My Pakistan: The Story of a Bishop’ by Alexander John Malik, moderated by Nelofar Bakhtyar and ‘Metro Lahore - a photographic journey along Lahore’s Metro Bus’, by Faizan Ahmad.

On Saturday, nine book launches will be held. Some of them are Mosaic of Food from the Islamic World (Aliya Naqvi in conversation with Anissa Helou, celebrated cookbook author of Feast); A Line in the River: Khartoum, City of Memory (author Jamal Mahjoub in conversation with Amna Rizvan Ali) and “Tell Her Everything” (Zarrar Said in conversation with award-winning novelist Mirza Waheed).

There is also a performance from 2 to 4pm, a rendition of Punjabi folklore character Heer, penned by Waris Shah during the eighteenth century, directed by Huma Safdar.

‘Asma Lives!’ is another important session, celebrating the legacy of Asma Jahangir who helped shape human rights and activism in Pakistan. Nida Aly, I.A. Rehman, Seema Iftikhar and Gul Rukh Rahman will be speaking with the session moderated by Farida Shaheed in this session.

Many of the sessions cover international politics and history, such as ‘channeling nostalgia with the Ottomans’, ‘the Great War and Turkey today’; a discussion on war writing, especially in Syria: ‘unraveling of a cultural haven in the Middle East’; ‘Iran: legends of emperors and kings’ by Author Iftikhar Salahuddin’; “decoding Iran” –a discussion of its youth and its expressions in activism, art, literature and other realms’. On Sunday, under the same theme will be ‘our neighbours to the West, the triumphs and setbacks of democracy and diplomacy in the Middle East’, moderated by Khaled Ahmed; ‘music, literature and performance in North India’; ‘global strongmen –a discussion of experiences of this phenomenon from the US, Sudan and the Middle East’, and many others.

Women also make one of the prominent themes of this year’s LLF. From dedicating panels to Pakistani writers such as Khalida Hussain and Fahmida Riaz, to human rights activists like Asma Jahangir, there are many other topics related to women. These include ‘the women’s movement in Pakistan’: ‘activism, Islam and democracy’; ‘women’s past categorization – authors cannot be defined by their gender alone’ and ‘women in South Asian media’ by Iqra Aziz and Atiqa Odho, moderated by Fifi Haroon.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2019