KARACHI: A select group of writers and critics gathered at the Arts Council of Pakistan to pay tribute to the eminent novelist and short story writer, the late Abdullah Hussain, who would have celebrated his 93rd birthday on Aug 14.

Moderating the event, writer and journalist Syed Kashif Raza said Mr Hussain was born on Aug 14, 1931. He didn’t belong to any literary family. In 1962, he, as a young man, sent the manuscript of Udas Naslein to M Salimur Rehman who used to take out a magazine called Savera.

Reading the material pleasantly surprised Mr Rehman and his friend Hanif Ramay. They hadn’t read such a novel in Urdu before. They invited Mr Hussain to their office and discovered that he’s a young man who hadn’t published anything thus far. They told him that before publishing the novel they needed some short stories from him. The writer complied with their demand. Later, Mr Raza said, Mr Hussain said in an interview that he had already penned some stories in the 1950s which he had sent to the magazine Nuqoosh but its editor M Tufail rejected the stories advising the writer to work harder.

Writer and journalist Iqbal Khursheed said the Arts Council was an apt choice for paying tribute to the writer because he was fond of the institution. He recounted the time when he first ran into Mr Hussain at the council where he had come to participate in the International Urdu Conference. “I wanted to interview him. It was not easy. He had an imposing personality. There’s a journalist named Mahmoodul Hasan whom I requested to get me Intizar Husain’s interview, which he did. But when I asked him to facilitate an interview with Mr Abdullah Hussain, he said he couldn’t help me and I needed to do that on my own.”

Mr Khursheed then went on to narrate how the interview with Mr Hussain went and his subsequent meetings with the novelist.

Writer Irfan Javed said he interacted with Mr Hussain on a number of occasions at the Karachi Literature Festival and the Urdu Conference, and both visited each other’s houses.

“Now when I look back, the immediate impression that I get of the novelist is that he was a lonely man. He spent the whole of his life in a particular kind of loneliness. He once told me that his father was 52 years old when his fifth wife gave birth to him (Mr Hussain). He was six months old when his mother died. He often remarked that he could have easily been his father’s grandson. Mr Hussain’s father, when the writer’s stepbrothers and sisters had grown up and got busy with their lives, used to take him to Gujrat’s countryside. He would hunt and tell his son about the various aspects of life such as flora and fauna. Mr Hussain was 20 years of age when his father passed away. After that, the novelist had a nervous breakdown and was treated for it.”

Mr Javed said contrary to the general perception Mr Hussain first published his short stories when he was in school in the magazine Husn Parast. “It goes to show that he had an interest in literature from the very beginning.”

Arts Council’s President Ahmed Shah said Mr Hussain was a celebrated fiction writer and he liked his prose. He pointed out he doesn’t like to draw comparisons between writers [such as Mr Hussain’s with Quratulain Hyder]. However, when Mr Hussain’s Udas Naslein saw the light of day some people objected to it, saying he didn’t know Urdu well.

“And that’s the beauty of his writing. When you write short lines like Mr Hussain did, they carry feelings. He also wrote strong characters. I had heard him say that a novelist is as good as his second novel, therefore he wondered that his novel Baagh didn’t get as much recognition as Udas Naslein.”

Critic Mubin Mirza and writer Akhlaq Ahmed also spoke.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2024