Many years ago at the University of Iowa in the USA, a young Irish writer shared a panel with me on world poetry, along with a few other writers from different countries. After the usual, monotonous praise for the aesthetic appeal of classical oriental verse (courtesy Rumi, Iqbal and Tagore), the Irish writer was direct and brave in critiquing significant contemporary Pakistani poets she knew for their overtly political content.

According to her, that made them popular to their immediate audiences in a particular space and time but also made major parts of their work look mundane in the long run. It was surprising coming from an Irish writer; if she were Swiss or Belgian I would have been less surprised. Nevertheless, I think she is right. But I also think that we as Pakistani poets and writers — irrespective of the language we choose to write in — are stuck.

We are stuck in a quagmire and, like any creative soul should, we must wriggle ourselves out of this quagmire. But before we get out of it, it comes naturally to us to define how we are stuck. That forms a major part of our writing. And, it is not just to gain popularity among the audience. It is what we experience, feel and suffer as poets and writers.

It was the fag end of Gen Ayub Khan’s martial law regime when I was born. My late uncle, the journalist Aqeel Ibrahim, was in prison then. As a consequence, there was little celebration on my birth. Ibrahim was released soon after. My father had to give some guarantees before my young uncle could be released. That continued to burden them for years.

I was born and brought up in Karachi and sadly witnessed what happened in terms of violence and chaos in urban Pakistan. To an extent, I am also familiar with Lahore and Hyderabad, due to long stints in those cities during summer vacations in my childhood. Blood spilled in our cities and we tried to write about it. But rural Pakistan is much less talked about and rarely captured in writing.

A couple of years later, I was put into kindergarten during Gen Yahya Khan’s regime. Around the same time, the family, including me, went to the then East Pakistan. I have no personal memories of that time but the grief of what happened in 1971 and earlier was transferred to me by my parents and other relatives. It was transgenerational trauma, as they put it.

There was a civilian interlude in the early and mid-1970s, an odd blend of sagacity and vindictiveness under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, that followed Gen Yahya Khan. Soon after, Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial rule was imposed. From grade five to my entering university (1977-1988), it was hard years for us as students with cultural proclivities and a love for music and dance.

The dramatic and music societies in my school were proscribed, harmoniums and tablas were crushed under the feet of so-called proctors and Allama Iqbal’s ‘Lab pe aati hai dua [The prayer on my lips]’ was replaced by ‘Hai waqt-i-shahadat phir aaya [The time for martyrdom has arrived again]’ in the morning student assembly. In later years, it was Gen Pervez Musharraf’s usurpation of political power that attempted to redefine the country, society, family and individuals. He was different when it came to the promotion of culture but followed the same pattern as his predecessors when it came to the realisation of civil and political rights.

Gen Zia’s period was the worst for us. Our mail was censored to the extent that we would even miss wedding invitations coming to us by post. In 1979, my maternal grandfather was taken into custody at the age of 85. In 1981, my father decided to call it quits from his association with the films department of the government of Pakistan and, in 1984, my maternal uncle was removed from his service in Lahore. We survived. But the Pakistan we knew didn’t.

I was born and brought up in Karachi and sadly witnessed what happened in terms of violence and chaos in urban Pakistan. To an extent, I am also familiar with Lahore and Hyderabad, due to long stints in those cities during summer vacations in my childhood. Blood spilled in our cities and we tried to write about it. But rural Pakistan is much less talked about and rarely captured in writing.

What happened to an ordinary village in Punjab under Gen Zia is so aptly presented in Parchhawaan — a novel written in the Punjabi language — by Akmal Shahzad Ghumman. It took me back to my childhood and youth. The novel reminds me of the pain that continues to stay in our bones. It is a story about a village in Punjab that transforms from a normal place to a place led by the harbingers of hate. But the resilience of the place stays. The layers of the story make Parchhawaan read like a novel. Otherwise, due to the word length, it could have also been called a well-narrated short story.

Ghumman brought me back to the vibes of Mohammed Hanif’s Rebel English Academy. See, the poets and writers of Pakistan cannot be disassociated from politics. Hanif began with exploding mangoes, brought in Christian activist Alice Bhatti in the middle and then came back to the political rebel Baghi in small town Punjab during the same Zia period. Ghumman does the same in the Punjabi language, with similar ease and patience.

The writer is a poet and essayist. His latest collections of verse are Hairaa’n Sar-i-Bazaar and No Fortunes to Tell

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 5th, 2026