A PROLIFIC author, editor, columnist and, above all, a good human being, Shamim Akhter, who died on April 12 in Karachi, would be missed by her journalist colleagues for long. Even though her mother tongue was Pushto, she wrote in English and Urdu with felicity for a number of magazines and newspapers, including Dawn. Among the books she authored, the most moving is her autobiography, Dill Mayn Chubhe Kaantay (Barbs in the Heart). It is more than her life history and includes a description of those tension-filled days when the issue was whether the North-Western Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) would join Afghanistan or become a part of Pakistan.

Shamim belonged to an Afghan family, which, like many others, was hounded out of its motherland by King Amanullah. The escape was a trauma in which death was never too far. Her mother’s tears were a factor in shaping her attitude towards life. One day, she asked her mother why she often stood at the window looking at the sky. She said she wanted to inhale as much as possible of air coming from Afghanistan. Her mother’s favourite Pushto song roughly translated to, ‘I look this way because the breeze that graces my face comes from my homeland’. The family’s entry in Pakistan came at a time when emotions were high; the issue was crucial — would they join Pakistan or vote in favour of Afghanistan in the referendum the outgoing colonial regime had ordered. Mimi, as Shamim was often called by her friends, was a devoted Pakistani and showered her blessings on her brothers as they paraded the streets carrying swords and Pakistan’s flag.

She could be nonsensical to the extent of being flippant as when she told her husband Irfan, a writer himself, “if I were you, I would never marry a silly girl like me”. Looking at her dead grandmother’s body she wondered aloud, “if one comes to this world to die, why enter this world at all?”

Never afraid of airing her views no matter how radical, nay, awkward, she used to visit the red light area to watch mujra. This flippancy would one day give her a master’s degree in philosophy, her favourite philo-sopher being Kant.

She began her journalistic career in the 1960s with Akhbar-i-Khwateen, and rose to become its editor. She authored three books. The books included Pakistani Children’s Art (in English) and (in Urdu) Tay Se Titli and Tuway Se Tanveer. These titles show the versatility of her writing prowess.

A journalist
Karachi

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2026