Transcript of an audio interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH) conducted by AAA project researcher Samina Iqbal (SI) on 22 May 2017 at Hashmi’s residence in Lahore, Pakistan.

22 May 2017, Part 1

SI: Mrs Hashmi, we wanted to start the interview with you and we wanted to ask if you can go—just really go back to your memory lane and start from as far back as you can remember.

SH: Okay. Some of it will be hearsay, for example, where I was born, which is Delhi, 1942, in the last month, December. My father was in the British India Army and he was a Lieutenant Colonel. And since I was born in Delhi, which was at that time the capital, my parents were very much involved with the cultural life of the city. So it was not just a regular army existence—it was something else. My earliest memories are interestingly not to do with Delhi, but they are with Rawalpindi which I believe my father was transferred there and I was about two, two and a half years old. My earliest memory is of falling down and hurting myself and bashing my eyebrow open, and then being in a hospital and being very frightened because it was apparently a hospital where the family was not allowed and my phuphi—my aunt—was smuggled in pretending to be an ayah (governess) to look after my needs. So that's my earliest memory really, which is—of course—of a trauma.

22 May 2017, Part 2

SH: Another very early memory is of Shimla. And it must have been when my mother was expecting my younger sister, so I must have been four or around that age, and it was of getting lost in the bazaar. I was terribly frightened because somehow I had lost track of my mother. I was hanging on to her coat belt and it was lost—at some point slipped from my hand. So that was a second trauma that I remember—wandering around and then finally with a rush of relief to suddenly spot her. And she hadn't even noticed that I was no longer hanging on to her coat straps. Also then, while she was in the hospital, my father babysitting me and being very bad at it because I was wailing and I wanted a biscuit, and to pacify me he went and got the worst kind of biscuit that you could offer a child, which had no cream—nothing nice and sweet. It was a dry biscuit. I suspect it was the kind of biscuit that you had with your cocktails in the evening or something like that. So that's another early memory of the inadequacy of my father trying to be a mother.

Much later, my sister in a pram back in Delhi, and wandering around in Lodhi Gardens. We were on a bridge which had a decline and my sister was in a pram and I remember I had pushed her. I suppose this was my first feeling of sibling jealousy. And the pram went down that slope so fast and overturned. And then the terror in my heart that I had done something terrible. My sister, of course doesn't remember any such thing and nor did she come to any harm, but it always remained with me—my first feeling of really major guilt.

I remember a birthday party, also in the same wonderful house in Delhi, in Lodhi Gardens or next to Lodhi Gardens. It must have been possibly my fourth birthday, because after that we left for Lahore, and subsequently, Lahore became part of Pakistan. But I remember that birthday party. I remember the games. I remember great fun—a sense of gaiety. Lahore was very different. I first was sent to a school where I wept constantly. And that pattern was to repeat itself however many schools my mother changed. Every school was a terrorising experience.

SI: When did you move to Lahore?

SH: We moved to Lahore in February 1947 when my father took over the editorship of Pakistan Times.

SI: So before partition?

SH: Yes. He resigned from the army at the end of 1945. So early 1946—they already knew that Pakistan was coming—so starting a newspaper called The Pakistan Times was really in preparation for what they felt was going to happen.

SI: This is 1946?

SH: 1947.

SI: 1947—when they were preparing for The Pakistan Times to be launched?

SH: Yes. It was The Pakistan Times and Imroze. He was editing both papers—the Urdu and the English. We were living in a changing series of places, but what I remember is being in this flat—a top floor flat—in a hotel which was called ‘Metro Hotel Restaurant’. It was opposite the Punjab Assembly. And there is a vivid recollection of waking up one afternoon and hearing a lot of noise outside and looking out on to the Punjab Assembly. I climbed up on the windowsill. My mother was fast asleep. It was a hot afternoon—must have been, I suppose, April or May. But this date can be verified because it was the day that Master Tara Singh stormed out of the Assembly with all his followers. They were all waving their kirpans. And I remember shaking my mother awake and saying ‘see what’s going on.’ and she just told me to go back to sleep. Later, when I described this event to Abdullah Malik, the historian of the Punjab, he said ‘My God, you would miss that momentous event when the Sikhs politically decided to part from the Muslims.’

There were similar memories of those very early days. But then it was Kashmir, because we moved to Srinagar for the summer; that was my mother and her eldest sister—Dr Taseer’s wife—her children, because my English grandmother and grandfather had come from England. They’d been on a long tour where they visited their sons who were in South Africa, and then they came to visit their daughters, both married to Indians.

SI: Do you remember the year?

SH: 1947.

SI: Before Pakistan, before August?

SH: Yes, before August, because we took the house in Srinagar for the summer. Dr Taseer knew Srinagar very well. He had been the principal of the college there. So therefore everybody knew him. And I remember that it was just before Eid because 14 August was Jummat-ul-Wida. So for an Eid present, we were taken in a shikara on the Dal Lake to the bazaar. So we must have been living on the other side. There we went to a friend of the family who had a jewellery shop and a craft shop. And all the girls were told—my sister was still a baby in arms—we were told to choose something for ourselves. And I remember I chose a pendant on a chain with a beautiful yellow stone. I still remember the way the yellow stone shone—so I said ‘I want that one.’ The gentleman whose shop it was, who was my uncle and father's friend, he sort of paled. Obviously I had chosen probably one of the most expensive stones in the shop and my mother tried to detract me and say choose something else. But the yellow stone was something that I was marvelling at and I only wanted that—so I was given that. I suspected it was taken away from me later without my knowing but I still remember the shining of that yellow sparkling stone.

Srinagar was great fun. We were constantly sick because we had the whooping cough—all cousins together. The result of which my sister got pneumonia, she was taken to the hospital. My mother was with her so I was left with my aunt and my cousins. There were all kinds of fruit trees in the garden. So we were constantly having upset stomachs because we were stuffing ourselves with peaches and plums and all the rest of it. We got up to all kinds of mischief. But my grandmother—my English grandmother—was the most entertaining woman and she had puppets, which she would give puppet shows for us. She would dress up. She had brought a whole trunk full of things to entertain children with because she was a great mimic. She had wigs, false noses, glasses; and she would make up these stories and become different characters while we would all sit, fascinated with her. I didn't know any English at that time, because I had been brought up to speak only Urdu. So I slowly learnt English with my two grandparents.

And then suddenly something must have happened. I learnt later that my father sent my mother a telegram and told her to get back to Lahore because we were expecting trouble. It was obvious that Kashmir was going to be in dispute. But Dr Taseer and his wife and children, and my grandparents stayed on in Kashmir—in Srinagar. While my mother, myself and my sister, we got on to the bus and came from Srinagar to Murree. By the time we got to Murree, the rioting had started. There had been terrible riots. The Sikh community had been massacred in Murree where there was a large Sikh community. The factories which were producing Murree Beer were put on fire. So we stopped in Murree. There was a curfew in Rawalpindi everywhere so one learned. My mother found some friends—there was; I remember a Greek lady—they got together and decided to take out a peace procession to stop the fighting and I was put in the front of the peace procession on a donkey and carried a white flag. So my activism started at the age of whatever it was— four and a half. I was leading it and I was very proud of myself. And then we got on to the bus to come down to Rawalpindi train station—I remember waiting—yes, another person who was at that time in Murree was Anna Molka Ahmed and her elder daughter Zara. Tahira, as far as I know, was not born at that time.

SI: What were they doing in Murree?

SH: They were holidaying for the summer.

SI: How many days did you stay in Murree?

SH: I don't know—I have no idea of time. It couldn't have been very long. It must have been until my father gave the go-ahead to come back to Lahore because there were terrible riots in Lahore.

SI: And you said there was curfew in Pindi also?

SH: In Pindi, I don't think we stopped. I think we came straight on to the…I don't have a memory of that. The train, I do have a memory of because there were hundreds of people on the roof of the train and it was chock-a-block. And in our compartment there was Aunty Molka, Zara, myself, my mother, and I think there was one other person—a lady. It was a ladies compartment. And as we started going through…I just remember it was very dark in the compartment. And I remember the kind of sounds which were basically sounds of distress, I suppose. I remember being very frightened and it must have been because the general atmosphere was like that. And I know that when we arrived into Lahore station it was very dark. There was an absolute sense of like terrible despair—it was very oppressive. It was curfew and I remember my mother saying to Molka that ‘you can come…’

22 May 2017, Part 3

SH: ‘Molka, don't worry you can come home with us,’ because she didn't have a curfew pass. My father was coming to meet us because he did have a curfew pass, being a member of the press. And so we were taken in—I think it was a tonga—if I'm not mistaken. I can't remember what vehicle we came in. But by that time my father…we'd moved in with Begum Shahnawaz…she gave us some rooms to stay in her house which was on Jail Road. Right at the corner of Jail Road and Race Course Road—it was a big mansion.

SI: Begum Shahnawaz—the Member of Parliament?

SH: The Member of Parliament, yes. She was the daughter of Lady Shafi and was a very prominent Muslim Leaguer. And so there was a portion of the house that we were put up in. And Molka stayed the night there with Zara. Next morning, of course she was able to go to wherever she was staying—I don't know. And then the next few fragments of memory have to do with things that were happening at partition. I remember playing in the garden and my mother saw some servants—Begum Shahnawaz's driver and some ayah—carrying some looted things. I remember one of them was a gramophone, a big gramophone that this driver was carrying on his head. And my mother just yelled at him and asked him where he got it from, and he said—you know—looted it from somewhere. And she sort of screamed that you should return it where you got it from. And, of course, he didn't understand why this woman was getting so het up about it.

I remember also my mother going to the Bait-ul-maal, which was opposite Faletti's. There was a place with shops there and that became the Bait-ul-maal where goods were given to refugees that were coming in. I remember once I went with my mother and she was giving out blankets. Because she had nobody she could leave me with—my sister had an ayah—so I used to trail with my mother—and I remember the frenzy with which people were desperate for the blankets, and my mother giving out these blankets. I also remember the railway station. I think she had come again to…there were some refugees arriving and she was already there, and I think I went with the driver. We had a car by then—or somebody's car, I think so. And apparently a train—this I learnt later, because suddenly there was a kind of hush, and apparently a train had come in and there were only dead people on the train. I didn't know that of course. I only sensed some terrible quiet had happened and my mother rushing out and yelling at the driver; why did you bring her? I mean, that's just a fragment. I put two and two together much later, because that must have been what she had seen or experienced which was why she was so upset.

Then there's another fragment of a memory of going with her where Lahore College is now. That was a camp for women and children who had been abandoned or lost. I remember walking with her and there were these children looking out of the windows and there were people searching, people who'd lost their children were looking. I just remember looking at the faces of the children—that's a very vivid memory—who were just looking bewildered. Also, I remember one child who been rescued from under a pile of bodies but had been hit by some kind of a machete or axe on the head. So there was a big, sort of hurt and the skin had grown over and the hair had also grown into that crevice of the head. That, I remember extremely vividly. That was a child who had just been adopted. I think, I'm not sure, but some quite well-known person had adopted that child. There were other stories of two girls who were found under dead bodies, who were then adopted by Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan, our first ambassador to Delhi. And I met them many years later. One of whom just got married—in fact, I went to the wedding.

So those are the sort of 1947 memories together with that of my grandparents arriving from Srinagar on the last bus and being dropped in the bus to our house. We lived upstairs in this flat on Empress Road opposite Radio Pakistan. And a wonderful time that they gave us…my grandmother always full of stories. I was put in yet another school, which was the Convent of Jesus and Mary where I wept as much as I did in the first Hindu school that I went to. I was especially bewildered because I didn't know any English and the nuns couldn't understand how an English woman could rear a child and not teach her English. So I used to sit by the door and my grandparents used to come and fetch me a little bit early. As soon as I saw their tonga arriving, I used to dart out the door and then they used to take me to have ice cream or meringues or whatever on The Mall. My grandmother taught how to make puppets to the students of the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University. And she taught them how to make dolls. She was a great doll maker. She was tremendous with her hands. I remember that—remember once being in the class when she was teaching them how to make dolls out of bits of wool. And we had those dolls for a very long time. We played with them constantly. Those are very strong memories of those days.

There is another memory of a room in the house full of the things left behind by the family whose house it was. And there was a lock on the door because my mother said we were not to touch those things because the people who owned it would come back. And sure enough, it was a very well-known doctor whose house it was, which had been looted badly. But upstairs where we were my mother made sure that nothing was touched. So this gentleman came, and I remember out of that room there came some toys, and there was a doll's pram, and my eye lighted on it and I sort of jumped at it and I started wheeling the pram. And my mother was very angry. She smacked my hands and said ‘this doesn't belong to you.’ And this gentleman said ‘no, no, give it to her please. I'm not taking it back.’ So I got this doll's pram and I remember my mother was looking furiously at me. And I had that pram till many years later, in fact, Meezu inherited it from me—my sister inherited it from me. I also remember that the people who lived in the quarters downstairs were very angry that this gentleman was taking his stuff back, because he brought an army truck in which to take his stuff back.

SI: What year was this, do you remember?

SH: It must have been the end of 1947.

SI: He must be very influential to be able to do that.

SH: He was very influential. In fact, many years later his son came to Lahore and I met him. In fact, recently he passed away and I'm in touch with his widow because we want to put a plaque with information about that family on that house.

SI: And where is that house?

SH: It's Shimla Pahari. It's next door to what is now the American Consulate, so it's very heavily barricaded. But it's now government property. The Department of Social Welfare's office is there. So I remember that. And I remember then he gave away clothes to all the men who stood there very sullen trying to stop him taking stuff. That I remember—he gave away things. That's among the earliest memories of Lahore; always being very unhappy at school. Eventually, my mother took me away from Convent also and put me into Queen Mary's, which was again not much better for me. I was always in a daze, always in my own world. Didn't know what on earth was going on in the class. I hardly paid attention and wept copiously, almost every morning. No morning was a happy going to school day for me.

SI: So you were the first-born?

SH: Yes.

SI: And so Meezu is...

SH: Meezu was always very happy in school. She was the sort who would be jumping along. She was very sociable, unlike me. I am totally anti-social—absolute recluse. My father at that time was working very hard setting up The Pakistan Times. We barely saw him. He was involved in trade union activities. He was organising the postal workers. He was elected to be their president so he headed the Postal Workers' Union. He with his comrades was getting the railway workers' union organised. So basically this was the period in which he was forming trade unions in Lahore—the early trade union movement in Lahore in which he was very deeply involved. And it was, of course, the time when— because the Kashmir conflict had started—there was a great separation of views on how this problem should be solved.

This was the start of the Cold War and Pakistan was one of the arenas. We were firmly moving into the American camp, which meant that things like the trade union activities were very strictly looked at and scrutinised. It was the time when setting up the Communist Party was one of the objectives and for that Sajjad Zaheer was sent from India to help organise the communist party in Pakistan, though he was not from this area. And there were people like Raza Kazim and so on who were…and then they had to go underground because the CID (Crime Investigation Department) was on the lookout for them. And these were the people who were…certainly the…Liaquat Ali Khan and the Muslim League which was already showing signs of being extremely corrupt. Full of nepotism and not at all interested in having a democratic evolution take place, because basically, it was the big landlords of Punjab who had the Muslim League in their grip. The women also, the role that had played in 1947 and before 1947, they were pushed to the periphery. And they were no longer in any positions of influence. And of course, as soon as that happened, the jostling for power started. So the first elections which were to happen, which were for the Constituent Assembly so the Constitution could be framed, meant that the Muslim League was determined to have a major role in that. And so the Awami League or whatever—I think that was the actual name of the opposition which was being formed. People like Mian Iftikhar Ali, the owner of Pakistan Times, they left the Muslim League. They had decided to move to the Left. So it was a great time of great turmoil. And as a small child, all I felt was that there were always meetings going on. My father was never there.

SI: In your house?

SH: Yes, yes, there were meetings in the house. But there would be writers there also because it was a time when there was a lot of change, so you had people like Badaruddin Badar...Sufi Tabassum was always there. I remember Chiragh Hasan Hasrat who was the editor of Imroze. Abdul Majeed Salik—these were the intellectuals of Lahore. But there was slowly a rift occurring between Right and Left—so people who were originally part of the whole thing, like Shorish Kashmiri, moved most emphatically to the Right. And, therefore, the conversations became much more strident. And one was just a child, one was just aware of that. One may not have known much.

22 May 2017, Part 4

SH: So yeh jo intellectuals thay, chahay Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum hon ... Abdul Majeed Salik (So these intellectuals – whether it was Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum or Abdul Majeed Salik), these were the great pillars of the intellectual life of Lahore. They were the writers, the columnists… there was Hameed Nizami… these people who had started the Nawa-i-Waqt. Hameed Nizami was very much to the Right of these people. But interestingly in spite of their politics, they had close friendships. And similarly, who was referred to as Meem Sheem, Mohammad Shafi who was one of the columnists—devoted to my father's poetry but totally against his politics. So you had these combinations at the time. Not that I was so aware of them but I knew that there were great divides. As a small child one understood that. I remember Badaruddin Badar, who had translated A Midsummer Night's Dream into Urdu—Sawan Rain ka Sapna—I remember he was wonderful at telling stories. I didn't know of course that he had cancer of the throat and so when he would tell me a story it would be in a whisper. I would keep saying ‘why don't you talk louder?’ And he would say ‘I only want this story to be told to you.’ That's why I'm…

22 May 2017, Part 5

SH: One other person who is very memorable is A.S. Bokhari—the great Patras Bokhari. My earliest memories are of going and spending the day with him in Government College when he was the principal, with his wife especially. He didn't have much time for his wife. He was always out somewhere or the other with his yaars (buddies). But his wife I remember. She was tremendously kind. Next thing I remember about him was that he was our first ambassador to the United Nations. Not the first ambassador—I think the first ambassador was Chaudhry Zafarullah—or maybe A.S.P. was the first one. But I do remember that he used to come to Lahore and by that time my uncle, my khalu, Dr Taseer had passed away and my father was in jail and so he went out of his way to indulge the children. I remember one year he came it was near Christmas, so he said ‘what do you want for Christmas?’ And I said ‘I want a silk suit.’ I don't know what Meezu asked for; I think she asked for a kitten. And my mother told me he had left a sum of money with her and he said give them a really nice Christmas. Marium, my cousin, who was in touch with me the other day, said he always used to press a hundred rupee note into her hand. Because he knew how difficult circumstances were for both the English women. So he was a person who was always far away but on the horizon.

The most momentous thing I suppose in one's life had been my father being hauled off to jail and not understanding why he should have to go to jail. Not knowing where he was. For three months there was no word. All we were told was that he was a traitor and there were fourteen other people arrested with him; men and one woman. Most of them were army and air force people. There were only four civilians; he was one of them. There was Sajjad Zaheer, Muhammad Husain Atta who was a trade union leader, and there was one other person I can't remember. And for three months all we knew was that they had disappeared. That they were being tortured which was told on the phone to my mother by some unknown voice who would say you better confess everything, otherwise we're going to pull out his eyes or we're going to do this, that and the other.

For me, there were two memories of this three month period. One is that I was invited for a birthday party by a classmate with whom I was not very friendly. I hated birthday parties anyway. But my mother thought I needed a break so she sent me off. And at the party, I was taken to a room where there was a long table with a lot of men around the table and I was made to stand on one side and they started questioning me about where my father was. And how he was, and what did I know about…and I suddenly realised that was why I was invited to the birthday party. So I got very frightened but I was also very stubborn and I got a bit defiant and I said ‘I know my father is all right.’ So they said ‘how do you know he's all right.’ Now very stupidly, actually secretly a message had been sent to my mother in a letter. It had been smuggled out through someone. It came to my aunt who gave it to my mother, in which she learnt that he was all right, because we didn't know whether he was dead or alive. So I said ‘I know that he's alive.’ They said ‘how do you know?’ I said ‘my aunt told me.’ I was totally making up things as I went along and I said ‘we got a letter from him.’ So I remember the men exchanged glances with one another. But I was very, very frightened. And they asked all kinds of other questions. I don't remember what I replied but I know that it was part fake and part true because I was determined that I was not going to let them get the better of me. So I came home and I told my mother I'm never ever going to go to a party. And when she started questioning me, I told her what had happened. I remember she called up that family and she gave them hell on the phone. That was one memory that I have that is very stark. The other was simply the fact that we suddenly lost all our friends. Nobody would come. There was a CID man outside the house and there was a kind of hush. My mother was very defiant because she was that kind of a woman. So basically it was just my khala and my mother and my phuphi who came to live with us, to be with my mother. She was the youngest stepsister of my father. So there were just us in the house.

SI: How old were you then?

SH: Eight and a half. And because my khalu had died just three months previously, the whole family was in this state of shock. And then finally after three months, we were told that we could meet my father. He was in Lyallpur Jail. An elder cousin of mine was a teacher there in Government College of Lyallpur, so he came and picked us up in the tonga. We went in the train to Lyallpur.

SI: All three of you; you, your sister, and your mother?

SH: Yes, the three of us. I recently revisited Lyallpur Jail in the centennial year of my father where we were bringing out this collection of his letters. Because I had very strong and vivid memories of that single meeting because we didn't know what state he was going to be in. And I remember the superintendents who…and I was sitting facing the window and my mother had her back to it. I remember she had dark glasses on. Suddenly I saw my father walking outside in the dewri (courtyard)…not the dewri but beyond that…through the window, we could look out onto the inside of the jail. And he was walking and he had his 555 cigarettes in his hand and smoking and looking quite relaxed and dapper in a white pyjama kurta. He always wore khara pyjama and a kurta. And I said to my mother ‘I can see Abbu (father).’ I remember she froze and she said ‘what does he look like?’ So I said ‘the same.’ Because she didn't know… well, none of us did, but I suppose she was more…and then, of course, he came in and this and that. He was not allowed to say anything about what had happened or anything. But he was so relaxed, so it was obvious that there was no physical torture or anything like that. The hour went by very quickly. But after that, it was time for the trial so he was moved out of there to Lahore Jail and then to Hyderabad Jail, which is where the trail was going to take place. So those are the kind of two memories. When I went back to the jail now, it's totally been renovated and so that image that I have of my father walking through the window, I just couldn't place it in the new context. But to me, that is the actual—what I remember.

22 May 2017, Part 6

SH: ...of memories are all to do with going to Hyderabad Jail on the train with my mother— that whole sort of atmosphere of…because the jail…the trial was held on camera. They had built a court inside the jail. So Hyderabad was not the way it is now. There was no place to stay. So he used to stay in the dak bungalow, which is literally there was rait (sand) outside the rooms. And there was a succession of lawyers that followed one another. Because at first Mian Iftikharuddin engaged a very, very famous Queen's Counsel, Pritt—D.N. Pritt—a very famous British lawyer. And he came and examined the case because the government rushed through a special law to try these people, which was called the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case Act. So he said that the Act is meant to punish them. The law itself is faulty and I cannot argue this case because the Act is meant for these people to be found guilty. Therefore, he examined it but he said ‘I'm sorry but I cannot accept fees to argue this case because it is totally loaded.’ So he went back. Then my father had a cousin who was a lawyer, so he was engaged by my taya (father's elder brother) who himself was a retired Sessions Judge…not retired then, he was still in service. And so our car was sold to pay for the fees. It was not enough because, you know, travelling to Hyderabad, living in Hyderabad for the lawyer and so on. So my mother took us out of Queen Mary's—it was too expensive a school. We were sent to Kinnaird Mission School.

SI: Kinnaird?

SH: Haan (yes), Kinnaird, which was a mission school—a Scottish mission school with an English principal who sort of had great sympathy for my mother because, you know, an English woman battling the law. So we went there and it was an Urdu medium school, so there was a great sort of shift. And then we had to walk to school because there was no car.

SI: Where did you live at that time?

SH: Wohi (the same) Shimla Pahari. And this was like somewhere Bohar Wala Chowk jis ko kehtay hain (which is known as)...Nicholson Road aur woh jo chowk hai na (and the chowk there). So it was quite a long walk. It was like a mile or so to walk to school. And so circumstances totally changed. But far more for me was the fact that one felt very vulnerable suddenly. My mother went to work which she had not done previously. She used to go to work on a cycle. She was working in The Pakistan Times looking after the women's page and the children's page. And it was extremely tough on her. We couldn't afford to go very often to Hyderabad. We went once in six months. My mother went once in three months. And it sort of dragged on. But there were, sort of, great moments when, you know, the few friends who stuck with us really stuck with us. There were others who didn't want to know us. But matlab (I mean) Sufi Tabassum's family because he used to go to Radio Pakistan so he used to stop by. There was a friend of my father who lived in a village near Lyallput, Sher Muhammad Hameed, from his Government College days—who was quite a social reformer of his own kind. So whenever he used to come from the village—he used to come and it was a great thing. A lady from the red light area, the famous singer Almas who used to sing my father's poetry, she used to turn up and bring lots of fruits and flowers for my mother. And my dadi (paternal grandmother) when she used to come and stay with us sometimes, couldn't figure out what this lady was, and she used to ask her that: beti, shaadi shuda ho? (daughter, are you married?). And she used to say: nahi (no). So she told my mother that she’s so good looking, why hasn’t she found a rishta (a suitable match/proposal). So there was all this going on. And years later when my father was released and he became the secretary of the Arts Council in Lahore, the first concert that was held, Almas was invited and she sat in the first row where my father placed her next to Justice S.A. Rehman and his wife. Justice Rehman was a visitor to the red light area so he, of course, knew Almas. His wife was sitting next to Almas and was not pleased with the situation. But, you know you don't forget these odd moments.

The only time I remember meeting Saadat Hasan Manto was my mother had taken us to Lawrence Gardens. She used to take us every Sunday and then we used to sit in the restaurant and we'd have chips and tomato sauce. So we're doing that and then suddenly this man darted out from the bushes and he sort of said to my mother ‘how is my friend, Alys, how is my friend? My mother was sort of telling him that he was all right. So he said ‘tell him I love him’. So my mother said okay. So when he left, I said—it must have left an impression on me because I still remember—I said to my mother, ‘who is that?’ And she said ‘this is Manto and he is drunk twenty-five hours out of twenty-four’. And I remember I was just puzzling; what is my mother saying? How can there be twenty-five out of twenty- four, if there are only twenty-four hours in a day? I remember I puzzled over it so long and that's why I suppose I remember. I still remember his face; I remember his glasses. It was a sunny winter afternoon and the vision in my mind is so clear. And he must have made an impression otherwise why would I remember that. I was not old enough to know who he was or anything like that. And also there were these memories of a few friends who would be there.

The other thing…very much was picnic, which again, these friends, there was another friend of my father's called Hanif who was a real maulvi (Muslim clergyman). He became a maulvi at partition because my mother said he was a gay old dog but the sights he saw during partition totally changed him. And he saved this old—in his mohallah (neighbourhood) there were these Sikh and Hindu women—he gave refuge to them in his house and the mob came to try and get them out and he defended them and said ‘you'll have to step over my dead body.’ Then he finally found a truck and took them out of there and made sure they crossed into the camps safely. So there were these odd people who I remember.

SI: Do you remember his full name?

SH: Muhammad Hanif.

SI: Muhammad Hanif. And what did he do?

SH: He was a businessman. Straightaway businessman, I think he had shops. Many, many years later I met a woman at the Lahore airport who came up to me and said ‘my father was Muhammad Hanif and I don't know if you remember him.’ Of course, I remember him. And he’s mentioned in my mother's letters also.

SI: So when you're talking about all these people around you, you're mostly talking about writers. What about artists? You've talked about Anna Molka...

SH: Anna Molka was great pals with my mother because she knew her from England when they were girls.

SI: Right. Any painters at that time who would visit your house?

SH: Ali Imam visited. He was underground and I remember my mother gave him breakfast and this and that. He came and he gave a painting to my mother—that I remember. He would visit. I have a memory much later of Shemza when he was married to Mary; actually, she came and stayed in our house. I have Marium Shah who was a great friend of my mother's, a sort of protégé. The people I remember were always people who one met in Molka's house.

SI: You used to go to Anna Molka's house?

SH: Yes that was one house we used to go to. And for birthday parties ... the girls used to come over to our house for my birthday parties ... so that was something, there was that interaction. And therefore through her, I met people like Anwar Afzal—un ki students jo thee na (they were her students)—Anwar Afzal and Jalees Nagi and Neseem Qazi...

SI: Probably the first batch after Pakistan, graduates of Punjab University.

SH: Yes, they were the people who I met. It was much later that I met Shakir when he came. Because I don't remember his early time. I only remember Shakir when going to Mayo School once with my mother.

SI: How old were you when you first visited Mayo School?

SH: Mayo School, I think I was very young because that was when the Shah of Iran visited Pakistan. So they had a big exhibition and I remember I went for that. So that was my first trip to Mayo School. And then I don't remember going for quite a long time but I remember going when Sidney Spedding was the principal of Mayo School. I remember there was a film show of Do Bhiga Zamin (Two Measures of Land)

SI: Do Bhiga Zameen?

SH: Haan, Balraj Sahni ki jo thee (Yes, Balraj Sahni's film). And it was upstairs in what used to be the drafting studio. So I remember seeing that film show which was organised during his tenure. And I must have met Shakir but I don't think he made a very great impression on me, because he was very withdrawn and this and that. But I do know that my mother used to joke about him being sweet on Mariam Habib and everybody being sweet on Mariam. I do remember Moin Najmi somewhere in the background because Moin was tremendously handsome so I had quite a crush on him as a schoolgirl. And then I remember this exhibition that I went to jis main (in which), Moin and Safdar and these people who were…I remember the show. By that time I think I must have been a student at Matric-shatric main hon gee (doing my matriculation).

SI: So you finished your schooling from?

SH: From Kinnaird School where there was no art. It was very bare bones.

SI: But you also used to frequently visit the museum where you had...

SH: That was my mother—no that was at partition. Charles Fabre was the Director at partition. That, I remember going as a child. I remember frequenting the museum as a little girl because my mother used to take me there. I remember going there later also. Malik Shams was then by that time the Director. That was one of the things my mother thought we should do, so we were taken there. And I think that my aunt also was very friendly with Malik Shams. All us children were taken there. Because basically, it was my cousins—my aunt's kids and us—who were the closest. It was like we were part of the same. So everywhere we went, we went together. Whether it was picnics, or shopping, or anything at all…museum, we all went together. My cousin Salma was quite a bit older but Mariam and I, there was only a year between us and Salman was a year younger.

SI: Salman Taseer?

SH: Haan (yes). Salman and I were very, very close. We used to play together because his sisters used to tease him a lot. So he used to come for relief to our house to play with me. And then of course by the time my father actually came home from jail—it was after he was sentenced, then he was transferred to Montgomery Jail, now Sahiwal. And that I remember very vividly because we would go more frequently. It was closer to Lahore. So that I remember more vividly. And once I had mentioned going inside and going and visiting him in his…

SI: Cell?

SH: Compound, which I again visited in 2011. Then I took photographs and so on. And that was very much the way I remembered it. Of course it was empty when they took us now. But when I went it was winter and there were a lot of flowers that he planted. The sweet peas I remember especially smelling beautifully and the roses he had planted. And the bagh (garden) is still there surprisingly.

SI: So how long did he stay in the jail?

SH: He was there for four and a half years.

SI: And then he came out in 1950...?

SH: 1955. Four or five...1955.

SI: And then when he came out, what was life like after that?

SH: Well the thing was that first to begin with, he was going to go back to Pakistan Times. So he went there back for a while. And then, of course, Ayub Khan happened. So he was at that time - but he was also involved in making the Jago Hua Savera (Wake up, the day has dawned) in between. So I think by '56, '57, his love affair with journalism was over and he was wanting to do filmmaking. So then he met Akhtar Kardar and he went to East Pakistan and he found the place where they were going to shoot. And he had this great passion for films always. So this was something that he felt very strongly about. And then came the coup d’état and he was abroad when it happened. He was in fact in Tashkent at the writers' conference—Afro-Asian Writers' Conference—so people told him not to come back because by that time they had started arresting workers', trade union leaders, writers, journalists, students. So especially because the film was going to be premiered in London they wanted him to stay on. But he decided he was going to come back because it was my birthday and he wanted to back for my birthday. He arrived on the 13th of December.

SI: 19..?

SH: This was 1958. And I remember my grandfather had died then and had left some money and my mamu (maternal uncle) had sent a car because my mother had told him to send a car. And my mother didn't know how to drive. She was learning to drive. So when this car arrived—it was standing in the showroom—so, my mother had a feeling that my father might get arrested when he comes. So she rang up his great pal, the IG or the DIG, and said ‘listen Faiz is coming back. If he's going to be arrested tell me because then I'll leave the car in the showroom because I don't know how to drive it. If he's not going to be then I'll bring the car home so he can drive it.’ So he said ‘nahi, nahi, sawaal hee nahin paida hota (no, no, that's out of the question).’ So she brings the car home, parks it there and my father arrived and then we had a birthday party and great fun and this and that. And then the next morning of course...I was having my exams so I told him I need to have a lecture—one on Iqbal and one on Hali. So he gave me a long talk on Iqbal and Bang-e- Dara (The Call of the Marching Bell) and then one on Musaddas-e- Hali (Hali's Poetry; musaddas: stanza of six verses). Tau main ne kaha main Urdu main fail nahi hona chahti (I said I do not want to fail in Urdu). Anyway, I said I didn't have a very good teacher. So he had just finished talking to me and the bell rang. He went to answer the door. He comes back—so he said ‘yeh mujhe laine agay hain beta (they have come to get me, child)—call your mother and tell her to come back from the office.’ I called my mother; come back. She came and of course she saw the police around the house, so she gave them all her swear words of ulloo ka patha (literally son of an owl, but means fool), gadhay ka bachay (a donkey's baby) and all the rest. She didn't know much more that—haraamzada (bastard). And they were kind of standing like this. So she got his suitcase ready. So off he went.

SI: You were sixteen at that time?

SH: Yes. I had actually just joined Lahore College. And that was really, really nasty and vicious because they took him to Lahore Fort and put him into solitary confinement. And interestingly, just in the next-door cell, was Maulana Maududi. And my father used to say that his shalwar and pyjama were much better than mine – much—you know, very sartorial elegance. But the thing was a lot of poetry came out of that short—it was about five months. But it sort of…in Lahore College it made me very furious that this should happen. Especially, I got a first division in matric and I got a scholarship. Woh daitay thay (they gave that) if you had above a certain number. So they denied giving the scholarship saying the father had too much income because before that he was in Pakistan Times. So my mother was even more furious because we had no money—we had very little money. But anyway, somehow, because I didn't want to ask her for any pocket money or anything, so it was quite, quite tough. But then after five months he was released and that was after that, then he was offered this Arts' Council job. So that's when he joined the Arts' Council.

SI: So we'll stop here, for this part.

SH: Haan, theek hai. (Yes, okay).