The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired a book about women’s achievements in Pakistan. Who Am I? is a collection of interviews with distinguished Pakistani women. The author is the well-known journalist Moneeza Hashmi The book was generously donated to the TU Libraries by the Embassy of Pakistan in the Kingdom of Thailand, coordinated by Khun Imran Shauket, Goodwill Ambassador of the Alhamra.
The book is shelved in the Pakistan Corner of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus. Originating with a television program, the interviews focused on high achievers in the fields of law, arts, poetry, music, science, sport, literature, and theater, among other subjects.
Moneeza Hashmi is a daughter of the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, some of whose books are also in the TU Library collection, in the Pakistan Corner of the Pridi Banomyong Library. Moneeza Hashmi earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Hawaii, USA, before entering a career in broadcasting.
Among the personalities interviewed in Who am I? is her older sister Salima Hashmi, a painter and teacher who formerly served as professor and the dean of National College of Arts (NCA), a public art school located in Lahore Punjab, Pakistan, the oldest art school in Pakistan.
Eminent interviewees
Among the interesting conversations in Who am I? is one with the Pakistani novelist Bapsi Sidhwa. The TU Library owns a number of books by Bapsi Sidhwa.
In an online interview in 2015, she recalled about her native land:
Pakistan had a lot of expectations, but as a brand new country it has had its teething problems, including several martial laws. But in the last few years, democracy appears to have taken root… Pakistan has lacked proper leadership and has often suffered from the interventions of foreign powers because of its strategic location. Despite this, the country has looked out for its self as best as it could.
She told another interviewer about the importance of reading for a writer:
While you’re writing, what you read is very important. If while writing something serious, you only read something funny, it won’t work. Unconsciously, it does influence you; one does build on the shoulders of other creative people in a way. Because I didn’t go to school because of my polio, I used to read a lot. If I’d gone to regular school it would not have been so easy for me to write.
Another noted author who speaks in Who Am I? is the poet Zehra Nigah, who writes in the Urdu language. She was born into a literary family, and such noted authors as Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz would visit her family home.
Works by Muhammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz are also represented on the shelves of the Pakistan Corner of the Pridi Banomyong Library. Her father would offer to pay his children to memorize verse. As she recalled:
And we would wield all our energies to memorise them. Such was my training that at four I had learnt the correct recitation style and pronunciation and by the time I was 14, I had learnt the masterpieces of most big poets by heart.
Here are some examples of the poetry of Zehra Nigah, as posted online in translations by Yasmin Hameed:
*******************************************
Autoplay next video
As if in a dream,
I remembered last night,
The tree in a corner of my garden,
Studded with flowers of moonlight.
I would play beneath its shade,
Sheltered afternoons long from the sun,
Swing on the boughs, meeting them as they swayed,
Touch the flowers and run.
Into its trunk had been sunk
Scores of nails.
Many a time had I been warned
Not to touch those nails.
That tree, they said,
Was haunted.
But a wise man
Had cast a spell on it,
Trapped the giant within,
Transfixed him with nails.
Should anyone pull out those pins,
It would release the genie within.
Which would devour every flower,
Which would sap every leaf.
Then this house, this home would burn
In a flash, into ashes it would turn.
Within the confines of this body and soul
Dwells such a moon-silvered tree
Its leaves I’ve always confided in
Each flower has been a friend to me.
Still, I dearly love
The shade of this, my tree.
And in its trunk until this day
Lives bewitched that same genie.
Even now I live in dread
If ever I should touch those nails
That ogre might escape
The flowers he may not devour
The leaves he may not want
But my home would surely burn!
Would it really into ashes turn?
Brimming with culture, the very same shops,
streets embellished with history;
with hands stretched out
or heads bowed,
in corners, the very same trees;
in the flurry of flickering lights
hums a city,
where once we lived.
I was restive, perturbed,
your mind at peace, you were content,
lost in your own company;
chained by silent commitments,
I axed through
the jungle of loneliness;
unawares, the city,
collapsed over me,
a house of cards,
crashing down at the slightest motion;
collecting myself,
from here I escaped.
Long after,
to the same city
I have returned;
in the same streets I often ramble,
laze about in the same gardens;
your habits have grown over me;
my mind at peace, I am content,
lost in my own company.
The journey of togetherness
has its price,
unlike the simple, divergent paths.
****************************
Another interview subject in Who Am I? is Dr. Fatima Shah, a physician, social worker and advocate for the blind in Pakistan. She was the founder of the Pakistan Association of the Blind (PAB) and one of the founding members of the All Pakistan Women’s Association.
She was also the first woman to become president of the International Federation of the Blind. The Pakistan Times wrote about Dr. Shah in November 1964:
According to her, the blind are placed in a category just one better than that of the dead. It is no wonder that she passed through a shocking experience. What is really astonishing is her emergence into the land of living beings from amongst the ranks of the semi dead in a brief period of two years. After her tour of some of the foreign countries, including a recent tour of the United States, Dr. Shah has reached the conclusion that in Pakistan more than half of the blind population lost its sight due to causes which are avoidable. In the developed countries now, none loses his sight due to smallpox, diabetes or such other controllable diseases. In those countries the blind are there because of wars and such other unavoidable catastrophes. However, these persons after their reorientation courses are provided all facilities to choose any calling and like any other normal person they become administrators, lawyers, vendors, telephone operators etc. In Pakistan, on the other hand, of the alarmingly big blind population of 65,000 children, hardly about 200 go to schools. The remaining plus the adult blind population have no educational facilities. In the entire country there is only one press which publishes books on braille system and these are mere text-books covering courses of study up to fifth or sixth class. Dr. Shah asserts that more than the normal persons it is the blind who need education because their only contact with the world is through books and it is through books that they can see the world.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)