[Reader-list] Alys Faiz (September 2, 1915 - March 12, 2003)

[Harsh Kapoor]

In Memory of Alys Faiz

South Citizens Wire Special
March 26 2003


Contents:
#1. Alys Faiz passes away  (Nasir Jamal)
#2. HRCP mourns Mrs Faiz's passing
#3. Alys Faiz (1914-2003)  (Moni Mohsin)
#4. Alys Faiz, great woman behind great poet  (Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad)
#5. Tribute to Alys Faiz - She crafted the future (I. A. Rehman)
#6. Alys Faiz  (Ariz Azad)
#7. Leaving a void (Zafar Samdani)

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#1.

DAWN (Karachi)
13 March 2003

Alys Faiz passes away
By Nasir Jamal

LAHORE, March 12: Human rights crusader, peace activist and wife of 
poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Alys Faiz, passed away here on Wednesday 
morning at the age of 88.
She had been unwell for some time and was confined to her house after 
suffering a fracture of the hipbone in a fall. She died at the 
Ittefaq Hospital at around 10am where she was taken for emergency 
treatment.
Mrs Faiz was buried in the evening in the Model Town graveyard by the 
side of her husband. Faiz had died on Nov 20, 1984.
Hundreds of people from all walks of life attended the funeral 
prayers. Prominent among them were Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood 
Kasuri, former finance minister Dr Mubashir Hasan, and PPP leader 
Salman Taseer. Mrs Faiz is survived by two daughters, Salima Hashmi, 
former principal of the National College of Arts, and Muneeza Hashmi, 
a senior producer at PTV in Lahore.
Born on Sept 22, 1914, in London, Alys Faiz came to India in 1938 to 
visit her elder sister, Christobel (Bilqees), who was married to Dr 
M.D. Taseer. She could not go back to her country because of World 
War II and decided to stay on. She married Faiz, who was teaching at 
the MAO College in Amritsar at that time, in October 1941.
The wedding took place in Srinagar and their nikah was solemnized by 
prominent Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah. She was given a Muslim 
name, Kulsoom, when she embraced Islam at the time of her marriage, 
but she always remained Alys to her friends and admirers.
Alys Faiz had joined the Communist Party of Britain when she was only 
16. She also served as secretary to Mr Krishna Menon, who was then in 
London, and took an active part in the subcontinent's independence 
struggle.
She joined The Pakistan Times in 1950 and looked after the women's 
and children's sections of the newspaper. She joined the newspaper's 
regular staff in 1951 after the arrest of her husband in the 
so-called Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. She also started the 
newspaper's reference section.
Mrs Faiz taught special children in Karachi when her family settled 
there in the late 1950s. She started working for Unicef when Faiz 
moved to Islamabad. She joined the weekly Viewpoint after the family 
returned to Lahore following a period living abroad in Beirut.
Dr Mubashir Hasan described Mrs Faiz as a "fighter in her own right". 
"Faiz owed a great debt to her. She stood by him in the worst of 
times," he said.
Ms Salima Hashmi said her mother was a rebel who never compromised on 
principles. She made "a tremendous sacrifice for her husband and 
family and submerged her identity. In spite of her parents' 
insistence, she refused to leave Pakistan and join them in London 
with her children when our father was jailed in the conspiracy case."
Alys was the author of two books, Dear Heart, a collection of her 
letters written to her husband during his years in jail in the 1950s, 
and Over My Shoulder, a collection of her dispatches for Viewpoint 
sent from Beirut at the height of the civil war.


_____


#2.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
Press Release
March 12, 2003   |  Lahore

HRCP mourns Mrs Faiz's passing
 
Lahore, March 12: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) mourns 
the passing away of Mrs Alys Faiz this morning and acknowledges her 
outstanding services to the cause of human rights as one of HRCP's 
founder members, as a member of its first executive, and as a leading 
figure on its editorial board for many years. Her commitment to the 
rights of the disadvantaged was as complete as possible and she 
inspired her colleagues at HRCP with unremitting devotion to peace, 
freedom and human dignity, an exemplary sense of duty, and boundless 
compassion for all human beings.

Earlier, she had devoted many years to the education and welfare of 
the sick and the special children and had taken an active part in the 
subcontinent's struggle for independence as a young volunteer in 
London. She left her family and home in England to share Faiz's 
passion for his people's freedom from oppression, want and squalor, a 
cause she did not abandon even when on sickbed. One of her greatest 
contributions was extending Faiz Ahmed Faiz the emotional support and 
family stability that considerably helped the great poet in realising 
his creative genius.

The HRCP Secretary-General and members of its secretariat have in a 
resolution expressed, their solidarity with the bereaved family and 
renewed their pledge to continue fighting for human rights as Mrs 
Faiz would have wished.
I. A. Rehman
Director


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#3.

The Friday Times, Lahore
March 2003

Alys Faiz (1914-2003)

Moni Mohsin remembers the life and times of an extraordinary woman

It is not easy being a famous man's wife - and few women could have 
known this better than Alys Faiz. Married to Faiz Ahmed Faiz for 43 
years, and widowed for almost two decades, Alys continued to be known 
by her association with him. And it was not as if Alys had not 
achieved anything in her own right. A journalist by profession, she 
came to be recognised as a tireless campaigner for human rights. But 
when measured against the immortal poetry of Faiz, few achievements - 
hers or indeed anyone elses - could stand up to scrutiny. However, 
Alys did not grudge Faiz his fame. In fact, she strove through all 
those years spent with him to create conditions in which he could 
produce his best work. And in the process, if she reaped the rewards 
of Faiz's fame, she also lived with separation, imprisonment and 
ostracism.

Sailing out to India as a young woman in her early twenties, Alys 
George had little idea of the course destiny had charted for her. It 
was the late 1930s and all she knew was that she was going to a 
country struggling for liberation from two centuries of British rule. 
Unlike most other young British women of her generation, however, 
Alys approved wholeheartedly of freedom for the colonies. But then 
Alys was different. The second daughter of a middling publisher and 
bookseller, Alys had been a card-carrying member of the Communist 
Party since the age of eighteen. Instead of romantic novels, the 
literary staples of her youth had been the publications of London's 
Left Book Club.

It was an ideology that Alys shared with the handful of Indian 
students that she and her elder sister, Christabel, met in London. 
The Indians were inspired young men, burning with the zeal to 
liberate their country. Some of their passion must have rubbed off on 
the two sisters, for Chris left for India to marry MD Taseer, a young 
PhD student she had met and fallen in love with at Cambridge. Soon 
after, Alys too set sail for India. "I felt that I was by now 
committed to socialism and India's struggle for freedom", recalled 
Alys. "And I also wanted to see India".

A brilliant educationalist, MD Taseer was the Principal of the Muslim 
and Oriental College at Amritsar in the late '30s. Taseer, with his 
towering intellect was something of a guru for young poets and 
writers of the Punjab. His house in Amritsar was a salon where the 
likes of Imtiaz Ali Taj, Hasrat, Jallundhri, Sufi Tabussum and others 
gathered at weekends. A member of this elite intellectual club was a 
young English teacher at the college called Faiz Ahmed. Though shy 
and diffident, Faiz was known as a budding poet whose work had 
received favourable notice.

Herself forthright and confident, Alys at first mistook Faiz's 
reticence for a taciturn nature. But as she grew to know him, she 
discovered that "he was not taciturn, but shy with a becoming sense 
of humour". The friendship blossomed into love. They had long 
twilight walks and leisurely "drives in Taseer's Victoria to the 
gardens to drink cool well water". In Faiz, Alys discovered a soul 
mate. Like her he, too, had read Marxist literature and been won over 
by its humane philosophy. Theirs was to be a partnership built not 
just on the fleeting pleasures of romance but the enduring premise of 
a shared ideology.

Faiz's widowed mother, however, wouldn't hear of marriage to a 
foreigner. Conservative and orthodox, she wanted her son to marry one 
of his own kind, a Jat. Alys had to convert to Islam, become fluent 
in Urdu and only then, two years later, did Faiz's mother relent. 
Faiz, accompanied by his younger brother, set off for Srinagar, where 
Alys was now staying with her sister's family. In Faiz's pocket was a 
gold ring, bought with money lent by Mian Iftikharuddin. Those were 
difficult days for Faiz. His father had died a few years previously, 
and since then the family had been plunged into near penury. Alys 
must have thought about this, along with the huge differences in 
their backgrounds. But if she had any doubts they were drowned by 
Faiz's personal qualities.

Their nikah was performed by Sheikh Abdullah and the wedding party, 
aside from Faiz and his brother, comprised Taseer's family and the 
poets, Josh and Majrooh. After the ceremony there was a small 
mushaira and two days later the couple set off for Lahore where the 
family received Alys warmly.

The newlyweds took up residence with Faiz's large family in a house 
on the Canal Bank and slowly, Alys set about familiarising herself 
with the alien customs of her new life. Faiz was now a lecturer at 
Hailey College and though he earned a modest salary, his recently 
published collection of poems, Naqsh-e-Faryadi, had catapulted him to 
instant fame. Faiz was hot property not only at mushairas but on 
radio programmes and public functions. Students gravitated towards 
him, often arriving at his house at all hours to sit at the poet's 
feet. Alys, who was still adapting to the unfamiliar mores of a 
Punjabi household, had now also to contend with the public's tangible 
presence in their lives. She handled it with grace, smoothing out the 
details of Faiz's life so that he could devote his attention to his 
art.

When Faiz joined the army during World War II, Alys accompanied him 
to his posting in Delhi. Those were happy days for them. Faiz's old 
friends from Lahore - Taseer, A S Bokhari, Rasheed Ahmed, Sufi 
Tabassum, Amina and Majeed Malik - were also in Delhi and Alys, who 
had made a place for herself in this select group, enjoyed their 
stimulating company. For the first time in her married life she also 
had the independence and privacy of her own house. It was in Delhi, 
that she had her firstborn, Salima.

They returned to Lahore four years later where Faiz was now editor of 
the newly established paper, The Pakistan Times.Alys and Faiz shared 
a small house on Race Course Road, with a colleague from the paper, 
Mazhar Ali Khan and his beautiful young wife, Tahira. When the clouds 
of Partition engulfed the Punjab, Alys was holidaying in Srinagar 
with her parents. When riots broke out, Faiz brought Alys and their 
two daughters to Murree, and returned to Lahore.

Murree was still full of Sikh refugees waiting for transport and a 
way out. Ever practical and helpful, Alys pitched in with some 
friends to arrange a safe exit for the Sikh families. Despite their 
best efforts, however, the convoy was attacked and every single Sikh 
murdered. It was with some difficulty that Alys found her way back. 
Accompanied by her two small daughters and her friend, Anna Molka 
Ahmed, Alys boarded a train for Lahore. Afraid of being butchered if 
recognised as western women, Alys and Anna wore burqas and clutched 
Qurans in their hands. Though the journey was fraught with danger, 
Alys shepherded her little convoy home safely.

Fortitude was perhaps Alys' greatest attribute. It was also one which 
she was called upon to demonstrate repeatedly. In 1951, when Faiz was 
arrested for participating in a conspiracy - later called the 
Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case - to overthrow the then government, Alys 
rose to the occasion with a grit and determination which few women in 
her place could have mustered. For the four years of Faiz's 
imprisonment, Alys held together her small family through sheer 
strength of will. In the beginning when a possible death sentence 
dangled over Faiz's head, Alys and her children were ostracised by 
old acquaintances. Though hurt and worried, Alys refused to buckle 
under. She sold their car, bought a bicycle and securing herself a 
job at The Pakistan Times became the breadwinner of the family. She 
had to remove her daughters from their posh school to a modest 
establishment, but though money was desperately short and her spirits 
low, she managed to treat her daughters to small luxuries like 
paint-boxes and picnics. Through an endless stream of letters, she 
bolstered her husband's spirits and when funds allowed she made the 
long train journey - travelling third class - across the scorching 
deserts of Sindh to Hyderabad jail. "They were difficult days", 
recalled Alys, "but there were good moments too, like when I'd return 
from home to find my two daughters and sister-in-law looking over the 
balcony for me, or those rare meetings with Faiz and the kindness of 
friends like Amina, Mazhar and so many others".

Life with Faiz, though exciting and rewarding, was never certain. His 
was too unsettling a presence for the comfort of dictatorial regimes. 
Hence when the harassment from Governor Kalabagh became unbearable, 
Alys convinced Faiz to leave the country for a while. They spent two 
years in England and while Faiz alternately travelled abroad and 
pined for home, Alys found a job in a school and set about putting 
some order to their life.

In 1964 Faiz decided to return. General Ayub Khan's regime was still 
very much in place. Alys feared that the days of harassment were far 
from over, but Faiz was determined to return. As it happened, their 
life in Karachi, where they now settled, was pleasant. Faiz had been 
offered a job as the head of a charity school and orphanage and 
surrounded by his old friends like the Majeed Maliks, Sibte Hassan 
and Shaukat Haroon he was at peace and fulfilled. Alys, who was also 
teaching again, enjoyed the settled, harmonious rhythms of their 
life. They stayed in Karachi for eight years. Meanwhile their 
daughters grew up and flew the coop, and with the years of hardship 
and uncertainty behind them, Alys could look forward to a peaceful 
middle age.

But Faiz was a man of ideas and plans and when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto 
invited him to head the National Council of the Arts, he did not 
demur. The '70s found them in Islamabad where Faiz put together a 
cultural policy for the country. Before it could be properly 
implemented, however, General Zia had usurped power. Disheartened and 
depressed by the turn of events, Faiz chose to exile himself. He left 
for Beirut, where he edited Lotus, a magazine of Third World 
literature. Alys followed him out and there amid the bombs, strafing 
and daily ravages of the war, she lived with her man. Often, on bad 
days, she couldn't leave their flat. Though impressed by the courage 
of their Palestinian friends, Alys mourned for them too. But for fear 
of infecting Faiz's already low spirits she concealed her worry. Faiz 
was visibly depressed and now suffering from ill health. Alys 
probably guessed that they were now running out of time.

Through careful husbanding of their resources, Alys had built a small 
house in Lahore and it was here that Faiz, tired, ailing but still 
cheerful, returned home. But time was against them. By the end of the 
year, Faiz was dead. Grieving, worn, Alys stood alone.

Theirs had been a fruitful marriage. Faiz had been a liberal, 
affectionate and sensitive husband, but lost in his own thoughts, he 
was often removed from the mundane worries of life. So throughout 
their married life it was Alys who had dealt with the practical 
necessities. Though Faiz always provided, it was she who saved, 
planned and managed. Lionised by an adoring public, Faiz had 
constantly been surrounded by acolytes and fans. It fell to Alys to 
organise his time, often at the risk of courting unpopularity among 
his friends. But had Alys not done that, Urdu literature would have 
been the poorer for it.

Throughout his peripatetic and often hazardous life, she stuck by 
him. When he was imprisoned she could conceivably have left for 
England with her daughters - but to flee the battleground would not 
have been her style. The foundations of their marriage was their 
shared ideology and once she had entered into that covenant, Alys did 
not renege. She never pressed him to accept lucrative jobs or 
compromising stipends. Alys' brusque Anglo-Saxon style was sometimes 
resented, but even her detractors cannot deny that she lived a life 
of dignity and sincerity.

She died peacefully last week in Lahore, at her home in Model Town. 
There was no pain, no fuss at the end. Her eldest daughter, Salima, 
kissed her in the morning before she left for work, wrapping a 
blanket around her frail figure as she sat in her wheelchair in the 
cool, morning hours (Alys had been increasingly confined to a 
wheelchair in recent months). Less than half an hour later, she had 
passed away quietly. As Salima tried to explain to the visitors who 
flocked to their house upon hearing the news, the family would like 
to remember her by celebrating her extraordinary life rather than 
mourning her death.


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#4.

DAWN
22 March 2003

ISLAMABAD: Alys Faiz, great woman behind great poet
BY Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad

ISLAMABAD, March 21: Alys Faiz, the great woman behind the great 
poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, was remembered at a meeting organized by the 
Islamabad Cultural Forum at the Trust for Voluntary Organizations 
(TVO) auditorium here on Friday evening.
"While Faiz created poems of ineffable beauty, Alys lived poems all 
the time," said eminent educationist Prof Khawaja Masud, who knew the 
famous couple very closely, quoting from writer Walter Lowenfels, 
"for anyone to create poems anytime, some one has to live poems all 
the time".
Bringing out the distinctive qualities of the two personalities, Prof 
Masud thought that Alys represented the pragmatic humanism that runs 
through Locke, Shaw, Wells and Russell; while Faiz epitomized the 
sublime humanism of the great mystics: Mansoor, Madhu Lal Husain, 
Shah Abdul Latif, Rehman Baba and Sarmad.
He quoted from one of the letters of Faiz to his wife, and said it 
summed up the difference in their approach to erring humanity. Faiz 
said: "Your philosophy of toughness has amused me. I know this is the 
way the world goes. My philosophy of not casting the first stone can 
produce only poetry."
Prof Masud said, in their letters to each other, they may differ in 
their interpretation of humanism, but in life both stand vindicated. 
In her letters to Faiz, Alys emerges as an extraordinary woman of 
great courage and fortitude. She had an identity of her own, which 
neither Faiz would have liked to be submerged in his own, nor could 
she ever tolerate it to be tempered with.
He also read out a poem for Faiz written by Alys:
I will sing of you later,
When the thread of a thousand feet
the unending roll of sorrow
the breath of roses enfolding
the eulogies, the warranted praise
the drawn-out memories of others
the grief of recalling,
the total acceptance of death are over.
Then will I sing, not to the tread of a thousand feet, nor to the 
roll of sorrow
Nor will I lift the roses nor echo praise nor recall, nor accept
My song neither begins nor ends
It is eternity.
Poet Ahmad Faraz spoke of his awe and reverence for the great poet 
since his student days, and how he came into contact with the great 
poet which also lead to his great respect for Alys Faiz. He recalled 
that while being editor of a literary journal in Peshawar, he visited 
the residence of the poet in Lahore to request for a poem from him 
for publication in his journal. "As Faiz Sahab went to the other room 
and brought out his poem, Faraz and the publisher presented him with 
Rs20, his wife came along and angrily said: 'How come you can accept 
this amount so casually."
Faraz said, he thought that perhaps the wife was angry because the 
amount was too small for such a big name, but Faiz Sahab went inside, 
and on the advice of his wife wrote a formal receipt to formalize 
even this small transaction.
Talking of his exile days in London, he said that Faiz also came from 
Beirut and settled there. He said Alys Faiz would often telephone him 
and ask Faraz to take care of the poet. He said that when she came to 
London he once remarked to her jokingly that she was a great 
disciplinarian as far as her husband was concerned. Although she did 
not answer then, but one day asked him if he was serious in his 
comment. She said that she did so because she had to look after him, 
and care for his health.
Faraz said that this combination of a care-free poet and a 
disciplined wife seemed to be working very well. She was a friend, a 
companion who bore the brunt of his days in jail, and contributed a 
great deal in the upbringing of the children.
Referring to Khwaja Masud's remark that Faraz was a great poet after 
Faiz, Faraz modestly quoted an Arabic proverb that the death of great 
has also made us great.
Ashfaq Saleem Mirza read out from various extracts of letters of Faiz 
written to Alys. He also read out an article "Women know a lot of 
things", written by her.
A number of participants, including Dr Zarina Salamat, Munir Raja, 
Shahzad and Ishaque Chaudhry also spoke on various facets of her 
personality, some of them remembering her as the "Aapa Jan", the pen 
name under which she edited the children's page of Pakistan Times.
The meeting also observed one minute of silence for the loss of 
innocent lives in the present US invasion in Iraq.


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#5.

The News on Sunday / The News International
23 March 2003

tribute

She crafted the future

The world was rattled by the noise made by the victors in the Second 
World War about a new war -- this against an erstwhile ally -- and 
Alys clutched the banner of peace, that was never lowered as long as 
she could walk

By I. A. Rehman

Alys Faiz, who recently withdrew herself from the earthly scene at 
the age of 88, was a woman of many parts. She played the 
none-too-easy role of a life partner to a man of genius, guided their 
two children towards becoming celebrities, worked as a journalist and 
as a teacher for many years, wrote and spoke on humankind's joys and 
sorrows, fought for the rights of the under-privileged, and never 
looked back -- certainly not with any regret. It is difficult to 
decide which of these roles revealed her at her best. Perhaps all 
these roles were fashioned by her quest for a happier future. She 
devoted herself to the crafting of such a future.

Adjectives that are often used in obituaries to describe the life and 
work of a dear departed, such as 'great', 'outstanding', 'noble', are 
not needed, nor are they adequate, while paying a tribute to Alys 
Faiz. She acquired eminence without labouring for distinction and 
chose to derive pleasure from doing what she had to do without 
carrying for the value anybody was going to put on it.

What was it that persuaded Alys at a very young age to join the fight 
for South Asian people's freedom at a time when young men and women 
of England were more keen to benefit from service of the colonial 
administration? True, the First World War had radicalized the 
European youth and they began exerting for their ideals in different 
parts of the world. But there had to be something within one's self 
to persuade one to devote one's whole life to the building of a 
better future for the fellow human beings. Alys had been blessed by 
this spark of light and she never allowed it to go off.

She came into the South Asian family at a time when fascism was 
rapidly advancing to capture the world and threatening to sniff out 
the socialist experiment. But every anti-fascist did not try to 
understand the colonised people's dreams or to stand by their side. 
Alys did that and more -- she fell in love with them. While remaining 
very English all along she obliterated all the distinctions that 
separated her first from the Indians and then from the Pakistanis. 
These were in fact only two different appellations for peoples whose 
tomorrows were linked with those of the rest of humanity.

In the early years of Pakistan one saw her in the small brigade of 
fighters for civil liberties and she was one of the few who 
understood what the shouting was about. The defence of these rights 
was to become a passion for life. The world was soon rattled by the 
noise made by the victors in the Second World War about a new war -- 
this against an erstwhile ally -- and Alys clutched the banner of 
peace, that was neverlowered as long as she could walk.

During the first half of the 1950s she faced challenges severe enough 
to break any ordinary will. The way she faced the shower of calumny 
and stood at her post at home and outside it and carved dignity out 
of deprivation and suffering opened many eyes that had been slow to 
recognise her mettle.

She was allowed a modest assignment at The Pakistan Times and along 
with it a great deal of drudgery and she used this opportunity to add 
to the newspaper's credit. That was also the beginning of the 
discovery that life is not made entirely by the fulminations of the 
rich and the powerful, it also receives its colour and dynamism from 
the strivings and aspirations of the poor and the young.

While Faiz Ahmad Faiz was in prison, made to pay for something that 
was nowhere mentioned in the tale, Alys was the moving symbol of 
defiance. The best reply from Faiz and her would be, she decided, to 
launch 'Dast-i-Saba', and show the world the joy of creativity.

However, she had to wait for many years before her talent for 
journalism found a fuller expression. When she joined the Viewpoint 
in the 1980s she had little difficulty in creating a niche for 
herself and defining her outlook as a member of a journalist team. 
People whose mother tongue is English often suffer heart-aches while 
working with the subcontinental consumers of this language. Alys had 
her share but did not allow this to affect her responsibility or 
friendships.

During the break from journalism, Alys had opportunities to join 
women's forums abroad and share the Palestinians' struggle for their 
identity and their homeland. Of course, the ground for her joining 
this front was paved by Faiz's entry in it, but Alys read the script 
by herself and put her personal stamp on what she stood for.

Faiz's death in 1984 was a deadly loss and it seemed insurmountable, 
particularly as she counted the days spent without him. But she found 
strength in sharing the deprivation of the disadvantaged. When she 
came to work at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan it seemed she 
had taken up a job she had been doing since her days of youth. She 
could feel the pain of women ravaged and the anguish of people jailed 
without cause and there was no question of abandoning the ranks of 
the people fighting for their sovereign rights. Even when physical 
disability had obliged her to remain confined to bed, the will to 
speak out when this was needed did not disappear. And whenever there 
was occasion to recall the past years of struggle, the triumphs and 
setbacks, her eyes would light up as if she was again relishing the 
joy of struggle, because struggle was all that mattered.

What does commitment to civil rights, peace, freedom and human rights 
mean? One must go on building a future that guarantees freedom and 
happiness for all people, she would often observe. As for herself she 
never gave up and perhaps she did not fail to transmit to the young 
girls and boys of Pakistan the spark of hope that had illuminated her 
path decades ago.

____


#6.

The Guardian  (London, UK)
Tuesday March 25, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,921150,00.html

Alys Faiz

Ariz Azad

The journalist Alys Faiz, who has died aged 87, was one of the last 
surviving members of a diminishing band of internationally minded 
campaigners who fought for the anti-colonial cause in prewar London, 
and later exercised considerable influence on the human rights agenda 
in the newly emerging states of the Indian sub-continent.

Born in London, the daughter of a bookseller, she went to school in 
Leyton, Essex, and joined the Communist party as a teenager. With her 
sister Christobel, she became close to a group of London-based Indian 
intellectuals, and joined the Free India League. She worked as the 
unpaid secretary to Krishna Menon, the league secretary, who became a 
leading diplomat and politician in Jawaharlal Nehru's government 
after Indian independence in 1947.

In 1938, Alys went to India herself to visit Christobel, who had 
married a well-known educationist and writer, MD Tasser. There, she 
fell in with a group of radical writers and political activists, 
including her future husband, the Urdu poet and Lenin peace 
prizewinner Faiz Ahmed Faiz. They were married in 1941.

After the partition of the sub-continent, Alys adopted Pakistan as 
her homeland, and helped resettle the mass of refugees generated by 
the transfer of Hindus and Muslims across the new borders. In 1951, 
Faiz Ahmed Faiz was imprisoned for his alleged role in what became 
known as the "Rawalpindi conspiracy" to overthrow the government of 
Pakistan; he was, in part, the inspiration for the character of the 
poet Nadir Khan, in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Alys bore this difficult period with dignity. She joined the staff of 
the country's leading English-language daily, the Pakistan Times, 
editing its women's and children's pages with flair. Her regular 
column, Appa Jan (or "elder sister"), inspired a generation of young 
women into writing and human rights activism. The touching letters 
she wrote to her imprisoned husband, collected into Dear Heart 
(1986), are a testimony to her courage.

After her husband's release in 1955, the family moved to London, but 
Faiz Ahmed Faiz could not endure exile and, a year later, they 
returned to Pakistan, settling in Karachi. In 1971, when Zulfikar Ali 
Bhutto formed Pakistan's first democratically elected government, 
Alys moved to Islamabad, where her husband became cultural adviser to 
the new administration. From 1973, Alys herself worked with the 
United Nations children's fund (Unicef).

In the wake of General Zia ul-haq's military coup against Bhutto in 
1977, Alys followed Faiz into exile in Beirut, from where she wrote 
regular dispatches to the radical weekly Pakistan paper Viewpoint; 
these were later collected into the anthology Over My Shoulder (1991).

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1983 forced the Faizs to 
return to Pakistan, Alys wrote regularly for Viewpoint, mostly on 
human rights and social justice issues. She became a familiar figure 
on the political and cultural landscape of Lahore.

Following her husband's death in 1984, Alys continued to write for 
Viewpoint until it folded in 1992, after which she produced a regular 
column for She magazine. She also collected material for a national 
centre of folk heritage and handicrafts, and worked for Unicef in 
Islamabad, having been closely engaged with the Pakistan human rights 
commission since its birth in 1986.

She is survived by her daughters Saleema Hashmi, an artist and former 
head of the National College of Arts, and Muneeza Hashmi, a 
television producer and former general manager of Pakistan Television.

· Alys Faiz, journalist and human rights campaigner, born September 2 
1915; died March 12 2003


_____


#7.

Khaleej Times (Dubai)
March 21, 2003
Lahore Notebook

Leaving a void
BY ZAFAR SAMDANI Lahore

I HAD planned to write on the spate of protests the city witnessed 
over the past few days. Politicians were up in arms against the Legal 
Framework Order; lawyers were agitating against the extension in the 
retirement age accorded to judges and women were marching on the 
roads demanding rights. Lahore presented the picture of a political 
and social cauldron.

Then something more disturbing happened. Mrs Alys Faiz, wife of the 
late laureate and Lenin Prize winning poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz breathed 
her last on March 12. In her death the entire country lost a woman 
who was a remarkable, incomparable and a role model.

Establishing a personal identity as the wife of an international 
celebrity with a tremendous fan following is not easy. But Alys Faiz 
carved a distinguished place for herself as a loyal wife, devoted 
mother, human rights activist, committed journalist, author, and a 
woman of fortitude and dedication.

For columnist Munno Bhai, a close associate of the couple for 
decades, Alys possessed exceptional qualities and was a source of 
inspiration for men and women from many spheres of life. Faiz, he 
said, could not have been such a great poet without her support.

Alys stood by Faiz when he was in jail and provided strength to the 
leftist poet - she was a communist at the early age of 16 - in his 
years of exile, and made her impact on Pakistani society without 
borrowing glory from her husband.

She came to be loved and respected for her willingness to wage 
crusades for women, workers and the generally less endowed human 
beings, both physically and economically; she did commendable work 
for special children.

Alys had come to undivided India to meet her sister who was married 
to educationist and scholar poet, Dr Taseer, but was soon married to 
Faiz, a friend and colleague of Taseer and never went back. For the 
record, she was Faiz's wife for 43 years and his widow for 19.

While she took Kulsoom as her name after embracing Islam, 
contemporaries called her Alys and many of the younger generation 
addressed her as 'Mama', like her daughters Salima, Munneza and 
grandchildern. 

After independence, the poet and his wife shifted to Pakistan, where 
Faiz was born, and lived in the country, except for periods of forced 
exile. Faiz grew to be an internationally renowned poet and Alys 
became a leading light of the country's educated and conscientious 
classes.

She was given an emotional and affectionate send-off by a very large 
crowd. The gathering at her funeral and qul ceremony comprised the 
literati and the glitterati, writers and painters, politicians and 
public servants, lawyers and judges, activist groups, social workers 
and of course journalists - a veritable who's who of Lahore's 
thinking elite.

Those who came to pay homage to the elegant lady who embodied the 
best in society included a number of people from outside Lahore.

Karachi-based composer Arshad Mehmood, a lifelong devotee and admirer 
of Faiz and Alys, commented that "one had often heard people say that 
somebody's death had left a void in the society; now I know what 
these words imply." His words summed up the feelings of many who will 
miss her. 


++++++++

Complied by Harsh Kapoor for the South Asia Citizens Wire.
SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service 
run by South Asia Citizens Web (www.mnet.fr/aiindex)