Remembering two sons of Frontier province

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Professor Mehfooz Jan Abid had not been keeping a good health for the past some time. Mostly bed-ridden, his movement during the last days was greatly restricted to his residence in Gulbahar No. 2. He devoted the best years and energies to teaching in Peshawar University’s historical and later upgraded Islamia College, which incidentally brings to mind literary names like those of Ahmad Faraz and Mohsin Ehsan.

Mefooz Jan taught English language and literature and served the cause of education by helping out the weak students with made-easy guide books and summarised notes of text-books, which were in great demand at book-stores in Saddar Bazaar, Qissa Khwani and even in the Coffee Shop Market adjacent to Islamia College.

Whenever this was not possible, he reached out to the hard-working students in his privately-run tuition centre. After retirement from government service, he started a school in Gulbahar which was patronised by middle class families. Supervised by his son and daughter-in-law, the school has been a success story in the area.

Being the younger brother of Masood Anwar Shafaqi, former resident editor of daily Mashriq, he very nearly kept a safe distance from journalism and poetry. Every inch a practical man, Mehfooz Jan never bothered to waste time in idle gossip, heated discussions in the Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq or delivering presidential speeches in college debates.

His services were duly availed by the examination branches of Peshawar University and the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) both as paper-setter and head-examiner. In his free time, he offered his services to privately-run educational institutions as part-time subject specialist and advisor.

Giving an honest and straightforward assessment of their performance to students, he was duly admired and praised by his pupils. Always a busy person, he was seldom seen in social get-togethers or wedding dinners. His school in Gulbahar is nothing short of a befitting gift to the people of the area.

Age and hard work visibly told on his nerves and he was overtaken by ill health and inactivity. If he had lived longer, he might well have planned more educational gifts to the people of his area. Due to his devotion to his profession, he was widely respected by students as well as the parents.

Although there was little interaction among them but people like Farigh Bokhari, Khatir Ghaznavi, Ashraf Bokhari, Shaukat Wasti and lately Nazeer Tabassum lived within a walking distance of one another. Except for Farigh Bokhari, all others had teaching as their common pursuit.

Some of the book-sellers in Peshawar thrived on dealing in the much-demanded college notes prepared by Mehfooz Jan. Due to professional rivalry, they never could evolve a lasting relationship but the City had quite a few college teachers that knew the art of compiling successful guide books and notes that were of collective usefulness.

One is not sure how they mutually regarded one another but the owners of good and successful educational institutions in Peshawar should have formed a more interactive association of wise, experienced members. People like Mehfooz Jan will be remembered by admirers for a long time.

Lovers of art and music in NWFP were shocked out of their senses to know of the fact that singer Kamal Mehsud had suddenly disappeared from the scene. As his surname indicated, the artist belonged to Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan but one must not confuse his name with Baitullah Mehsud, chief of Tehrik-i-Taliban-i-Pakistan (TTP), who was targeted by a pilotless drone plane while asleep on the rooftop of a newly-built house belonging to his in-laws in the tribal agency. Kamal and Baitullah were diametrically opposed. The former enlivened his people with his enchanting music while the latter killed them in the most unimaginable manner.

During the raging militancy, security forces tried to cash in on this inherent contradiction of the tribe. Distributing free of cost the CDs of his albums among people, the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) department of Pak army reportedly tried to show to the world at large that all tribal people were not militants.

When Kamal’s admirers saw that his name was being used to promote peace and condemn war, they secretly started fearing a backlash or retaliation in one form or the other from TTP and its activists. Kamal himself smelled something wrong and foresaw trouble. In a state of panic and anxiety, he decided to dispose of the property of his forefathers in Tank City and switch over to a house in Islamabad’s E-11 sector.

On January 2, 2010, Kamal entered his house during the load-shedding hours and tried to light a candle. Somehow or the other, he could not realise that due to leakage, inflammable Sui gas had filled the room. As he struck the phosphorous-tipped stick on match-box, there was a burst of fire and with serious burns he collapsed to the floor.  

Whether in South Waziristan or in the federal capital, Kamal’s name continued to be associated with peace, love and coexistence. As the coincidence would have it, a Pushto-speaking woman scholar from Kohat, Farhat Taj, a Ph D research fellow at Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, made a 30-minute award-winning documentary film titled ‘Waziristan: a culture under attack’.

She chose to insert into her documentary, a song by Kamal Mehsud. Just when the plastic surgeons in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) were battling to save Kamal’s life, peace-loving general public in the country was quietly celebrating the honour given to Farhat’s film by the Los Angeles Reel Film Festival (LARFF), held on December 30, 2009.

The capable PIMS doctors lost their battle against fatal burns as the lean and thin singer (almost the look-alike of Uncle Urfi-famed television artist Jamshed Ansari) breathed his last on January 7, 2010. Surprisingly, the mainstream press either ignored the death or covered it in a single column news item. Being a dependable name in Pushto folk music, the tribal singer could equally enchant his audience by rendering Seraiki and Urdu poetry into music.