LAHORE: Mustafa Zaidi is one of those poets of Urdu literature who were famous in their life but their deaths put them in further limelight. While death of others like Shakeb Jalali and Sara Shagufta were declared as suicides, Zaidi’s case was more surrounded in mystery and there was another character involved in it, Shahnaz Gul. Shahnaz was a socialite who was found unconscious in the same house where Zaidi was found dead and during their life, their relationship was no secret as Zaidi had written poems on her and titled them as Shahnaz. The tragedy happened in 1970. Fifty-four years later, Tooba Masood-Khan and Saba Imtiaz tried to unravel the mystery in their book, Society Girl- A Tale of Sex, Lies and Scandal.

“We had a story that we wanted to tell in our way and we looked at the case as well as the country at the same time with the same context. When people ask the question why we are writing about it now, I say I think it’s a social history of the county that makes it important,” said Tooba at the launch of the book at The Last Word on Sunday.

Tooba said when she started out, she was on the side of Mustafa Zaidi but as she was approaching the story from various perspectives, she found out that their (Zaidi and Shahnaz) characters were not black and white but very grey.

“All the sources that we wanted to reach out to we could not reach. But we made a very conscious decision to write very sensitively about the case,” she added.

Saba Imtiaz said a lot of details could not be verified because there were no back-up sources. “During the research, the question was raised why the people were reacting the way they did which was in a way understandable due to one being a popular poet and young.”

To a question, Saba said the government should release all the records of Mustafa Zaidi’s case, including investigation, his suspension and dismissal from service on corruption charges.

“Not just Mustafa Zaidi but also the other civil servants too because in the 1960s and in fact until the mid-1970s, the civil service of Pakistan was a very important institution as bureaucrats were so powerful that everyone said ‘Yeh tou mulk chalatay hain’. They were also considered to be very upstanding in their personal life and they could not be accused of corruption. They were considered to be pillars of society which is why there was so much drama around it because the ‘pillar of civil service’ had fallen,” she said.

Giving further context, Saba said that in December 1969, 303 government officers were dismissed and the news was on the front pages of the newspapers but it was not clear what were the charges against them.

“The tribunals were made to investigate them and some of them, including Mustafa, were formally dismissed and some of them reinstated. Those dismissed were not allowed to sell properties and they were not allowed to leave the country and their names were on the ECL which was a big contributing factor to some of the events that happened with Mustafa Zaidi”.

Moderator Hira Azmat said Shahnaz was very young at the time of the incident. “Her entire life was completely transformed because of this alleged affair with this gentleman who was found dead next door. The essays written after his death told about two suicide bids he had already made and he had lost a brother to suicide. He had mental health issues which is a very important part of his story.”

She described the book as impartial and very journalistic. “There is a significance of the book in terms of Pakistani history because it’s a book about the people who had very dramatic lives. It’s ultimately a very real slice of Pakistani history because it captures a certain time in the country.” The book put the time into context as the story was used as a salacious distraction from whatever was happening as it suited the state to push this as a lead story, she added.

Azmat said Shahnaz’ family was from the Afghan royals and they grew up in Gujranwala. “My mother grew up in Gujranwala in the same place where Shahnaz family used to live. She was one of five sisters and she was my Khala’s senior in college. The families knew each other.”

Saba Imtiaz said that access to records should be allowed to public even in court cases, adding that the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s Karachi Registry had refused to give the record of the case though the judgement had already been reported in the newspapers. There were no police records, she added.

Tooba said even Shahnaz could not get the case file from the court if she wanted and added that hospitals burnt their records every 10 years as a routine because they had no place to keep it.

Saba expressed surprise that everything from the Pre-Partition years was easily available related to government, like details of Mustafa’s father who was a CID officer in pre-partition India, the cases he dealt with and Mustafa’s brother who was also a civil servant in India. “The official documents are available even until the 1970s and then there is a gap.”

Tooba said the records were strangely missing even in the PTV and Radio Pakistan and they said everything had been burnt “but nobody tells who burnt them”.

Saba lauded the Punjab Public Library that had all the archives and the staff were helpful as well as private persons who helped.

To a question, Tooba said Shahnaz’ two daughters knew about the book but they did not want to be a part of it. “One of her daughters lives in Lahore. We told them (the daughters) about the book. They gave a go-ahead but did not want to be a part of it,” she said.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2024