LAHORE: The family, friends and admirers of Alys Faiz got together and paid her glowing tributes as a woman who wore many hats and rode out the trials and tribulations in life with aplomb.

The event was organised as part of the centennial celebrations of Alys Faiz by the Faiz Foundation Trust at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan auditorium on Saturday evening.

Recalling the memories of her mother, Ms Saleema Hashmi read out a paper, “Someone’s knocking on my door” which she had earlier presented in Doha. It was the story of Alys Faiz’s struggle against injustices and tyranny of the state in the form of Faiz’s incarceration, threat of evacuation from the house that was the property of the Evacuee Trust Property Board and two-year stay in Beirut during Gen Zia’s regime.

She said her father paid the price of speaking the truth but ‘Mama’ always exhorted us to lead a life of principles and truthfulness. “She (Alys) became a member of the Communist Party at the age of 16 and worked at The Pakistan Times against a salary of Rs420,” she recalled.

Farah Noor, an Indian academic who has obtained an MPhil degree on the basis of her research on Alys Faiz’s writings, told the gathering that people often ask her why she chose the subject (Alys writings) and how it was connected to her. And the answer she comes up with is: “We are all connected and interdependent in South Asia. Pakistan has always been my concern and business.”

She said Alys Faiz’s works needed to be understood and promoted and her letters could be read in many ways for being profound. She said it was Alys Faiz’s multiplicity that set her apart from others as she was willing to perform many roles.

“It is the power to question that paves the way for intellectual advancement and it was this message that Alys Faiz had inculcated among his pupils,” Ms Noor said.

Lawyer and veteran rights activist Asma Jahangir regaled the audience with some interesting anecdotes and praised Alys for her services as a teacher, care as a friend and compassion for the downtrodden. Narrating how passionately she would work as part of fact-finding missions at the HRCP, she recalled an incident when during a visit to Karachi she expressed her desire to meet Edhi and Murtaza Bhutto.

“It was after her meeting with Murtaza Bhutto that she changed her mind and shed the impression of him being a gangster,” she said.

Alys had also visited Quetta (Balochistan) and lent sympathetic hearing to the Baloch nationalists without bothering them with oft-repeated questions. She was a modest woman who never imposed her opinion on others, said Ms Jahangir.

Reading out a message by I.A. Rehman, Navid Shahzad said: “Alys Faiz was a symbol of selfless service who always stood for the passionate defence of the underprivileged. It was a life given to enduring human sorrow. She was someone who lived by labour and within means.”

She further quoted Mr Rehman as saying the HRCP was founded two years after Faiz’s death and Alys became one of its early members. Despite her failing health, she remained part of fact-finding missions and worked tirelessly for the cause of the have-nots.

“Nature had worked out what Alys had been cut out for,” she read out and concluded by presenting a poem of John Donne as her eulogy.

The grandchildren of Faiz and Alys read out some of the letters the couple had written to each other from time to time. Later, a short documentary film commemorating the life of Alys Faiz was shown to the audience before a cake-cutting ceremony.

“Many people labour hard to leave indelible footprints on the sands of time, but only a few make their mark by simply being who they are. Alys Faiz was one of those people.” That’s how Mr I.A. Rehman once described the life partner of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Published in Dawn, September 21th, 2014