This story should have been written long ago. Much earlier. But, as always, life intervened. Now, here I am, at the age of 75, with a breast cancer diagnosis in hand, wondering whether time will grant me the luxury to finally tell my story. As Munir Niazi once wrote, “Hamesha dair kar deta hoon main [I am always too late].” I suppose that verse was written with people like me in mind.

When I say life got in the way, I mean it in every sense: my temperament, the weight of world affairs, years of activism and, now, the relentless demands of grandmotherhood. I often imagine my late husband, Ahfaz [journalist Ahfaz-ur-Rahman], smiling down from the heavens, amused: “So now you’re doing for the grandchildren all that you never managed to do for me or our kids.” And yet, knowing the perfectionist he was, I can just as easily imagine his disapproving frown: “You should be asserting yourself. Why are you putting up with their tantrums? You’re 75 for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you?”

Ahfaz was never pleased with my domestic efforts. My children, thankfully, are more generous. They tell me I may not have been the most structured or hands-on mother, but that my love was unwavering, that I cared for them in the best way I knew how. What I was lax in providing, they say, was tarbiyat, that essential Urdu term for life training and everyday discipline.

And they’re not wrong. What else could you expect from someone like me? I was raised under the wing of an overprotective, sheltering mother. Well into my university years, I still relied on her to buy my clothes. Me, the so-called independent leftist and feminist, was hopelessly ill-equipped for life’s practicalities.

The recently published memoirs by Mahnaz Rahman detail her life as a journalist, leftist activist and rights advocate, presenting an unvarnished account of its challenges, triumphs and setbacks, especially during Gen Ziaul Haq’s 11-year-long dictatorship. This was a time when Pakistan’s journalists faced censorship, arrests and brutal state reprisals. It is a story of youthful idealism, resistance and quiet determination. Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from Love, Life and the Left, published by Jumhoori Publications…

The recently published memoirs by Mahnaz Rahman detail her life as a journalist, leftist activist and rights advocate, presenting an unvarnished account of its challenges, triumphs and setbacks, especially during Gen Ziaul Haq’s 11-year-long dictatorship. This was a time when Pakistan’s journalists faced censorship, arrests and brutal state reprisals. It is a story of youthful idealism, resistance and quiet determination. Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from Love, Life and the Left, published by Jumhoori Publications…

A walking paradox, I could live alone in a university hostel in Karachi in the sixties, embrace socialism and communism in my youth, defy my parents and marry for love… and yet, I couldn’t cook a decent meal or manage a household without chaos. As my mother often said, I was sifar bata sifar (zero upon zero) in practical life.

That same impracticality, of course, followed me into marriage. Despite being a revolutionary and a man of rare integrity, Ahfaz had certain traditional expectations of me at home; expectations I simply could not meet. I remember telling him once, quite sincerely, “Apart from your temper and your traditional expectations from me, you are like a saint.” But true to his sensitive nature, he didn’t take it as a compliment. He sulked. He grumbled. He took offence. And there I was thinking I was praising him. Such was our chemistry: spiced with friction, layered with love.

Today, ironically, I perform acts of service for my grandchildren with a kind of reverence that I never afforded my husband or even my children. They’ve succeeded in enlisting me into their army, one where I march to their tunes, attend to their smallest whims, and revolve my world around their joy and comfort. It is for them too, partly, that I have delayed writing this memoir for so long. Only now, when cancer has knocked on the door, have I finally sat down to write. Better late than never, they say. I hope that sentiment holds true for both of us, dear reader.

Let me be clear: this is not an act of self-congratulation. If I were a writer of books for the sake of books, I could have published volumes drawn from the thousands of columns and articles I’ve written. But this is something else. This is an attempt, perhaps my only real attempt, to make peace with the whirlwind of a life I’ve lived. A life of relentless movement, sporadic reflection, and very little calm contemplation. This book is my bid to reflect, not in guilt, but in peace. I won’t sugarcoat anything. You will find, in these pages, my story warts and all.

This memoir is also, in part, for the young activists and leftists of today. I hope you’ll learn from our generation’s missteps, but also from our moments of grace, our acts of resistance, our quiet strength. Yes, I have inverted the cliché. In these dark times, you deserve to hear not only what we did wrong but also what we did right. And if ever you feel disillusioned, remember what our beloved Rosa Luxemburg once said: “You lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.”

BEFORE ZIA, THERE WAS BHUTTO

It’s easy to forget now, drowned in the inky shadow cast by Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship [1977-1988], that the seeds of oppression, and thus resistance, were sown earlier, under the regime of none other than Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Though Bhutto inspired a generation with his populist slogans, his government did not shy away from cracking down on a free press. In the foreword to Ahfaz’s Freedom of the Press: The War on Words (1977–1978), [journalist] Wahab Siddiqui recalls how the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), buoyed by the clear promises of the [Pakistan] Peoples Party [PPP] upon its rise to power on December 20, 1971, held high hopes, only to see them quickly shattered.

Within just two months, the government banned three publications: the Lahore-based fortnightlies Punjab Punch and Zindah, and the monthly Urdu Digest, all under martial law orders. Their editors were........

© Dawn (Magazines)