Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Pablo Neruda, great contemporary poets, were intimate friends, a fact little known in Chile and Pakistan. Chile and Pakistan are geographically far apart, but share remarkable socio-political similarities in their post-independence periods. Both countries produced charismatic leaders like Salvador Allende and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Tragically, they met the same fate, deposed and eliminated by military dictators at the behest of their imperialist masters.

Pablo Neruda supported Allende and served under his government, as did Faiz Ahmad Faiz under Bhutto. Pablo did not survive long after the 1973 US-backed military coup by Augusto Pinochet, which attacked the presidential palace and killed Allende. General Ziaul Haq arrested Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on 5 July 1977, and after a kangaroo trial, he was hanged on 4 April 1979.

Faiz was exiled and spent many years in agony before he could return home in 1982. He died in Lahore on 20 November 1984. Faiz is called the Pablo Neruda of Pakistan—a great compliment for him as well as the Chilean poet. Neruda was honoured with the Nobel Prize, and both won the Lenin Peace Prize in recognition of their efforts in literature and world peace.

Both Neruda and Faiz were actively involved in freedom movements, which in their times were essentially anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. Their poetry, musical, lyrical, and inspiring stems from the........

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