Remembering Faiz and His Dreams
By A.H. Cemendtaur

Practical implication of an ideology can fail, but an ideology can never be proved wrong. Throughout his life Faiz Ahmed Faiz dreamt of a workers’ revolution in Pakistan. Faiz died in 1984, seven years before the communist party was officially banned in the Soviet Union. How heart-broken Faiz would have been had he had lived to see the eventual dissolution of the USSR?

This year being the centenary of Faiz’s birthday, commemorative events are being arranged all over the world, to remember the great poet, his dreams, and his political views. These programs also provide an excellent opportunity for the old time progressives to get together, reminisce about their past struggles, and analyze the present world in terms of Marxist paradigm.

On Saturday, April 16, Friends of South Asia (www.friendsofsouthasia.org) celebrated Faiz’s centennial by hosting a short play and a talk by Abid Hassan Minto.

A staged-reading of the play “Dear Heart”, written by Munib Anwar and Sam Lathem, and featuring Kashif Maqsood (as Faiz), Jessica Risco (as Alys) and Abbas Zaidi and Hemukumar Joshi as the two prison guards, put into context Faiz’s prison days and his frame of mind regarding an egalitarian society he wished to see. The play was directed by Saqib Mausoof and produced by Ijaz Syed.

The staged-reading was followed by a talk given by Abid Hassan Minto, a prominent lawyer and the president of Workers Party of Pakistan. Over thirty people listened to Abid Hassan Minto describe his association with Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Minto’s views on Pakistan’s current political situation.

 

 

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