They say that all who go to Multan from other places are sad to go there and, when they are to leave, again they are sad. To me neither of these things happened, perhaps because one of my ancestors, Sheikh Umar [a lawyer around 1900] was a resident of Multan; may be because I had first visited Multan as a teenager and [like most things at that age] found it a land of adventure. Since numerous relatives had served in the Saraiki region, it held a romantic and benevolent charm which was augmented by myself image of self sacrifice and stoicism. I therefore started for my interview to the Multan University, as it was then called, with a mystical anticipation of the mystique of Multan. Although there is a strong temptation to recount the stages through which I passed and how Multan came up to all my expectations and how it finally let me go without a sense of deprivation, I think it will not be just to my present purpose if I were to allow myself to ramble.
This present reminiscence is essentially a repayment of debts; debts to those who made it possible for me to contribute to the Saraiki Research Centre. Saraikis are strange a people, they will not speak their own language unless they know that they are talking to a Saraiki speaker. My appeals to several champions of Saraiki culture fell on deaf ears; ‘no mature person can learn Saraiki’ said my friends, ‘do not spoil our language’ said my detractors. But it is so easy to blackmail Saraikis once they have made the mistake of befriending us, and Ashfaq Bokhari was the easiest of them all. I threatened not to talk to him unless he spoke to me in Saraik – and I was in – he was my teacher at the primary level, so I passed the ‘do’ test. Egged on by the criticism of my chairman, Dr. Durrani, a Pathan who knew no Pashto, a treasure-house of Saraiki idioms and gems of culture, I began to pass as a Saraiki speaker who had been educated or brought up in Lahore and Islamabad.
Custodians of traditional oriental learning such as Allama Atiq Fiqri and Mr Aasi Karnali fascinated me and the ‘make do’ attitude of a literary circle content to hold its sessions on wooden benches taught me to understand the ‘sufiana mizaj’ of the city. In a sense it was like being transposed into a semi-modern version of the Multan of the Sultanate period of which I was a student. Connection with the family of Taunsvi ulema through Muhammad Farooq made the actualization of my dream possible. I wanted to be considered a native speaker of pure Saraiki; and you can not get more pure than Taunsa or Dera. Farooq was as keen a teacher as I was hungry as a student. In due course of time he began to test me with his friends who knew me not; and they would take me to be a native Saraiki speaker.
While Ashfaq and Farooq gave me the gift of Saraiki language, grounded me in its urban and rural culture and sensitized me to social nuances, another group of friends taught me the Saraiki method of loving knowledge. I think the first was Sarfaraz Ansari, not then a Ph. D. who brought back from foreign travels not a car or gadgets but a choice collection of a few thousand books. These he had to stack on planks interspaced with bricks to make a bookshelf; why not buy a few more books for the price of a crafted shelf. A man of two wives, his sole ambition seemed to be to earn two thousand a month for necessities so as to be free to study his books. Petty bureaucratic red tape would not allow him a full time job at the university even though he was the most complete social scientist on campus. It was with a heavy heart that we allowed the NIPS, Q A. University to steal a treasure from us because we were helpless. The slim man, with an intellect as sharp as his voice was thin, had to abandon Multan for the dearth of a pittance; but perhaps it is a national gain.
The second was Mirza Ibn Haneef, working at the Imroz newspaper, whose passion for mythology and archeology made him forgo many days salary to extricate quantities of material from the slush and mud of bores being made for sinking pillars in the fort region. Whose back problem could not keep him home when I was to go to Harappa; who could reserve books at the book store while he arranged finances but would not accept a gift of the same from an admirer. Who could put a President or P. M. in his place and tolerate abuse at the hand of a scholar. Sophisticated and delicate, proud and forthright, upright as a plumb-line if as thin; most people found Mirza Sahib intimidating. I cannot imagine him raising his voice for I never heard him do so even to talk to Soomro sahib who was hard of hearing; yet none dared raise their voice to him. He was not proud of his integrity but his haughtiness derived its strength from respect earned by honesty. I was privileged to enjoy the status of younger brother and had the right to impose on him under duress while he made mock complaints that I was a jabir sultan.
Then there was Soomro Sahib, the champion of Multan, who found it offensive if anyone suggested that his clan had Mesopotamian or Arab roots. Emotional, boisterous, given to swearing and the use of the lewd idiom, self taught and extremely well read; Mr. Mumtaz Soomro enjoyed a solitary life despite two wives and several children. A tastefully built house in a locality that had once been posh was falling to ruin like the grand man with a grand library who lived in it. Mr. Soomro may have had fewer books than Mr. Ansari but his affection for them had occasionally led him to house them in bookcases. Mr. Soomro liked the beautiful and graceful as much as he enjoyed the earthy, loud and common. His range of friends was varied but few could stand the intensity of his personality for long. Those who became addicted to him or who fitted in one of several moulds within which Mumtaz Soomro could cast himself, were slaved for life and came to do his bidding.
He fancied the royal style of calling for his servants by clapping his hands and preferred that his companions shout to be heard. Perhaps Mirza Sahib would have liked to visit him more often but shied from the need to shout; until by a happy chance he decided to allow me to take him there for a visit. My neighbour Mr. Durr Muhammad had often mentioned Soomro Sahib as a great student of history and had promised to take me to him sometime. On his part, having read one of my articles, perhaps the one that this piece is replacing in the present volume, he had been asking around for anyone who might know me. My own limited ability has always encouraged me to maintain a low profile and so he did not find anyone for several months who would own up to knowing me. Mirza Sahib exhibited rare boldness in asking me to take him for a visit to Soomro Sahib, this was a great honour. I do not think he would take such a liberty with any person who was not considered family and that too a family member who was very dear. In any case the opportunity was a God send; it served all three of us well for the rest of the lives of both my benefactors.
Mirza Sahib was now free to speak into his handkerchief while talking to Soomro Sahib; I would shout his statement for him and any passer by on the road to hear. Soomro sahib in turn could make a lewd remark; elicit an interjection on my own part to tickle his sense of humour while interpreting the response. I borrowed several books from Soomro Sahib as his library contained such treasures that were not found in the libraries I knew. I was yet to learn that there were several private collections open to the public through the kind offices of Mirza sahib and Soomro Sahib in & around Multan where sources not available in Lahore and Islamabad could be accessed. The Jandheers for example were good hosts in addition to being patrons of scholars and custodians of books and a wealthy library.
The list of my numerous benefactors, so to speak my extended family or Saraiki clan may take too much space. Anwaar, Raoof, Karamat, Zubair, Abdul Rashid Khan, Fayyaz Ahmed Hussain, Mehmood Bodla, Dr. Zafarullah and Prof. Dr. Ashiq Muhammad Khan Durrani, [he would never tolerate a less formal address]; all had their own critical role to play in the Saraikification of Khurram who would not mind if posterity remembered him as Sheikh-i-Multani. But my greatest debt is these four: Ashfaq, Farooq, Soomro Sahib & Mirza Sahib and it is this debt that I wish to dwell upon in the remainder of this epistle.
Ashfaq and Mirza Sahib shared similar physique and health; commonalities between the other two are less striking but all four made the mistake of befriending me. What is worth noting however that I include Mirza Ibn-Haneef, an Urdu speaking emigrant born in East Punjab, who could hardly speak a word of Saraiki, among those who made me a Saraiki! There is actually no mystery here: I know of no resident of Multan who loved the city or its people more. Some of my non-Saraiki friends were quite critical of my Saraikification but with the shining example of Mirza Sahib to look up to and the unmitigated admiration that he commanded in local circles, I never felt apologetic about my affection for the land where I had no identity except my own but roots going back to a century. I now turn to a portrait of these four in the sequence I came to know them so that I will come to the end of my description with Soomro Sahib whose library is now part of the Saraiki Centre.
I should have known Ashfaq Bokhari from Islamabad, perhaps we met there but neither of us remembered the meeting. When I joined the Multan University on 16 January 1979, I got refuge in a bachelors’ den called 248-B thanks to Qaisar Mushtaq. Within a week I was to have my first encounter with teachers’ politics. A group of fifteen of them stormed in to the den one evening, raving about a strike against the establishment and threatening an encounter with the student’s union. I was unable to understand how this could be done in our capacity as teachers but was too new to raise any objection. The rising tempo did not seem likely to abate when a bespectacled thin person joined us and was given one of the better seats on offer. I assumed that this was due to his sickly health because he had a cough but was to find out that this was in deference to his status as president of the ASA. He listened for a while then spoke in a soft voice and I was amazed to see that they were all attentive – how he did it I don’t know but Ashfaq was amazingly persuasive.
How this and several other storms of the mercurial ASA were handled could take many a page and ten years of history would depict Ashfaq as the hero; but this is about Ashfaq, not the ASA. For some reason he and I immediately became friends; for my part it is easy to understand because he infused a sense of security in me, for his part? Allah knows best. Whatever the reason, this leader of a group of some twenty five young lecturers, who was a resident of the old city [just outside the walls] allowed me to be always in his company. Where he and Asghar Ali got their amazing sense of justice and integrity is a mystery in itself. Not because of any other reason as because of the quality of it and the manner they expressed it in. Ashfaq was always low key and Asghar always pronouncing his verdict in unequivocal terms. Somehow Ashfaq had the ability to make a mouse feel empowered and a megalomaniac feel insecure; only after the event did those who sought to intimidate him realize that he had not let them set aside an issue until he had negotiated them to an area of his choice. Perhaps this was a trick he had learnt from Dr. Ejaz Malik, our mentor whom we all tried to imitate in our own ways and idealized in all his mannerisms. When Ashfaq returned from Canada, after his Ph D, I finally began my Saraiki education in real earnest, because he was only a few houses away, now that both of us lived on campus.
For a little over a year we did our politics together and our families supported each other in social life as much as in chores. Then I had to go to England for a year and left Ashfaq at the mercy of a polity that could not give him the support he needed in the ASA. Thus I lost the opportunity of continuing my education in Saraiki for some time; Ashfaq found it impossible to continue at the university because of political pressure and, at considerable economic loss, resigned. When I got back, all that was left for me was academics, a small band of friends and a hostile political community. Ashfaq left the university, the town as well as the country; even though I have enjoyed his friendship through three decades, our time of constant companionship came to an abrupt and unfortunate end. He continued to contribute to my Saraikification but these were occasional donations not constant support. Nature, however, has its own way of compensation; Ashfaq got more recognition, money, and influence by leaving Multan and I got a teacher with a more powerful vocabulary.
Muhammad Farooq was an extraordinary Saraiki from an unusual group of Saraikis like Mazhar Arif, Shamim Arif, Akram Mirani, Farid Khan and others. They spoke in Saraiki constantly and did not mind if others [many of the urban Saraikis of Multan fell into this category] had to ask for the meaning of what they said. I suspect that in the beginning he, Farooq I mean, used difficult words in my presence expecting that I would loose interest. If he did he could not have been more wrong; I am nothing if not persistent and I enjoy a challenge. I would guzzle up his words and try and use them on every opportunity so as to confirm their usage. It soon became a kind of game, Farooq would use as many of the unusual Saraiki words a statement could hold, explain them to me and wait for me to put them to use in my own thoughts. He would also discuss the various accents and cultural nuances in different areas; and then he paraded my Saraiki before his brothers, I passed!
Farooq and I had a lot of time together, being faculty in the same department – Pakistan Studies and History had not been bifurcated yet. We not only shared the department but also the binding force of Rashid Khan and the common interest in trying to learn to play tennis. We both had another axe each to grind as well. I wanted Farooq to subscribe to an academic agenda that I had spent several years developing and Farooq wanted to absorb as much knowledge of English as I and my wife could offer. With many vested interests tying us to each other, my dearth of social acceptability and our mutual lack of political clout, Farooq and I often spent up to a quarter of our normal working day together. Then Farooq married the daughter of a dear friend and moved to the campus. Although I have known Farooq well for a quarter of a century or so, it is strange that I cannot feel sure of having assessed his character as I am certain of Ashfaq. I always feel that I am hovering between the position of one whose credentials are being assessed for sincerity and that of a dear and trusted friend – one to be relied upon but not too much.
Although I had known Mirza Sahib from about my second year at the Multan University, now called the Baha-ud-din Zakariya University for several years, he had not known me or of me at that time. As a young lecturer who would not put himself forward when older and senior ranking people were conversing, I had sat by and listened to him several times before he became aware of me. As in many other cases, I believe I had Anwar to blame for exposing me to Mirza Sahib. In this sense, though Anwar and Ashiq Durrani did not contribute to my Saraikification directly, they had a very strong indirect influence. Mirza Sahib’s interest in archeology triggered it off, our relationship I mean, and soon led to the formation of what must be termed a mutual admiration society. Anwar lived next door to Mirza Sahib and took it upon himself to inform Mirza Sahib of my academic interests.
Our annual trip to Harappa soon became a ritual despite Mirza Sahib’s back problem and his annual bout of jaundice; he was not willing to forgo the ritual. Farooq had developed an interest in archaeology and so we would all get into my car and visit the Americans at the dig. It was during these trips that I realized that the Saraiki area was not merely that in which Saraiki was spoken but also that in which a cultural history was bound together. Perhaps it should be said to include Shorkot and Jhang, but not Sahiwal, Pakpattan and Depalpur. This seems to match the history of Alexander’s march and Ghazi Malik’s war against Khusrau [1500 years apart] as much as the Indus civilization and its remains. The trips to Sadnai and Shorkot, the crossing at Trimu and Garh Maharaja, Saddan Shaheed, Wahova and Sultan Ali Akbar, all contributed to increasing my bond with the Thal and its environs. On the other hand Dravar and Hiran Minar, the promise of a visit to Yasman Mandi tied me to the romance of Cholistan. It only needed Kaleem Lashari to give me his book on the necropolis at Makli and talk of a series of forts in Cholistan to complete the picture of Sindh and Multan in the same package as attested by Sultanate historians. Add to these our trips to Uch and Sitpur and you can imagine almost all the fascination of the Saraiki romance; we were, all three of us, both teacher and pupil to each other.
This was a land to be studied through history, archaeology, anthropology and sociology. A land that represented a language and a culture which has absorbed ethnicities from time immemorial; ethnicities coming from all directions at times converging and sometimes diverging. Providing now a watershed, now a melting pot and now a clear passage where conquerors and traders came and went; sometimes triumphant and at others defeated. As I was now armed with the language as well as exposure to geography, history and culture, I was ready for the final grooming. The passion for seeing the world from Saraiki eyes was still missing; this is where Soomro Sahib came in. Hisگھن وچ مىكو من انwas contagious but I could not sympathize with his desire to claim all Hinduism to be of Pakistani origin.
I believe I knew Mumtaz Soomro for a decade or so before his death. For three years or so I discovered a new facet of Soomro Sahib and a new cache of his books library almost every week. A common bond between Mirza Sahib, Soomro Sahib and I was that we did not believe in taking things at face value; we were also highly conscious of the otherness of our closest companions. Soomro Sahib was always testing everybody to assess motive and intent and I was constantly putting his scholarship to the test. He claimed to be self taught and was able to read and write in Urdu, English and Persian apart from Saraiki. He knew everyone who had addressed any subject that he was interested in, corresponding in all languages, but mainly with Sindhis and Indians; with whom he felt a greater affinity than the Iranians. I would needle him about this and he would challenge my inclination to romanticize Muslim history; he had the advantage over me in referencing and memory. His books were extensively marked and annotated by him and he remembered all that he had noted so that in our discussions he would continuously interrupt me and go in to get a few books for reference; and I began to dream of getting his library into the university.
When the move to set up an institute to study Multan and its environs, the Saraiki belt or Southern Punjab [these being the optional titles] during the VC-ship of Durrani Sahib, it was no longer possible to ignore my commitment to the project. Karamat, halfheartedly I think, and Dr. Mustafa tentatively, included me in the planning but I was also tempted to seek my fortune in Islamabad at this time. A year of absence in Islamabad deprived me of many things; my greatest regret is the time that I lost with Mirza Sahib and Soomro Sahib. This was a foretaste of what was to come later, the termination of my stay in Multan.
As a Saraiki Diaspora I now know many others like myself who continue to love Multan but are not willing to live there. Some, content to live a retired life [like I had hoped] but others in search of a higher profile than they could expect to enjoy in the relaxed and easy going life of Multan, as I have come to do. Perhaps it was an unfortunate choice, perhaps not! It is difficult to say even now; but Islamabad was not ready for me then. I returned to Multan not unhappy but resigned to a brief stay of a year or so which actually stretched to four. I was welcomed home and in some ways spent my happiest time in Multan and my most productive period as a senior faculty member. A group of young social scientists led by my students Shafiq, Salyana and Sajid put me in a place of honour, so I held court and they made me feel like Ustad Fida must have felt. Seeking guidance, asking questions or presenting their ideas for inspection, these youngsters made me feel that I could not make better use of my life than acting thee part of a guru for them.
In the time that I had been away, the Saraiki research centre had come into being. When I came back to the BZU, I was invited to spearhead the research work there and I chose to perform the duties of its secretary. I was very conscious of my limitations as an imitation Saraiki and prone to shirk responsibility as far as possible but I did have many schemes of promoting Saraiki research. Dr. Durrani was used to call me a great ‘schemer’ without realizing the negative connotation of the statement. Anwar and Dr. Mustafa were keen to support me in every way and the office space made available was well suited for Zulfiqar Bhatti to arrange its decoration as a folklorist. Mirza Sahib was already convinced that he should leave his collection of artifacts to the centre but Soomro Sahib needed convincing. It was not that he loved Saraiki less but that he was a natural skeptic and had doubts of the preservation and management of his books; he also wanted recognition. I never knew what actually Soomro Sahib had done throughout his life except that he seemed to have a lot of wealth tied up in inaccessible assets. He would ruminate about building a library for public use or developing a museum along with some other friends. Nothing seemed to materialize; meanwhile I kept suggesting that he contribute his books to the BZU. In the end I won and he was kind enough to ask his son to bequeath the books to the SRC.
In 2004, I completed my twenty five years of qualifying service to Baha-ud-din Zakariya University Multan and headed for Islamabad to join my family; that is where I came from. I had planned to live a retired life and do some research, be with my mother and daughter and live in the Multan that I carry within myself even now – and for two years it was so. But Allah has different ways of making us change our plans – this He did in 2006, when my daughter was getting married I was getting a new job.
I not feel sad at going to Multan because something in the Saraiki land beckoned me like I was going home. I did not feel sad about coming from Multan because I carry it within me and feel like a Multani who lives in Islamabad. Most Saraikis who meet me treat me as such; and of course my homecoming in Multan, whenever I visit, is proof enough that I am a Saraiki from Multan. I am using all the expertise, techniques and methods that we perfected for the SRC towards organizing research on History and Culture at the national level in my present job and hope that this will serve as a template for all local histories.