Witty Pakistanis use poetry to protest

“We walked together singing the song of freedom

A new dawn of freedom was about to break

One push was required to demolish the old edifice

But in fact we were straying apart and losing our dreams.”

His words soon reached the ears of millions of Pakistanis. In February, when restrictions on Ahsan’s freedom were finally eased, television crews besieged him in his study and, one after another, beseeched him to recite his verse for their eager viewers.

It was yet another demonstration of how seriously this land takes its poetry. Pakistan may be home to Islamic terrorists. It boasts a nuclear arsenal and an omnipotent military. But it is also a place where lyrical expression still holds great power to inform, inspire and even mobiliae the masses, as it has in recent months, to the Government’s dismay.

Over the last year, poetry has, in many ways, emerged again as the galvanising language of political protest in Pakistan.

At every demonstration, their rallying cry draws on a famous Urdu verse by legendary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

“We shall see Certainly we, too, shall see That day which was promised, Which was written in God’s ink

We shall see.”

“A lot of people told me that Faiz has come alive after the Emergency yet again. They tell me, ‘We’ve come back to Faiz when we’re at a loss for words,’” said the late poet’s daughter, Salima Hashmi, an eminent painter and dean of visual arts at Beaconhouse National University here in Lahore.