Meeting Ahfaz Sahab

By Fatima Azhar

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3rd December 2019 was a day I came back home and went off into a story time to my parents more intense and animated than I had ever done. Why? I had met Ahfaz-ur-Rehman that day and he wasn’t someone whose stories you could take home without a touch of glee and excitement. Perhaps that was the reason the first book I bought at the book fair which happened some two weeks later was written by him, “The Freedom of the Press” and this was the book which became my priority read the following winter break.

When I heard of his passing yesterday, the meeting rushed back to memory. I had hoped that I would be able to meet him again someday. But I guess that was not to be. But I am glad I got to meet him even once, for he changed the way I looked at things and opened my eyes to what I had never considered.

Before we met Ahfaz-ur-Rehman, we had read about him and the words used to describe him were usually brave and vocal, never afraid of voicing his opinions and a fighter of press freedom but the man we met was more. He chose to meet us because he wanted to impart knowledge to us. He wanted to be able to teach us what real journalism is. He chose to meet us because we were students and he wanted to share what he knew and believed in with us.

He greeted us at the door of his house in the Journalist Society in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and we entered into his well decorated drawing room. He apologized in advance for his voice modulator which he had to use after having had his larynx removed due to cancer and told us we will have to pay a little extra attention to what he says. He then pointed to the biscuits, chips and juice set in a tray telling us his wife had gotten them for us and that we should eat.

Ahfaz-ur-Rehman was a story teller and a poet. He told us of his time in journalism, he shared with us what he felt about current news anchors getting very upset in the process, “Whenever something happens they say I knew this will happen. I knew it. I told everyone this will happen. They are not God? Why do they say this? There is no I in journalism. Journalism isn’t based on opinion.”

He was also a fighter, bravery and this thirst to find out the truth ingrained in him. Even in his student life he was always willing to stand for the rights of the society. He believed in fighting for what he believed in, going as far as to say that if a man doesn’t want to fight, he is not a man.

Ahfaz-ur-Rehman had a facebook page, where his most recent poetry was regularly shared, though he had no idea who it was run by “Either a friend or my wife must’ve made my Facebook page.” Speaking fondly of his wife he mentioned, “Me and my wife worked together in the same publication. She is now the Resident Director Karachi of Aurat Foundation” with a proud smile on his face.

When asked about the one memory he cherishes he started laughing; after laughing for a while he told us about the time he had come to Pakistan at the age of five or six and was living in a refugee camp with his family. His teacher from the camp’s school picked him up to embrace him after Eid prayers and checked his pocket just for fun, finding a photo of Madhubala and a love letter written at the back.

In the two short hours we spent with him, Ahfaz-ur-Rehman told us the story of his life, he spoke of a different time in the world, in Pakistan and in journalism. He told us about how unhappy he was with the way the news and media industry was running shows and what journalism has become. He talked about everything under the sun, from the degradation of society to our responsibility as students.

Even though it was painful for him to speak so much, he still did, each sentence spoken through his voice modulator was punctuated by a sip of water, each paragraph with coughs. But he didn't stop.

He iterated the importance of reading books, over and over again, advising us to never stop learning. And he mentioned is book, Freedom of the Press, countless times, telling us to read it.

Well Ahfaz Sahab, I did. And would like to thank you for it.

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Fatima Azhar