My grandfather, Mr Justice (r) Muhammad Afzal Cheema, died peacefully in his sleep this last Monday morning. His funeral was attended by thousands, including many public figures that ordinarily would not be seen within a mile of each other let alone being together under one roof.
In his death, just as in his life, he was able to bring people together and touch lives in ways that very few do.
Justice Cheema was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life. He died having achieved eminence in the fields of law, politics, diplomacy and the world of letters. He lived as an exemplar of the constant faith in God that defined his character.
He was many things to many people, but to his children, grand children and their many friends he was simply ‘abbajan’ — the gentle, loving soul whose limitless affection, constant encouragement and unwavering insistence on faith in God shaped their personalities.
My earliest memory of him is running into his drawing room wearing only shorts and clinging on to a toy that was just as eagerly desired by an older (and physically stronger) cousin. He was playing host to a few Middle Eastern dignitaries whose names I have long forgotten.
Instead of being embarrassed or rebuking me harshly he gently sat me in his lap and introduced me to his guests and made me shake hands with them. Embarrassed, I ran out again much to my older cousin’s delight.
Many years later, while visiting Pakistan on leave from my university in England, I remember challenging him, with that insufferable arrogance of youth, to a discussion on law. His responses were often generous, never dismissing my half-baked ideas.
To my question about the apparent harshness of Islamic law on maintenance for a divorced woman by her former husband, his response was a gift of a book on the subject. He told me to defer my question till I had read the first chapter of the book. Having read the chapter my question seemed quite pointless. How refreshing.
While I grew up taking his many achievements and success for granted, the reality was very different. With age I learnt to appreciate that his exceptional humility came from having achieved success after a hard battle.
Orphaned at a very young age and coming from a rural Punjabi background, where formal education was non-existent, he struggled tirelessly to educate himself.
Despite immeasurable odds he managed to graduate from Islamia College, Lahore, in 1932; received an MA in English literature from the Punjab University in 1934 and then LLB from the same university in 1947. His thirst for knowledge and love of education was exceptional.
Sometime in the early 1960s, he allowed his eldest daughter to accept a scholarship and proceed to the United States for an MA. His decision was received with an unsurprising sense of shock by his extended family that didn’t have many well-educated men let alone western educated women. Years later he would relate to me the fear of being ostracised at his decision to allow his daughter to study abroad.
To all his grandchildren he loved narrating the story of how he was declared unsuitable and over-qualified for the position of a schoolmaster he had applied for because the selecting inspector of schools and the competing candidate, both, were Hindus.
In times to come he would rise to be the President of Pakistan, albeit, only for a few days, serve as a judge of the Supreme Court and act as the principal drafter of the 1973 Constitution and be the only man in the country to have reached pinnacles in all the three organs of state. The message to his many grandchildren was simple: place your faith in God and apparent defeats may turn into successes.
For a few months before his death he had lost the strength to live a very active life. His body had struggled to keep pace with the tireless energy of his mind. He had also felt lonely after death of many close friends especially Justices Sardar Iqbal, Salahuddin and Qazi Gul and politician Malik Meraj Khalid. With little strength to move around he took up poetry as a way to occupy himself, writing humorous poems about his life experiences.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his life, particularly his long illness, was a total absence of depression and a constant contentment born of a deep sense of faith in God’s infinite benevolence. His constant reminder to himself was something he loved repeating to others as well: every living moment spent in God’s gratitude is not enough to account for His infinite blessings. He lived with a strong realisation of the brevity of life and the pressing need to make each breath count. He died without having any regrets and a firm belief that he would relive his life exactly the way he lived it even if he were gifted with another one.
His loss is not just personal. He was perhaps the last of the great men from his generation. His death marks the end of many institutions. He completed his journey in this world at a time when the very values he lived by were, and regrettably continue to be, in decline. His generosity and a sense of empathy for others, his love for knowledge and a disdain for accumulation of wealth, his constant search for people whom he could help and his insistence on intellectual (and otherwise) honesty were often at odds with the overly materialistic lifestyles of post-modern society. How I wish we could preserve some of those values.
