My friend Humna

ISLAMABAD: If you are trying to tell the story of a friendship, do you start when the two of you met? For Humna and myself, that was in the autumn of 1999, after we became friends while fighting over something in the first grade and the teacher made us sit together as a punishment.

Do you start at the beginning of your friend's life? Humna was born in January 1993, in Abbottabad. the younger sister to an only brother, the son of a father who had a promising career as an officer in the army, and a mother who was a devoted teacher. Her parents would, in 1998, resettle in Quetta, Balochistan, and begin a new chapter of their lives.

Do you start with your friend’s personality? Humna has always been exceedingly loyal, too generous for her own good, sometimes neurotic and melodramatic, and always, unfailingly, wickedly smart, frank, and funny. She is the kind of person who makes others feel funny too, as she laughs frequently and often.

Or do you start the story with the day everything changed? Which was in the early 2009, when her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when Humna was just sixteen years-old. The doctors told the family that her father had a maximum of about six months left to live.

But returning to our friendship: In school, Humna and I were both very competitive. We often got into fights about little things, and she constantly told me she would involve her bigger brother to settle things with me once and for all. Pretty much from the start, however, we were aware of how well we worked as a team. I suspect that if I look back at the things we fought over now, it would make me feel really embarrassed, but we both had our fun. One of the more grown-up things we did in primary school was compare who had more likable friends. (We both felt we were primary school socialites). Another fun activity was trying to get the other person to admit who they had a crush on.

Humna was a year younger than me, I had joined school a year later than most of my fellow students, and the day before I had to move out of Quetta (my father had been called for duty in the garrison town of Rawalpindi) she and I had one of the kindest, most innocent conversation of our lives. We talked about how much we adored one another and believed in each other. And although I would find this out as I grew up and our friendship blossomed, but I knew we had something special. There was something unique in what we shared, a miraculous kind of blind spot for each other wherein we each thought the other was the most hilarious and wonderful person ever. Humna, of course, has now become one of the top social media stars in Pakistan. But if most of you got to know the real Humna, the non-social media her, the awkward, bad-jeans wearing, blogging-but-years-away-from-publishing-a-book Humna, you would still think she is every bit, if not more, as wonderful and extraordinary as she appears in her video stories and pictures. A few years ago, I was at a writing class when the instructor told everyone to text their biggest fan. I hadn't talked to Humna in a while, but I knew it had to be her. When I expressed my feelings to a mutual friend, he laughed and said, "You should tell her that."

Since middle school, Humna and I have lived in different cities - she was in Lahore and Islamabad while I was in Karachi, Quetta, and even Gujranwala for a bit. But we kept in touch. I moved around a lot, and we did not get the chance to meet very often, although we still found time to tell each other about our lives. I only remember fragments of our friendship from this time, the silly gifts we exchanged, most of which were outlandish books, the time we reminisced about having tea or coffee at a roadside hotel named Quetta, or the time she told me she had just had a huge fight with a boyfriend and would never again find love in her life. Once, in the late 2000s, when I was in her city for a very brief but memorable trip with friends, Humna and I met on a rainy day and she lend me her umbrella so I could get back to where I was staying without getting too wet. "I want this to be as dramatic a moment when you write about it," she said with a wicked smile.

Over time, as we both found an audience who wanted to read what we were writing - I was freelancing for a now-defunct website and she was blogging on social media - we developed a habit of reading the early drafts the other was penning. It was Humna who gave me perhaps the greatest one-liner ever when I was down and out one day. "For adversity, Usman, brings us closer to our destiny." I remember thinking she must have been reading something really crazy to have come up with this line, she still hasn't told me where she found it. I also read some of her early material, giving her occasional tips. But really, it was mostly her guiding me instead of it being the other way round. Over the years, as we grew older and found our comfort zones, we grew apart. Once, when I emailed Humna an article I thought would inspire her to take up writing once again, she replied, "Usman, my father just got diagnosed with cancer."

A teenage Humna thus began taking care of her ailing father as he underwent treatment at a hospital. He lost a dangerous amount of weight after he was diagnosed and had to consume small meals while taking medicines as well. But he often felt too sick to eat. Remarkably, while caring for her father, Humna still pulled off getting immaculate grades in school. When I asked her if it was hard, she said I should come visit her so she could pour over the details to me in person. "It is the most difficult time of my life, I feel like crying all the time," she said.

Sometimes, Humna and I would text about the sickness of her father, but more often, we were trying to discuss things that would distract us from the complexities of our lives. When we got bored of talking about television shows, books, films, and even music, we started gossiping about mutual friends as well. Some of the friends we had known in Quetta and Rawalpindi were doing pretty well for themselves, and according to Facebook, at least one of them had even got married. Each gossip session would end with us discussing whether the lives of our friends would ever make for a modern retelling of Gone With The Wind or War and Peace, combining romance and the war, our favorite topics and a recipe for high drama.

In October 2009, four months after her father was diagnosed, he passed away. Humna was shattered. Reflecting on the time now, she says it is the moment in her life that has probably affected her the most. "And it continues to do so," she says. Ever since that day, every time I meet her, there is a sadness in her eyes that I cannot place. Perhaps every time a family member leaves us, they take something of us along with them. I can honestly say her father took with him a lot of the Humna I had known up until then.

In 2012, I moved back to Islamabad for my Bachelor in Space Science degree. But Humna moved to Lahore for Bachelor in Dental Surgery. We would meet every once in a while, and kept in touch. This was a period of great upheaval in her life. She had finally started to realise that her social media posts, that began to gain lots of traction (she and I both had friends in many different cities, and the reactions we would get for our rants on social media were often a good indicator of public opinion in our social class), could perhaps be put to better use. So she started blogging full-time.

In 2016, as we graduated from our universities, I went to Lahore for a little bit as Humna moved back to Islamabad. We both decided we would not let our academic training stand in the way of our dreams of being amazing writers. Humna continued blogging, gradually gaining audiences, and I joined a marketing agency as a lowly copy-writer, earnest to the bone. When Humna sent me some of her work, I would have my editors go through it. I would sometimes even text her as I read through it, heaping excessive praise on her first draft to tick her off (Humna is a perfectionist and would hate that).

Oh, and in 2014, a distant relative of Humna proposed to her. She had no idea it was coming. Muzamil Hasan Zaidi took her completely by surprise. She said yes, of course, Muzamil was the most wonderful man on the planet, he got along well with her brother and her mother, and had also been a friend of hers for quite a long time. They were engaged in 2014 and got married a few months later. I sent her the most dramatic message I could think of, saying I would definitely cry at her wedding. She was overjoyed.

In the days to follow, when she sent me stuff for reading, I would say that getting engaged had changed her already. "You write with such freedom, joy and love of life, this is the most positive thing I have read all year." I also asked her to dedicate her first novel to me as a thank you to my creative input, whenever she wrote it. I can promise you she loved cheesy lines.

After we graduated, and Humna started writing more, she got more emotional about her mother and her little sister (Cerene was born 2003). Humna's mother had been a teacher all her life, she had even taught me for a bit (if you are reading this Ma'am, I would like to thank you for urging me to take up writing as a career, yes I remember!). Over time, her mother gave up teaching, and invested in a school instead. While raising two daughters and a son, she also completed a post-graduate degree. She is now also the proud owner of a cross-country chain of day-care centres. "How do you imagine a world without a mother, Usman?" Humna once asked me when her mother  was sick but still  going to the school, running daily chores, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the family. 

It was her little sister, though, that Humna was particularly protective about. Cerene had been six when her father passed, and Humna has spent most of her life caring for her baby sister. "After the death of my father, I helped my mom take care of Cerene. She was the one who kept the family motivated and busy, she was a mood-lifter," Humna said. 

In 2017, I left Lahore to work at a national news outlet in Karachi, just as Humna's blogging career really took off. She gained hundreds of thousands of followers on her social media, and she even started a YouTube channel. I would spend many early mornings (I used to work for the print newspaper and would get home really late) going through the stuff she put up on the internet along with Muzamil. I would text her or call her every so often, but the job soon started taking a toll on me, and there was even a long period when we lost all contact.

When we finally reconnected, I had moved to the digital side of news, and had a much better routine. I quizzed her about her stardom, and whether it had inspired her to write a novel for her biggest fan. She laughed and said she would definitely give it some thought. "I want to create change, Usman, and talk about positive thinking. And how people can, in their own capacities, create positive change," she would tell me one day. I was really happy for her.

In time, as her earnings from different digital platforms grew, she also started investing (Humna has always been smarter than me, although she thinks it is the other way round). She has her own business now, called Inspire Me. It’s an e-commerce business of planners and journals that are focused on self reflection, self awareness, positive thinking and productivity. When I tell her I am jealous of her picture-perfect life, she teases me a lot about it.

In the summer of 2019, I changed jobs. I was still writing, but for a different news outlet. Humna, meanwhile, was doing something more important.

Earlier this year, she was invited to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan as he discussed the role that social media influencers could play to bring about positive change in the society. The meeting highlighted the importance that social media had come to command in our lives. When I asked her how it went, she said it was amazing. "I felt so honoured to be in his presence, Usman, and to be recognised for my part in disseminating information to the people of my country. He is much more inspiring to meet in real life," she added in a formal tone, as if she was expected to be respectful about the premier. I had been hoping for more scandalous details.

As a writer, I know how disrespectful it is to end an essay without a happy or a sad note. However, fulfilling expectations is not something I have always been very good at. For her part, Humna is continuing to do her part to make the world a better place. She is healthy, happy and our story is not yet finished.

A few weeks ago, I asked Humna if she wanted me to write an essay about our friendship. “I’d love it,” she said. In the weeks since, I have been really busy with work, a pandemic has spread across the world, but she has continued to tease me about it. “I want it to be a tearjerker," she texted once.

So here you go, Humna, my partner-in-crime, recently my inspiration, still my biggest fan, and always and forever a beloved friend. Text me when you have had a chance to read this and tell me what you think.