aeeda Gazdar’s family hailed from Allahabad. She moved to Pakistan after independence and married the prominent filmmaker, Mushtaq Gazdar. Saeeda and Mushtaq Gazdar were among the most celebrated couples such as Dr Rashid Jahan and Mahmud-uz Zafar, Sajjad Zaheer and Razia Sajjad Zaheer, Shaukat Kaifi and Kaifi Azmi, and Mazhar Ali Khan and Tahira Mazhar Ali – who embraced modern values and played significant roles in the development of progressive ideas, dedicating themselves to the struggle for a humanist society.

Saeeda authored several books, including collections of poetry, short stories and translations.

In literary circles she was known as a courageous poet and writer. Her short-story collection Aag Gulistan Na Bani and her poetry collections Zanjeer-i-Roz-o-Shab and Tauq-i-Daar Ka Mausam received critical acclaim. She also wrote poems for children, which were warmly received.

Saeeda Gazdar was the sister of Dr Muhammad Sarwar, a prominent student leader during the 1954 movement. She co-edited the literary journal Pakistani Adab with Sibte Hasan. Her husband, Mushtaq Gazdar, is regarded as Pakistan’s first documentary filmmaker.

Her short-story collection, Aag Gulistan Na Bani, was published in 1980. In her stories, Gazdar wrote about military dictatorship with remarkable openness. This was a time when many writers opted for symbolic expression. In stories like the title piece, Aag Gulistan Na Bani and Koel Aur General, she directly confronted the subject of dictatorship.

Gazdar’s Aag Gulistan Na Bani opened with characters from the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. Intezar Hussain also drew upon Gilgamesh in his short story Kashti. Previously, Syed Sibte Hasan had explored the tale in his book Maazi Kay Mazaar. Like Prometheus, the story of Gilgamesh is a celebrated masterpiece of resistance literature.

However, while Hussain’s Kashti immerses readers in a symbolic landscape, Gazdar’s story portrays the circumstances in direct language, interweaves lines from the Sumerian epic, to enhance the force of her narrative.

Reading Saeeda Gazdar’s work today, one can see how resistance literature endures and preserves the essence of history. As Henry James once remarked, “A great deal of history produces a little literature,” suggesting that profound literature emerges only after much history has unfolded.

Gazdar’s short-story collection Aag Gulistan Na Bani was banned by Zia-ul Haq’s government.

Writing about the plight of women during the period must have been difficult and painful, as is evident in Gazdar’s poetic collection, Tauq-o-Daar Ka Mausam. The collection explores the treatment of women at a social level. According to Gazdar, women’s freedoms – their purdah, chador, rights, ability to work and ability to participate in politics – were severely restricted. Their bodies and expressions were controlled; their mobility was limited; and basic human needs such as reading, writing, singing and dancing were curtailed.

Gazdar poignantly highlighted how the sense of honour in some quarters dictated that women bear the brunt of societal blame. She described the estrangement, enmity and distance between men and women, the loneliness of two people isolated by social norms, where every action was seen as obscenity and every gesture as nudity. This oppressive atmosphere, she wrote, made progress intolerable.

Through her poems, Saeeda Gazdar chronicled history, preserving details for the historians of the future. Her work referenced specific events, such as a stoning.

The subjects of many of Saeeda Gazdar’s poems are unsettling, serious and complex. She wrote about five women in Peshawar Jail who were whipped twenty times each for alleged adultery; a widow in Bahawalnagar flogged in front of five thousand onlookers after being forced to wear a burqa; and a poor, blind girl in Sahiwal sentenced to whipping under another charge. These women were immortalised in her verses.

Saeeda Gazdar masterfully linked personal relationships with globalisation, exposing the hypocrisy of political and religious systems. The restrictions on expression during that era are evident from the reception of her poem Bees Koray, which was rejected by a newspaper.

With her political insight, Gazdar recognised that love and freedom were intertwined passions – reciprocal and inseparable. Only a free person could truly experience love. How could a frightened, timid and helpless individual embrace such a sentiment, she asked? The moment one begins to resist the shackles of slavery and resolves to change their circumstances and those of others, they transform into free and authentic individuals capable of love.

This love, intertwined with a longing for freedom and a desire for transformation, deepened the sense of suffocation she wrote about. Saeeda Gazdar questioned herself: had acceptance become a habit? Then, in a moment of clarity, she incited action, declaring:

“This thought startled me. I have only one way to resist this dangerous situation: to express whatever is happening in whatever way possible – in a poem, in prose, in free verse. However, in whatever manner, I must make my basic human right a shield for defence so that future generations know about the fire in which the women and men of my generation burned, despite our helplessness.”

Saeeda Gazdar passed away in Karachi on November 7, 2024.

The writer is a Lahore-based critic, translator and researcher. He is currently translating Mumtaz Shireen’s short stories and unfinished autobiography. He can be reached at: razanaeem@hotmail.com. He tweets @raza_naeem1979.