"Every foundation is faulty, I saw

Except the foundation of Love, faultless"

Hafez ‘Shirazi’

Faiz quoted this verse by Hafez in his speech in Moscow while accepting the Lenin Peace Prize, the former Soviet Union’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It was 1962 and the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan was at its zenith. Faiz was reluctantly awarded permission to travel to the Soviet Union to accept the prize by the military government and he chose, after he received the prize, not to return to Pakistan for a few years since he had already served time in prison earlier (from 1951 to 1955) for his ‘subversive’ activities.

These included, among others, championing the cause of workers’ and women’s rights, speaking out for a free press and freedom of expression and other ‘dangerous’ ideas. At the time of independence, as the editor of two of the most prestigious newspapers in the newly formed nation of Pakistan, The Pakistan Times and Imroze, his opinions were considered especially dangerous by the undemocratic governments of the time since he had the ability, through his newspapers, to influence a wide variety of people.

In November 1984, at the zenith of another military dictatorship, one whose malignant effects are still haunting us, Faiz died of complications of heart and lung disease in Mayo Hospital Lahore. Next year, the newly formed Faiz Foundation organised by his family and a few close friends, invited the late Iqbal Bano to perform at the Alhamra Arts Council in Lahore. It was a mild fall evening. The seats in the hall were full, well before the performance began. There was a commotion outside and Faiz’s younger daughter, Moneeza Hashmi, came on stage and told the assembled audience that workers and activists of various left wing organisations had gathered outside the closed doors and were demanding to be let in.

After a brief consultation, the doors of the hall were flung open and more people streamed in, sitting on the floor, the stairs, anywhere they could until there was not an inch of space in the hall that was unoccupied. The capacity of the hall was around 700 people and there were, by one estimate, more than a thousand people there. This, of course, was at a time when gatherings of more than three people were strictly prohibited by the military authorities.

Iqbal Bano began singing and after a nervous start (she had probably never sung before such a crowd before), mesmerised the audience but it was when she began her now famous rendition of Faiz’s iconic ‘Hum dekhain gay’ that the fireworks really started. Every verse was greeted with loud cheers and shouts of ‘Faiz zindabad’ ‘Inqilab zindabad’ but the audience was saving its real enthusiasm for the verse:

"Hum mehkoomon ke paon talay/yeh dharti dhar dhar dharkay gi/aur ehl-hakam ke sar ooper/jab bijli kad kad kadkay gi".

When Iqbal Bano recited this verse, the claps, cheers and shouts rose to such a crescendo that it felt as if the roof of the hall would fly off. Later that same night, the Zia military dictatorship, frightened by the hold that Faiz still had on people from beyond his grave, cracked down and there were mass detentions of those who had organised and participated in the event. By this time, anticipating the crackdown, Faiz’s older son-in-law Shoaib Hashmi and a few friends had secretly recorded and sent recordings of the concert through friends to Dubai from where they were disseminated to London, the Soviet Union and other places.

It was graphic proof that despite the military government’s propaganda that all was well in Pakistan, resistance to the military dictatorship was alive and well in Lahore, the capital of Punjab and that the people of Pakistan would not lay down and submit despite the brutalities inflicted on them by the dictatorship.

The next year, the late Benazir Bhutto returned triumphantly to Lahore at the head of one of the largest demonstrations the country had ever seen and two years after that, General Zia was dead in a mysterious plane crash that also took the lives of the American ambassador and several of his top generals.

In subsequent years, Faiz festivals (sometimes also called Faiz ‘melas’) would become regular fixtures in the cultural life of Lahore. Following the tradition set during Faiz’s life, his birthday on February 13 and later, his death anniversary on November 20 would be occasions for people to gather, recite his poetry, sing, talk and celebrate life.

Faiz was always delighted when his birthday would be celebrated in far-off places like London, Moscow, Toronto, Beirut and, of course, Lahore. Often, he would be somewhere else and his friends and well-wishers would gather in his memory and to wish him well. This tradition has continued and it is as Faiz would have wished. After all, it was he who had said "Only the dead can mourn the dead. The living should celebrate the joys of the living".

In keeping with the tradition this year, too, the inaugural Faiz International Festival will be held under the auspices of Faiz Foundation Pakistan at the Alhamra Arts Council from November 19-22. It will feature talks and discussions by writers, poets, journalists, theatre and film artists, painters, musicians and many others during the day and poetry, music, dance and theatre performances in the evening.

Notable speakers include renowned Allahabad-based writer, poet, translator and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (making his first ever visit to Lahore), activist, writer and speaker Tariq Ali from London, Canada-based poet and writer Ashfaq Hussain as well as film maker Muzaffar Ali. Other speakers and panelists include Intizar Hussain, Zehra Nigah, Mustansar Hussain Tarar, Dr. Asghar Nadeem Syed, Dr. Asif Farrukhi, Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Salima Hashmi, Yasmeen Hameed, Arshad Mehmud, Irfan Khoosat, Sarmad Khoosat, Vasay Chaudhry, Nadia Jamil, Navid Shahzad, Afzal Ahmad Syed, Ikramullah, Nasim Zehra, Baela Jamil, Quddus Mirza, Moneeza Hashmi, Dr Arfa Syeda Zehra, Ajmal Kamal, Mira Hashmi and Mazhar Jameel.

Renowned Indian theatre and film actor Naseeruddin Shah will return to the Lahore stage for a performance of his play ‘Einstein’ and will be accompanied by a large Indian delegation which consists of film writer and actor Atul Tiwari, TV anchor Vinod Kumar Dua, film director Shilpi Gulati, and writers Annie Zaidi, Dr. Rakhshanda Jalil, Dr. Baran Farooqi, Dr. Mehr Farooqi, Dipa Singh Bagai, Anirudha Bhattacharjee, and Pragya Tiwari. Indian singer Sonam Kalra will also be performing at the festival.

Tina Sani will return to Lahore to pay musical tribute to Faiz and his legacy and there will also be musical performances by Lahore-based singer Ali Sethi and pianist Asad Anees accompanied by Adeel Hashmi.

Details of the festival are available on the Faiz Ghar website and Facebook page.