Khalid Hasan
(August 2010)
A date with Mr. Khalid Hasan
When Khalid died on 5th February 2009, after a short illness news of which was never leaked out to his family in Pakistan as per his strict instructions, there was no way that I, his lone surviving younger brother, could have made it to his burial. I had no US visa. There was also no time. So a modest ceremony and brief prayers was all we could do in Lahore. However, it was on my mind that I needed to make that long journey and have a chat with him, buried so far away in a cemetery that I did not know and a town I had not heard of leave alone finding a way to it.
This summer, thanks to my son Mekaal’s series of music concerts in the USA, I was at last able to make that long journey – and as events unfolded, it was long and aggravating and more off than on. It took us about 27 hours of traveling and airports just to make it to the first leg of the tour, a South Asian Heritage concert in Toronto organized by the sparkling and dashing Asma Mahmood (alas) married to Aga Arshad Mahmood, a fine gentleman in his own right! After Toronto, New York via Buffalo and by Megabus was another 13 hours and a few days later, a road journey from the Big Apple to Maine, about 8 hours and a day later and some six hours of driving from Maine to Vermont and finally to St. Albans and Mr. Khalid Hasan.
St. Albans lies in Franklin County, Vermont State. It’s a sleepy little town, population perhaps in and around 8,000 or so and perched on the shores of Lake Champlain, a huge fresh water 1130 sq km natural lake that links New York and Vermont, USA with Quebec, Canada. Here, just minutes away from the lake front, in a quiet and peaceful cemetery, some distance from rolling green gentle hills and amidst deep green foliage, rests the man who had more friends than you could collect in a dozen lifetimes. Someone as exuberant and full of life should now be in such a quiet part of this small town, was indeed odd. I sat near his tombstone, a beautiful deep forest green marble with just HASAN written and dates of his sojourn and departure from this planet. I sat numb, reading and re-reading the simple line at the base of the tombstone that said, ‘From God we come and to him we are returning.’ It was surreal, a part of me that could not come to terms with the reality of this final resting place and a part of me which reminded me that this indeed was what I had traveled so far to see. I tried hard to pray but between those obligatory words, I was also chatting to him in half complete sentences and saying, ‘what are you doing here Khalid Saab, so far from Pakistan that you loved with every single breath you took?’
But Khalid had given me that answer many years back on one of his coveted trips to Lahore. I had asked him that wasn’t it odd that unlike many families which manage to ensure they are all buried in the same geographical spot, we were scattered all over the countryside? Our father in a long forgotten garden, near a village in Sialkot District where he had married my mother at the turn of the last century, my mother in a small graveyard next to the noisy Peshawar airfield with screaming PAF jets, my brothers, Brig. Bashir in Cavalry Grounds, Lahore and Col. Saeed in the Army graveyard in Rawalpindi. And Khalid answered, ‘It is not essential to be buried in the same place because it doesn’t really matter to those who are dead. It matters only to those who are left behind. Graveyards are only for the living.’ And that was the end of that discussion.
St. Albans was still a strange choice – well not so strange in some ways. His wife, who is American, comes from that town and her siblings still reside there. Khalid had plans to ‘settle’ there though any settlement would have always been with Pakistan factored in deeply. He had also liked the quietness of the town because it was very much like him – deep down he was always a very shy and inwardly drawn person who was happiest with a small band of friends and awkward in large gatherings. St. Albans he had told our sister reminded him of Kashmir – the same gentle valleys, the abundant greenery, the lake nearby and the profusion of ‘Chinars’ – the Maple tree, symbolic of Canada but also of our long lost Kashmir. It was on one of his visits to St. Albans that he chose this particular spot for himself and his wife and sought permission to be buried there because it was, after all a Christian graveyard. The permission was readily granted and so there he is holding aloft the fluttering banner of Islam in a heathen cemetery, himself a blue blooded secular Muslim! The irony wouldn’t have been lost on him.
I sat there for well over an hour, saying nothing of any consequence to him but perhaps at peace that I had at last managed to arrive (our trip had near-cancelled at least four times!!). I touched his tombstone, ran my hand over his name carved in granite and said a personal prayer from childhood. In many ways I was soothing and the end of a nagging period of anxiety that I had not been to see him. You couldn’t get away with this kind of irresponsibility with Khalid Saab. The afternoon was wearing on. I saw a tea bag lying at his grave, placed there by Jahan his daughter who knew that her father liked his cup of tea to be strong and robust. Mekaal was quietly filming and I thought, well here we are, at Khalid Saab’s grave, Mekaal his nephew, I his brother - one generation into another. In a little while it was time to go and I was wondering how many would trace his grave like he did for Patras Bokhari? I also wondered as we walked away, had Khalid remembered that his beautiful Ava Gardner, the film star, (Khalid had a serious crush on her, as did I), was buried in a small graveyard in Springfield, Illinois from where she had risen, he surely would have made a pilgrimage to that hallowed ground. He would have.
I have also been thinking that in all likelihood, Khalid Saab would have rebuked me for writing this piece because it was not the done thing and something too personal to be made public, but younger brothers can sometimes take liberties with their older siblings and this is what I have done.