Owais Mughal

This is the third post in our series on architecture of Pakistan. Earlier we covered Merewether Tower, Karachi and Masjid Mahabat Khan, Peshawar in this series. Today we’ll take you to Sindh’s third largest city, Sukkur and to its one of the most significant landmarks, the minar-e-Masoomi (The Tower of Masoom)

The architecture of this tower is probably ungainly but there are few details that make it unique in Pakistan. The number 84 is significant with the architecture here as the tower is 84 ft (26 meters) high. One source claims the height of the minar as 31 meter. The number of steps to reach the top of the tower is 84. The circumference of the base of tower is also 84 feet.

Muslim Rizvi

I am traveling through a tunnel towards a source of white light. I have no control over anything. I just keep going faster and faster and then there is a dazzling flash and an explosion of blinding light. I close my eyes.

I am in the courtyard of our old house in Gulberg, Karachi. I see my grandfather in his white kurta and those wide wide pajamas, stepping off his namaz kee chowki (a wooden stand for prayers). He calls my name and I run to him to help him slip on his chappals (slippers). I am probably 7-8 years old. I look at him and ask “Baba, you promised me that you will tell me a story”. Baba smiles and pulls his huqqa (hookah).

He takes a kush (inhales) and says:

“First go get me some water, but not from the fridge”.

Baba never liked the water from the fridge. I run towards the clay garha (earthen pot) and pour some water out in the silver katora (bowl). I would run all errands happily for Baba just to hear one of his stories. His stories were about three things: the one were stories about Hazrat Ali, the super hero of Islam, the second were about Agra, his home town in India and third were about migration to Pakistan. I didn’t like the stories of migration. They were too sad and the whole thing never made sense to me. These stories haunted me.

Adil Najam

Noted journalist and columnist Khalid Hasan died of prostrate cancer in Washington DC a few hours ago.

Khalid sahib was many things to many people. Journalist, columnist, translator of Faiz and Manto, people-watcher, press secretary to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, international civil servant, poet, intellectual-at-large, wonderful company, someone you could talk to for ever (he would do most of the talking), and much much more. To me, Khalid Hasan the person was always far more interesting than all the persona he had acquired over time. He was a true phenomenon.

He was someone I held in too much awe to call a ‘friend’, but also someone who was way too kind to me to be simply described as an ‘acquaintance.’ I had always thought that the first time I met him was also the first time I met Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I was High School student writing on cricket for The Muslim, and Faiz Sahib had come to meet the equally legendary A.T. Chaudhry, then editor of that newspaper who moved on later after learning how to become a book editor. I found an excuse to go into A.T. Chaudhry’s office and was politely introduced. I always thought that the other person in the room was Khalid Hasan. Even once mentioned it to him in later years. Khalid Sahib nodded as if he also remembered, but now I realize that it not have been so since he was not in Pakistan in those years. For the impressionable youngster that I was then, this slip of the memory only cemented Khalid Sahib’s intellectual position right there with Faiz.