This article was originally published on July 28, 2019 and is being republished on July 28, 2020.July 28, 2020, marks the 74th birth anniversary of Pakistan’s arch-feminist poetess and activist Fahmida Riaz, who left us rather too soon in November 2018. But even in death, she gave us two remarkable books as going-away presents, rather Parthian shots: one, her last collection of poetry Tum Kabeer and the other, a fictional rendition of the life and times of the first-ever socialist Mazdak, the scourge of Zoroastrian Persia, a novella titled Qila-e-Faramoshi.As her sister Najma Manzoor informs us, she also left us her last unpublished poem Daftar-e-Imkaan (A World of Possibility) written from her sickbed in Karachi, just days before moving to her beloved daughter’s home in Lahore in 2018, and as it turned out, sadly on her final journey to literary immortality.Also read | Fahmida Riaz, Our New AqleemaThis poem, which does not need much explanation, is a beautiful ode to the link between the Creator and His creation, and is indispensable to understanding Riaz’s work. The poem’s original English translation is being presented below:The room in which I do resideA window this room does provideShould I wake up in the nightI turn to keep it within my sightThen I see as clear as lightThe moon in the window shining brightI smile slowlyAnd I feelAs if the moon too smiledThen with my eyes filedI sleep graduallyThen I come across a thoughtAlone in this world I am notThis universe and these starsThe vistas of the moon and sunCar sounds with all their mightUnknown wings in flightThese are made from the same jewelWhich is mine and yours tooBelongs to this too and thatAlone in this world I am not Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently based in Lahore, where he is also the President of the Progressive Writers Association. He has written on, and translated the selected work of Ismat Chughtai, Fahmida Riaz, Zehra Nigah and Razia Sajjad Zaheer. He can be reached at: razanaeem@hotmail.com.
