::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Reflections

The Prince of Peshawar

Eeltutmish Abdullah Khan

I am a retired journalist. I worked as a freelancer and an enlisted reporter of Dawn in the Pakistan period. Later on, after the liberation war, I worked for several daily newspapers in Bangladesh and retired in the late nineties. I am writing with the intention of sharing the most interesting incident of my life with the readers.

December, 1970. I was covering an organised debate that took place between a few (there were three of them if I remember correctly) renowned Indian existentialists and Muslim scholars in Peshawar. It was not really the talk of the town, rather my personal interest to listen to what these qualified men had to say and I had the intention of writing a few words on it later on. These existentialists formed a group and threw a challenge openly at the Muslim scholars to take part in a debate which would prove the invalidity of the philosophy of either side. The debate went on for days. The arguments of this kind usually never reach any conclusion and it was no different in this case. A time came when the Muslims had their backs against the wall. It was understandable because Islam is largely about spirituality and the existentialists were denying its existence totally, against which the Muslims were defenseless.

After lunch on the third day of the continuous argument, the host (Mudassir) who let these Indians stay at his home, a young energetic local Pathan, put a very strange proposal before the three existentialists who came from India. He said he would like them to visit someone. He was abrupt and fishy about it and spoke very little covering his pleasant face with a smile. He brushed off all the questions asked and later that afternoon, I followed their car to wherever he had to take them.

We were soon in those areas where you could smell poverty strongly, mostly crowded with dirt poor Pathan refugees. People were staring at our cars as we were passing by and it was a very queer feeling. We stopped before a straw hut looking at which I had a feeling, it may collapse any moment. The signs of the strain of poverty were so vividly visible that you would see them even if you did not want to. We stood out and Mudassir called out someone's name checking if he is home. A little boy informed us that the prove would see us in a while.

When he came out we were speechless. It was for obvious reasons. Firstly, I had never seen anyone that handsome in my whole life. Secondly, he had such a glow on his fair face that cannot be described with merely words. You talk about Hollywood heroes or the Bollywood ones these days. To say the least, considering his physical attributes, he was exceptionally beautiful and he would stand out in a crowd of a million. I did not have any doubt about the fact that he was a Pathan; his height, build were those of a Pathan. He was really young; a neat stubble of two days on his cheek was there which made me guess that he would be twenty five at most. He had beautiful moderately curly black shoulder length hair. He was dressed white which was torn here and there but was totally clean. He walked calmly to us and said 'salam'. His voice was exceptionally heavy and masculine with a calm tender tone. The Pathans hugged like brothers and the angel like man kissed Mudassir on the forehead. The Indian existentialists were still speechless. He came and talked to them in perfect, sophisticated Urdu which was quite unexpected from a Pathan who was living in this area of Peshawar.

He invited us in and asked us to sit on a small discoloured chatai (a little carpet). He himself sat before us and asked Mudassir to sit beside him. The room had nothing except that chatai and a few other household things. The Holy Qur'an was beside there beside the. He slowly wrapped his black turban around his head before saying anything to us. I think this man with the turban on could only be described with the word 'angel'. The conversation started. I still remember his face as he talked to us. Knowing that the Indians were not very good at Urdu, he soon switched to English. His English was as aristocratic, as beautiful as he was which was, again, a very striking surprise because most of these Pathans could not even write their names or read anything. He had a very sharp way of using metaphors as he talked which could be used as poetry! The Indians hardly talked in the three hours we stayed there. I asked him by the by about the source of his knowledge in languages. He smiled shyly and said that he had studied engineering in Peshawar. It made all of us go dumb for many minutes. This Pathan lad living in the poorest hut on earth was an engineer! The conversation went on. He either talked or sat in silence with our eyes glued on him (I wonder what would have happened if we were women). He talked of Islam, the truth and the spirit. He talked about honesty and the needlessness of being dishonest. A smile was frequently visible on his face and in between sentences he was praising Allah. His statements were simply magical and the way he spoke was charming. We went there expecting a stormy battle of words! But there was not even a single argument that any of the three existentialists had to put before him. Near the end, he offered us the sweetened milk of his cow. He drank nothing and the reason was very clear, there was not enough milk for all of us. It might sound like I am exaggerating; but I still remember the taste. Near the very end, this beautiful man started crying as he was praising Allah and reciting relevant lines from the Qur'an. I can still remember the sight of tears flowing from his eyes and still, in a calm voice, he is telling us about the greatness of Allah. It was so touch was that the Pathan beside him also began to shed tears. It was beginning to touch us too. In the end, he took out a pen out of his pocket and held it before the three men. 'What do you have to say when you see this pen?' he said first in Urdu and then followed it in English. As usual, they had no answer. The man spent a really long time in silence and then uttered, 'when you see this pen, you know that it was made in a factory by people and that means it has a maker'. A long pause followed that sentence again. 'What do you say when you see a human being and the world around you?'

We left him because he said he would not be able to give us more time apologising for that. I do not think any of us had any intention of leaving. But we had to and he escorted us to our cars saying goodbye. My life changed after I left him. I became not pious but concerned about the presence of the Almighty. Strangely and miraculously, all three of the three Indians returned back home to convert and become Muslim scholars later in their lives and I still have correspondence with one of them. We have tried looking for this man later on who changed our lives. In my last trip to Pakistan in 2001, I tried looking for him again with no information. I was sure that you would not require much information when you seek a man with that face. But the people who lived there said he had left for the 'mountains'. That could mean that he left for the almost inaccessible mountainous areas on the Afghanistan border. Only Allah knows where he is now.

As I write the last lines about this poor man, my eyes fill with tears. The poverty I saw in his hut, the humbleness, the simplicity can only make men cry. I do not think he even had the food for the next day. People around said that he was the poorest man in that area. They said he had the job of carrying heavy loads of the tourists on his back when they go up the mountains. They also mentioned that his named was Muhammad. Many started crying even after this many years as they spoke of him. Everyone loved him. Only our creator knows where he came from, where he went. Muslims, according to the prophecies made by prophet Muhammad (PBUH), are looking for a leader at this time of crisis. I can only think of this man I saw in Peshawar when I imagine a leader.