To Saneeya Hussain (August 13, 1954-April 20, 2005)

Saneeya… Madam (as you would say)

I found your unread email of March 8 too late, when searching my inbox the other day for the one of April 5 that I did reply to, in which you whimsically expressed your distaste for the antics of the mullahs who attacked the Gujranwala marathon, and suggested re-naming this place Absurdistan!

You’d probably also find it pretty absurd that your friends and family are clucking about, sharing memories of you on a yahoogroup in cyberspace, many of us meeting there or in person for the first time. The Saneeya connection, someone called it. There are tears at your untimely departure, but no, we’re not just sitting about mourning gloomily. Our grief runs deep, but when we meet and share your memories, there is also laughter, especially as we recall yours. Even people who only met you once remember that laugh of yours!

Everywhere you lived – from South Africa, to Brazil, to Nepal and of course Pakistan – you developed a unique circles of friends, your extended family. So many around the world have written to say they’re off for a meal you’d have liked, thinking of you as they tuck in. Your generous spirit always took such delight in the pleasure of others.

So you see, we’re celebrating you, as Shakir, Irfan Husain’s son, put it. And Moeen Faruqi said that yours was the most “un-sad” funeral and soyem he’s ever been to. Also probably the most unconventional, given that the last rites were administered at an Imambargah (your family’s dignified reply to the irritating question of why, was a simple, “We’re Muslims, not Sunni or anything else” – you wouldn’t have bothered, given your totally un-sectarian nature). It was also a truly multi-faith event, participated in by Zoarastrians, Christians and Hindus, as well as Muslims of various sects -- and atheists among all these categories. There was another break with convention when “the women of your life”, as Kanak Dixit from Nepal put it, accompanied you on your last journey. Mariam described it beautifully, how they came forward “bit by bit, inch by inch, until at the end there they were, side by side with the men, next to the spot where Saneeya had just been interred, joining in the last prayer and, in the setting sun, covering her grave with rose petals -- a final farewell to a truly beloved friend”. Hats off to your inspiring family, your father and mother and sisters for not giving in to the social pressures. You would have approved.

It was good sitting at your house a couple of days before Luis brought you back. Younger cousins and sister told us how you were always the favourite with all the aunts and domestic help, and how as the eldest, you bullied them endlessly. You’d call them ”grasshoppers” – so they went and got t-shirts printed that said “grasshoppers” to bug you, and you shook your head and laughed and said, ”You people…! Honestly..!”

Nazeeha told us how you started to work at MNJ as a copywriter in 1978. One of your aunts dragged all of you into JJ’s office on the way back from an outing, and proudly introduced you as “My niece who has done her Masters in English.” That was where you met Zohra (your first boss and later mine), and then Mariam, your close friends.

You wouldn’t like all this attention, but you always drew attention with your height – you looked taller because you stood so straight, your head flung backwards or sideways as you laughed, weighed down by your trademark long mane of black hair. In the mid-eighties, when you edited The Star Weekend magazine after Zohra was “kicked upstairs”, where we met, it was usually confined in a long plait –the irrepressible Vai Ell immortalised you in his cartoons “as the tall woman with a long plait rubbing shoulders with more famous subjects such as General Zia and BB, our lady of the dupatta,” as you put it in “Star Trekking”, that memorable article Anita D. Nassar in London got you to write last year.

You did a lively sum-up of that time, which you called “the most exciting period of my professional life”. Many of our colleagues had “activist and trade unionist backgrounds -- from students and political parties, and the nascent women’s movement — while some just came in for the fun and excitement the newspaper environment offered in the Zia days.”

The censorship had its funny side: “Among the more ridiculous instructions we received from the provincial arm of the Ministry of Information was the command not to reproduce Mrs General Zia-ul-Haq’s picture in the papers in anything larger than a single newspaper column since the lady in question had a rather large girth, the argument put forth being that a larger photo would make her look gargantuan.”

The paper was a platform for dissenting views. Banned columnists had to keep changing their names to continue writing, and the women’s movement that was so alive in those days found plenty of space in our pages. You and Zohra were also members of the Shirkat Gah Collective which catalysed the Women’s Action Forum, the lobby group that so fiercely resisted the Zia regime. When “the red scribbles from upstairs” got unbearable, in early 1988, you left.

You joined the World Conservation Union (IUCN) – and were also among the first Pakistanis to participate in people-to-people contact with Indian environmentalists. Some months later, I moved to Lahore; we stayed in touch as you set up the pioneering Journalists Resource Centre that trained and encouraged so many journalists in environmental reporting.

Your involvement in Pakistan’s National Conservation Strategy (NCS) drafted at that time included the path-breaking NCS Bulletin (later the The Way Ahead magazine), and its Urdu counterpart, Jareeda, edited by Obaidullah Baig.

On one of my visits to Karachi, you insisted on driving me to the airport in your little white Suzuki. On that long hot drive we talked about relationships, and I remember you saying that you had not yet met anyone you wanted to marry who also wanted to marry you!

After going to work with the World Commission on Dams at Cape Town, South Africa in August 1998, you met Luis P. Ferraz, the Brazilian geographer whom you interviewed for a project. He says he wasn’t the first choice for the job, but was taken after the other person dropped out.

He used to tease you that not every woman gets to interview her husband before they marry! It was “the big love” for both of you, you were “soul-mates,” despite the differences of nationality, age and height (sorry, Luis!). You would be proud of the strength of character he has shown at this traumatic time, even retaining his sense of humour. As your cousin Sammy said, you wouldn’t have married just anybody.

You got married and moved to Kathmandu after joining Panos South Asia as Director in 2002 following a series of detailed long-distance interviews, emails and phone calls. Your decision had so much to do with wanting to be nearer your parents in Karachi – but ironically, just when you joined, the Indians and Pakistanis banned each other’s overflights. You and Luis decided to move back to Brazil in 2004, and of course, the flights were restored just as you left Panos! There were two main reasons for your leaving (besides that ridiculous flights situation). One was that Luis would find it easier to get a job there, and secondly because Kathmandu was bad for your asthma. That is apparently what eventually took your life on April 20 in Sao Paolo this year.

For some time, until PSA got another Executive Director, you worked long-distance from Brazil – internet zindabad! Finally, after a lot of head-hunting, we got the television journalist A. S. Panneerselvan from Chennai to come on board. He has decided to name Panos’ Indo-Pak journalists fellowship as the Saneeya Hussain Fellowship Programme, knowing “pretty well that you will not approve of it” but urging you to “See this as a small gesture of love from all of us here in PSA”, and to accept the decision “because it’s from our heart”.

I think your mother put it best when she said, “I will always treasure the joy she brought to us, always thank Allah for the gift he gave us, never complain for its being so short. This gift He bestowed will for ever remain in our hearts and minds. The huge imprint she has left behind overshadows the physical absence.”