In 1986, Iqbal Bano, a singer so beloved in Pakistan, that she had already earned the title “Queen of Ghazals” for her unparalleled skill in putting music and voice to poems, stood in front of a crowd in Lahore.
It’s hard to get accurate facts about this night on the internet. Every retelling differs in some crucial way. I’ve now seen multiple accounts saying that there were 50,000 people there. But I’ve looked up the building that the concert took place in, Alhamra Arts Council in Lahore, and at the time of the performance, the auditorium had no more than a 2000 person capacity. So this seems unlikely.
This was the only detail I was able to meaningfully fact check, so we take following details as pieces of legend rather than fact (which almost makes them better than fact): Iqbal Bano wore a black sari, the color of protest, the sari banned by the oppressive military regime of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. She would not be allowed to perform in public after this night and her songs were banned from being broadcasted on Pakistani radio. The police raided the homes of the concert’s organizers, hoping to destroy any recordings of the night’s performance. A recording did make it out, and was quickly disseminated. Its censoring only made its popularity grow. You can listen to it here.
On that night, Iqbal Bano sang a poem.
It was a nazm, rhyming poem, written by the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who had died two years prior, although (legend says) his grandson Ali Madeeh Hashmi was in the audience. The poem is “Hum Dekhenge” and translates to “We Will See”. It describes the events of the Day of Judgment, and in that Faiz Ahmed Faiz way, it uses imagery from the Quran to incite the overthrowing of tyrants, specifically Muslim tyrants who were using that Quran to justify their rule. It describes the dark peaks of the oppressors’ power blowing away like cotton on the wind. It describes lightning falling on the heads of tyrants. It describes the removal of idols from their thrones and the people standing up to rule, those who never lost their faith. In the recording, which is actually a recording of the encore, you can hear the crowd losing their mind. In Urdu, they chant long live the revolution, the slogan chanted during India’s struggle for independence from Great Britain. Again, in that Faiz Ahmed Faiz way, the poem equates God to Truth to Revolution.
Not surprising, coming from the poet who was thrown in jail for participating in a communist coup. The poem was published in 1981, but it was Iqbal Bano’s voice that elevated it to masterpiece. All the great poets of the time wrote poems specifically for her, to lift their words into song.
All this to say, I love to remember that I live in a world where poems can make tyrants afraid. That songs can carry movements. That live music can feel like that. I love moments like this performance. You know? Like the crowd singing No Children and Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent and Hozier being surprised by a gospel choir and Adele letting the audience sing “Someone Like You”. According to Faiz’s grandson, in the audience, “For those of us sitting in the hall, it was quite surreal. The clapping and cheers were so thunderous that it felt at times that the roof would blow off.”
You can hear it in the recording. Probably the biggest cheer comes after the lines near the end: “Utthegaa ‘An-al-haq’ kaa naara/Jo main bhi hoon, aur tum bhi ho” which, translated by Mustansir Dalvi, means “When the clarion call of ‘I am Truth’ (the truth that is me and the truth that is you) will ring out”.
An-al haq. I am Truth. This is an Arabic sentence, and it was first said, quite controversially, by a Sufi mystic Mansur Al-Hallaj in late 9th century Iran and then he was executed for it. Actually it’s kind of a horrifying story lol. The scholars of the Hanbali school, prominent at the time, decided he was a heretic for calling himself God, though the Sufi view is that he was proclaiming his oneness with divinity through his worship and anyway, he was either hung by the neck until dead or whipped, dismembered and burned. Not sure which and I don’t think I’m going to keep chasing this one. There’s almost certainly historical context I’m missing for why this line is in this poem, why it elicited such a great cheer, what it means for a people who have been subjugated by a government acting as God.
I’ve spent weeks trying to understand this single poem, and there’s a lot I still don’t know. Part of it is the language — my Urdu is extremely limited, and many of the most elaborate words in this poem are of Persian origin, which is being scrubbed from spoken Urdu. The other part is how much of the historical context I’m missing. Even my parents don’t have clear memory of this time, one being in America already, the other being too young perhaps, or sheltered. I wish I could speak to my grandfather, who loved to listen to Iqbal Bano on his gramophone.
I started to try to read another Faiz poem from the original Urdu but I got stuck on literally the second word. The word for hand, “dast”. I have never used “dast” for hand. I have used “hath”. But actually dast has Persian origin which makes sense why Faiz would use it, while hath has Sanskrit origin. Then why does colloquial Urdu use hath when classical Urdu uses dast? Has it always been like this, or is it a result of recent erosion? I have so much to learn.
Anyway. If you read this far, let me know what music or poetry has moved you lately. Stay safe out there.