He wore the blue shirt of the Abbottabad Public School in those days. This I remember dictinctly. What I do not remember anymore was whether I wore the white shirt of Burn Hall or not. He was three years (and a few months) younger and we met first time in the sixties somewhere in the lush greeen valley of Abbottabad. We were boys then and I remember almost nothing of our meetings.
I remember the next phase. This time it was in the winter of early 1972. I had been commissioned in 1971, before the war, in Probyn’s Horse (5-Horse) and Omar joined it after the war. We lived in a jungle, a plantation near Multan, where wild boars were as common as domestic cats in urban homes. Omar was a quiet youth with a genial, almost shy, smile. He was very soft spoken and not in the least boisterous as most young subalterns in cavalry regiments were in those days. He was a good listener too and that is why I started confiding in him.
I needed a sympathetic listener because I was against that war. Such views could hardly have been popular among swashbuckling young cavaliers but, surprisingly enough, except for one or two of my colleagues, others were mostly indulgent towards me. But Omar and Jameel Malik were the best of them. Omar genuinely listened to me with a genial smile, his distinctive feature, playing on his face. He visited my tent in which he was fascinated with rows of books by Bertrand Russell and the classics of literature. We talked of many things as the regiment moved from the jungle to the open fields of a village near Chichawatni and then on to the sandy border lands next to the Indian border.
In February 1973 we came back to Multan and here all the young cavaliers wanted to buy brand new huge motorcycles. I was least interested in these contraptions. I loved horses, of course, but these things on two wheels were in no way substitutes for horses. Omar too wanted a motorcycle and he knew how he could get it---he would sell his car. This car had once belonged to his father. It was a Fiat-600 of 1961, a very small, deep blue shiny little thing. I loved it at first sight and I offered Omar a price which was enough to buy the motorcycle. The snag was, as in most cases, that I did not have the cash. However, after some soft loans from my mother and a hard loan from the local bank, the money was procured. So Omar’s blue Fiat became mine and Omar got his precious roaring motorbike. This was another bond with him.
Then Omar started discussing the possibility of leaving the army. His father, Air Marshal Asghar Khan, was in politics and an opponent of Mr. Bhutto the then prime minister. He felt he did not have a career anymore in the army and he did want to leave. However, I do not remember him telling me any specific causes of his belief. He resigned as a lieutenant and left. I stayed on and got posted to the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul where I was promoted captain. Omar used to visit me quite often. I too visited his house which was a small picturesque little hut now as his father’s bungalow had burnt down. I loved the idea of living in a small hut with huge, green grounds all around one. It was in this phase of his life that he talked seriously about going to study abroad. I remember having fired Omar with enthusiasm about England. I remember how happy he was when he got admission in the University of Sussex. Later, for his M.Phil, he also went to Cambridge.
When he came back from England I could not meet him for many days. I learned that he was in the Punjab University. I then learned with great regret that they did not appreciate him and the university, already notorious for not being able to attract talented young people, lost Omar too. When I met him I too had said good bye to the army and was on my way to England.
Again several years passed. Both of us had got married in between. When we met again in the 1980s both told each other how happy our marriages were. He was a very satisfied man as his NGO Surgi had started doing well. Sungi did a lot of very good work in Hazara some of which I saw myself. Omar was once threatened by the forest mafia i.e people who cut the trees illegally and sell them down in the cities. However, he was not frightened by them. When I was doing research for my book Language and Politics in Pakistan in 1994, I wanted to study the Hindko language movement. Omar’s Sungi office in Abbottabad organized my meeting with the activists of this movement in Abbottabad. This was Omar’s contribution to my research and it was of immense help. But for it I would have wasted weeks in tracing them all out. Now I met most of them in one single evening and then met them separately on my own.
Soon after Omar joined the government of General Musharraf we met at a seminar organized by Sungi in Abbottabad. We talked like old friends---about all issues except politics. Indeed, during this phase whenever we met, as we often did in parties, we never discussed politics. He was always happy. I never found him frustrated or angry. He told me he would quit the government when Chomsky came to deliver a lecture in Islamabad but I did not ask him why and he never told me why. The only time Omar discussed politics was the evening of 14 June in the house of our mutual friend Dr. Shaheen Rafi Khan. The occasion was the departure of Shaheen’s brother and Omar’s friend, Dr. Shahrukh Rafi Khan. He said that he would plunge himself in electioneering for the October elections. Some friends suggested that he should contest the seat from Islamabad. He was looking forward to October. He did not seem like a man who was tired of life. This was the last time I met Omar.
And then, on the evening of 25th June a friend told me on the phone about his death. I felt as if drained out of strength. I heard myself almost shouting that this was incredible but from somewhere deep in me reality spread its icy tentacles. Death, the inevitable, inescapable, incomprehensible enormity of death sunk into my consciousness. Suicide!? I could not think. I just went immediately to his father’s house and for a few moments met his wife. But what could I tell her. My voice broke when I told her what she knew already that I had known her husband as a boy. She wept silently. Then I came out and heard people trying to make sense of what had happened. After 4 p.m. today, Wednesday the 26th of June 2002, they consigned him to a grave around which were lush green trees. The music of water in the Ilyasi mosque was not audible but the water was not far. I know some people want to make sense of this strange death. Of course they should do that. But I want to close my eyes in look back to one who was so gentle in life and who made such a difference to so many peoples’ lives. I do not have the strength to make sense of this bedlam. All I know is that a bond with my childhood is snapped. I will never hear his gentle monosyllables again! But I also know that I can draw inspiration from a life of goodness and gentleness such as one can never forget.
Dr.
Tariq Rahman