Handsome Pukhtun from Karak called Pareshan

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

The last I saw him, Professor Pareshan Khattak gave no signs of ill health. With well-combed jet-black hair, he wore the flamboyant air of a final-year university student. With a bracelet on his right and an expensive watch on left arm, he was in a jogging track suit.

Coming back from an evening stroll, he strayed into the residence of his friend Fazlullah Fazli in Phase-III of Hayatabad where local writers and art-lovers had assembled for the post-sunset monthly session of the literary organisation ‘Takhleeq International’.

Except for osteoarthritis, which was not unusual for a man at 77, he did not seem to carry any other visible physical disorder.

Ignoring the synthetic mat spread on the floor of Fazli’s basement, Pareshan Khattak settled into a soft, comfortable chair.

Turning the chair slightly towards ‘Qibla’ in the direction of Makkah to the west, he raised his arms to touch the lobes of his ears and saying ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ started offering the ‘Maghreb’ (evening) prayer.

The participants waited for Professor Khattak to finish the ‘Namaz-i-Maghreb’. I had not the faintest idea that these were the last glimpses I was having of the lovable Pukhtun intellectual. The sound of ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ that was heard in Fazli’s house was stimulating and inspiring whereas the one heard in the sprawling phase one graveyard saddened the ears on which it fell. Pareshan shocked his friends by breathing his last on April 16.

The red rose-petals that slipped from Pareshan’s shrouded dead body got stuck into the blades of lush green grass. Silently announcing the arrival of the spring, they seemed to mourn the sudden death of a God-fearing man who used to come to this graveyard off and on to mourn the similar deaths of near and dear ones.

Born on December 10, 1932 in village Ghundi Mira Khankhel, district Karak, into the home of Malik Muhammad Hassan, the real name of Pareshan Khattak was Gham-i-Jan. Conscious probably of his physically being a handsome man, he later liked to be called as ‘Pari-shan’ (carrying the resemblance of a fairy).

However, the non-Pukhtun friends, colleagues and acquaintances all through his 77-year-long life randomly confused the name with the Urdu adjective ‘pareshan’ which literally meant ‘the mentally disturbed person’.

The mentally disturbed person though he never was except for the brief spell of life some years back during which he learnt that in an allegedly domestic brawl his daughter reportedly got murdered while being with her otherwise influential parents-in-law.

As an intellectual, Pareshan had many facets to his personality. The holder of Master’s degrees in History and Pushto literature, the common reader, for instance, knew him as a romantic poet, research scholar, translator, manipulative academic, successful administrator and an untiring speaker.

The untiring speaker he certainly was though others of his qualities were overtly or covertly doubted, debated and even challenged by various shrewd critics of varying caliber.

At one time, his admirers turned him into a sitting duck for book launching ceremonies.

He usually spoke in a long-winded manner, blending History with Geography and fact with fiction that depending on the public mood variously pleased or displeased the audience.

The proud author of about 10 publications, Pareshan left behind the book lovers that reached out for their purse when they noticed the first collection of Pareshan’s poetry titled ‘Tarranake’ or the more intriguingly named prose work ‘Pushtun Kaun’.

Although he was generally a friendly person but Mir Mehdi Shah Mehdi and Hamesh Khalil got on well with him.

Amazing as the attitude of the friends and foes was, Pareshan was flattered or flayed by the measure of favours that he showered or withheld when working on key posts.

Apart from being the chairman of the former University Grants Commission, he remained the head of the Academy of Letters, Islamabad and the vice-chancellor first of the Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan and then the Azad Kashmir University, Muzaffarabad.

During the days of General Ziaul Haq, he rubbed shoulders with the high and the mighty of the land.

At one time, he worked as the advisor to the prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Immediately after that he founded the Al-Khair University in the private sector.

Due to rush for admissions to this university, there was a crisis of management at various levels.

Partly due to the management crisis but chiefly due to the machinations of the professional rivals in the field of education, the Higher Education Commission started receiving complaints against the Al-Khair University with the result that the HEC had to order the closure in some cities of a few of the Al-Khair branches for not having the required facilities.

It is a pity that Pareshan has faded into history with what appears to be indecent haste. One is left with very few people to show to the outer world that can be called the true representatives of the Frontier province.

Farigh Bokhari, Raza Hamadani, Khatir Ghazanavi and Ahmad Faraz were the kind of writers with whom the outside world associated the province.

One feels oddly awkward in bracketing them together but NWFP in general and Pushto literature in particular has been left poorer by the disappearance from the literary landscape of figures like Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, Ghani Khan, Qalandar Momand and now Pareshan Khattak.

One prays for the health and a long life of men like Ajmal Khattak, Senator Afrasiab Khattak, Saleem Raz, Rehmat Shah Sail and many others who are still around and serving the cause of literature as well as revolution in the manner they think is pragmatic or expedient.

The admirers of Pareshan rightly expect that his sons Dr Javed Khattak, Major Khushal Khattak, Professor Shahbaz Khattak and Behlul Khattak will probably join hands and will piece together the unpublished works of their late father and bring them out in book form.

More humble and down to earth brother of Pareshan’s, Purdil Khan Khattak can help and guide four of his otherwise capable nephews in doing this work.