I met Amjad Sabri in 2013. I was hosting a live midnight show for Pakistan Television for the month of Ramzan. He was our grand finale guest, we were so excited to see him perform. He was the last performer of Ramzan and I remember him walking and settling onstage with his ‘humnawa’an’ and get into the groove, the ‘samaa’. I remember the goosebumps as he began his qawwali, I remember every single person in the studio being mesmerized by the sheer power of his performance.
I remember walking up to him later, I remember wanting to compliment him, but he complimented me first. “You did a great job hosting the show!” I was a little taken aback, laughed and told him it was really gracious of him. “Thank you. You’re amazing. I’m a huge fan,” I said. He laughed his hearty laugh, the laugh he was apparently famous for among the many people who knew him. A couple of us stood together and we had a photograph with him.
Where is that photograph today, I wonder. I lost it. I can’t believe I lost it. It seems a lot of things are lost in the fire of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan today.
The news flashed across my television screen. I scoffed at first. Of course it should have been a skirmish. A petty fight or he may have come in the line of some misdirected gunfire that is often a part of Karachi’s violent political culture. I refused to even process for a minute - that some deranged human being would want to kill Amjad Sabri, the man who had brought nothing but music and love to the people who listened to him.
I sat motionless watching the television screen flash photos and footage of him. Laughing. Singing. Talking. Saying nice, sweet things to his audiences. I saw his friends and acquaintances weeping, someone said even the guy who used to sell him tea from a stall remembered him like ‘a friend’.
How many of us can say that about ourselves? About many a celebrity, high profile personality that leaves their earthly abode?
Thousands flocked his funeral.
Grief poured on social media, celebrities who performed with him (Sonu Nigam for example) expressed their grief as well. The Rangers, the ever powerful omniscient Rangers in Karachi claimed that “Liaquatabad (where Sabri lived and was shot) seemed like an area of terrorists.”
Tehrik-e-Taliban claimed responsibility.
I drove around for a while. The hate, the constant hate, the constant stupidity, the constant madness of lives lost was getting unbearable. I played the famous qawwali of his, Bhar de Jholi Ya Muhammad, in my car. Before I realized, I felt tears on my face. Tears that wouldn’t stop. I kept shaking my head when he uttered the words, “Haalat e beykasi kis ko dikhlaeyen hum?” (Who should we show just how helpless we are?). Where would we go? What would we do?
Amjad Sabri’s life was a celebration of art. His death, his untimely, unjustified, unprecedented death, was a statement about who is winning the war on terror in Pakistan. Soon enough, the discourse on social media started attacking liberals. Those who missed Sabri. Those who celebrated him. Those who loved his art. Those who formed alliances with him.
Once again it was liberal, progressive, peace-loving Pakistan that lost. The terrorists, their apologists, their spokespersons, everyone started hating liberals and their standpoints all over again. And it got so much that I realized something someone told me a few weeks ago. “You are not winning this war.”
All of a sudden, with Sabri’s death, I remembered every progressive voice that Pakistan that has left us one by one. And all the rest of them who walk around with a target sign on their foreheads. And all the people who are out for blood. Voices that could have been phenomenally important in turning Pakistan into a secular, progressive state slowly and hurtfully left us all. From Benazir Bhutto to Salmaan Taseer. Important voices are dying. Important people are dying. Malala Yousafzai survived - but is currently being labeled as a Jew agent. Those who are alive fear for their lives. The dead are still being called god knows what not by conspiracy theorists. Rashid Rehman to Shahbaz Bhatti. Sabeen Mahmud and Khurram Zaki. And today Amjad Sabri adds to this horrifying list of peaceful citizens whose only crime was to talk. To express. To want a better world than they saw.
I can’t find that photograph of Amjad Sabri where I’m standing next to him. It’s lost. I tried digging through old archives. I got in touch with some old friends who might have it. I tried going through albums. I found nothing. Odd how I never thought that photograph would mean so much to me today. It feels like a loss that I can’t repair. This crippling feeling of helplessness. This mindnumbing despair. It feels like the loss of a generation. The loss of art and music itself. The loss of a beacon of hope, someone who could tell the world that Pakistan isn’t just a country of honor-killers and terrorists and rabid mullahs. And there they were again: the hatemongers, constantly preaching their ideology of hate and kill-the-infidels. Their chants of death-to-those-who-disagree. They were winning. With their posse of lemmings, their sycophants. Their ugly lessons. They won. Amjad Sabri lost. People who loved him lost. The monsters won.