A Letter from N. M. Rashed to his daughter Yasmin Hassan, May 7, 1969

N. M. Rashed. Letter from N. M. Rashed. To Yasmin Hassan. May 7, 1969. 2 pp. 1 sheet. 7 x 12". Pen on yellowish aerogramme. Writing in top right corner notes the letter was sent from Tehran. Blue Ink on reverse says: "Replied June 23rd". Aerogramme is different in appearance from others in folder. The colour is yellow-green and "Pust-i hawā’ī-i Īrān" is titled across the reverse in small writing. Urdu. Box 2. Folder 18: NMR's letters to his daughter Yasmin Rashed Hassan. 001. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Zain Mian. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

Several letters from Rashed to his family members are preserved in the Archive. This one, to the donor of the Archive, Rashed's second daughter Yasmin Hassan, dates from the early years of Yasmin and her husband Faruq Hassan's life in Canada. Two major events in Rashed's life are mentioned here. His third book of poetry, Lā = Insān, has been published by Munir Niazi's press, proving to the younger poets of Pakistan that Rashed is alive and well, as he triumphantly writes ("yih na'ī paud ke shā'ir mujhe qarīb qarīb marhūm o maghfūr samajh chuke the"). Secondly, for the first time Rashed has become a grandfather—he professes that this an odd feeling ("shāyad ab dāṛhī rakhnā paṛe!")

A summary of the aerogramme is below:

From: N.M. Rashed, Tehran P.O. Box 1555, Tehran, Iran. Written 05/07/1969.
To: Mr. and Mrs. Farooq Hassan, 601 Beaverbrook Street, apt. 4, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Replied 06/23.

NMR writes from Tehran that he has received Yasmin Hassan's letter of 26 April, 1969. Yasmin and Faruq Hassan are now renting a new accomodation in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Congratulates Yasmin on becoming an aunt. NMR confesses that it feels strange to be a grandfather. His correspondence with his son Shahryar has been very rushed on the latter's side recently. NMR has written for the second time to Munir Niazi asking him to send the Hassans 1 copy each of the 3 recently published books. Says that Yasmin should write directly to Saddan Khan, who has been looking for her pass-book in Karachi and may have found it by now. NMR sent some money to Yasmin in March. 

NMR asks whether Faruq Hassan is still writing his "Chhotī barī nazmeñ." Lā = Insān has created quite a stir in Pakistani literary circles. NMR believes that the younger poets had assumed that he had practically passed away already. Seeing the new poetry, poets like Iftikhar Jalib have had to admit that he is very much alive, side-by-side with the new generation. Lā = Insān is receiving good reviews in the newspapers and periodicals. It has been emphasized to Tamzin that she should write to Yasmin soon. However Tamzin's exams are approaching in June.

In 1969, Rashed's second daughter Yasmin Hassan and her husband Faruq Hassan were living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Faruq Hassan had begun a Masters degree in English Literature at the University of New Brunswick. Yasmin and Faruq had been living in a shared accomodation with a landlady since they had arrived. Rashed congratulates them on their moving to their own apartment, at 601 Beaverbrook St., apt. 4, bordering the University to the north-east. Yasmin Hassan describes this apartment as follows:

601 Beaverbrook was our first apartment which had two small bedrooms, living room, kitchen and our own washroom.¹

Yasmin Hassan's husband Faruq Hassan was himself a poet, and in 1967 he had published a volume of Urdu poetry entitled Chhoṭī baṛī nazmeñ (with Gilani Kamran; Lahore: Kitābiyāt). Rashed asks after Faruq Hassan with great fondness, referring to him as usual as ‘azīzī Fārūq. In 1969 Rashed's third daughter Shahin Sheikh had her son Omer, Rashed's first grandchild. The youngest sister from Rashed's first marriage, Tamzin, is also mentioned at the end of the letter.

This was the year of the publication of Rashed's third collection of poetry, Lā = Insān. It was published by Munir Niazi's press Al-Misāl, who also reprinted Rashed's two previous collections, Māwarā and Īrān meñ ajnabī. These are the three books that Rashed orders for the Hassans from Niazi.

Keywords: #Yasmin_Hassan, #Faruq_Hassan, #Munir_Niazi, #Shahin_Sheikh, #Iftikhar_Jalib, #Shahryar_Rashed, #Mawara, #Iran_men_ajnabi, #La_=_Insan, #Karachi, #Fredericton, #New_Brunswick, #Tehran, #Iran, #Canada, #Tamzin_Rashed, #handwritten, #letter, #family, #reception, #Beaverbrook_Street, #Chhoti_bari_nazmen, #University_of_New_Brunswick

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1 Yasmin Hassan, Email to Pasha M. Khan, June 26, 2015.

"Andhā kabārī" — Handwritten draft in Rashed's hand

N. M. Rashed. "Andhā kabārī" Handwritten draft. 3 pp. 3 sheets. 8.5 x 11". Pencil on white paper. Pages numbered 67-69. Urdu. Box 2. Folder 14: Gumān kā mumkin kā likhā hū’ā aslī likhā’ī. 001. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

Among Rashed's typewritten and handwritten drafts of his poetry in the Archive there is a partial manuscript in pencil of his 1976 anthology Gumāñ kā mumkin. The document highlighted here is a penciled draft of a poem from that collection, "Andhā kabāṛī" (The Blind Scrap-dealer).

This draft seems to be very close to the final version. Yet it differs from the published version in small ways. At the end of the poem, displayed in the image above, the eponymous scrap-dealer cries out, advertising the detritus of dreams that is his merchandise in the familiar sing-song fashion of South Asian street vendors. Rashed represents the dealer's drawn-out calls by lengthening the vowels in the last two lines: "khwā-ā-ā-ā-b... / in ke dā-ā-ām bhī...." In the Urdu script the alif is repeated. In the version published in the Kulliyāt Rashed (or the editor) goes a step further and also lengthens the last vowel. For readers put off by academic transliteration, that is to say that the last line reads: "in ke daaaam bheee...":

خواب لے لو، خواب—
        میرے خواب—
   خواب—
 میرے خواب
         خوااااب—
              اِن کے داااام بھی ی ی ی—¹

Keywords: #poetry, #handwritten, #Guman_ka_mumkin, #pencil, #Andha_kabari_

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1 Rashed, N. M. Gumāñ kā mumkin in Kulliyāt-i Rāshid. Lahore: Māwarā, 1991. p. 598.

Short Biographical Note on Mr. N. M. Rashed

N. M. Rashed. Short Biographical Note on Mr. N. M. Rashed (copy 2). 1 p. 1 sheet. 8.5 x 11". Typewritten. This copy marked "For Baji" (NMR's eldest daughter Nasrin Rashed) at top left by donor Yasmin Hassan. English. Box 2. Folder 5: English translations of NMR poetry and letters to editors. 003. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

Several similar short biographies in English and Urdu are present in the NMR Archive. As our researcher Zahra Sabri notes, this version of the English biography is different from the version that Rashed sent to Carlo Coppola when the latter was preparing his interview with Rashed for his issue of the journal Mahfil. Apparently this version was written prior to the 1969 publication of Lā = Insān, as it is not mentioned.

1910 - Born in Akalgarh (now Alipur Chattha) in Gujranwala District of what is now Pakistan.
1926 - Matriculated from Government High School.
1928 - Passed Intermediate Exams from Government College, Lyallpur (now Faisalabad).
1930 - Bachelor's degree with Honours in Persian from Government College Lahore.
1932 - Master's degree in Economics from Government College Lahore. Began writing free verse in Urdu (the form with whose success he is associated).
1932-34 - Honorary editor of educational monthly Nakhlistān, Multan.
1935 - Editor of literary and educational magazine Shāhkār, Lahore. Became Assistant in Commissioner’s Office, Multan late in year.
1939 - Programme Assistant at All-India Radio. Later became Director of Programmes in Delhi.
1940 - Joined Halqa-i Arbāb-i Zauq, Delhi.
1942 - Published Māwarā.
1943-1947 - Captain, Indian Army Public Relations. Stationed in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Ceylon.
1947 May - Assistant Station Director, Lucknow.
1947 Aug. - Assistant Station Director, Peshawar and Lahore.
1949-1952 - Public Relations Officer, Station Director, Radio Pakistan.
1952 Oct. - Incharge of South East Asia Section of Radio and Visual Services Division in Office of Public Information, United Nations.
1956 - Director UN Information Centre, Djakarta. Published Īrān meñ ajnabī.
1958 - Deputy Director UN Information Centre, Karachi.
1959 - Director UN Information Centre, Karachi.

Among his influences he lists: Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, D. H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Stéphane Mallarmé, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Muhammad Deen Taseer (father of assassinated former governor of Pakistani Punjab Salman Taseer), Akhtar Sherani, and Chiragh Hassan Hasrat.

This version is marked "for Baji" in black pen in Yasmin Hassan's handwriting at the top left. A copy of it was made and sent to Yasmin Hassan’s eldest sister, Nasrin Rashed, in Islamabad.¹

Keywords: #biography, #Akalgarh, #juvenilia, #ghazal, #Lyallpur, #translation, #John_Milton, #sonnet, #Beacon, #Government_College_Lyallpur, #Ravi, #education, #Patras_Bokhari, #Nakhlistan, #Multan, #Shahkar, #Lahore, #All-India_Radio, #Delhi, #Halqah-i_Arbab-i_zauq, #Mawara, #army, #Iraq, #Iran, #Egypt, #Palestine, #Lucknow, #Peshawar, #Radio_Pakistan, #UN, #Jakarta, #Iran_men_ajnabi, #Karachi, #PEN, #Alexandre_Kuprin, #free_verse, #Aldous_Huxley, #Oscar_Wilde, #D._H._Lawrence, #E.M._Forster, #Leo_Tolstoy, #James_Joyce, #Fyodor_Dostoyevsky, #Stéphane_Mallarmé, #Ezra_Pound, #T.S._Eliot, #Muhammad_Deen_Taseer, #Akhtar_Sherani, #Chiragh_Hassan_Hasrat_

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1 Yasmin Hassan, Telephone conversation with Pasha M. Khan, June 17, 2015.

Expression and Reach — Translation by Safdar Mir & N. M. Rashed

N. M. Rashed. "Expression and Reach." Translation of N. M. Rashed's "Izhār aur rasā’ī". Trans. N. M. Rashed and Safdar Mir. 1 p. 1 sheet. 8.5 x 11". Typewritten. English. Box 2. Folder 5: English translations of NMR poetry and letters to editors. 002. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

This is a typewritten copy, probably written on Rashed's typewriter, of the English translation that Safdar Mir and Rashed wrote of his poem "Izhār aur rasā’ī." The Urdu original of the first stanza shown above is as follows:

— مو قلم، ساز، گلِ تازہ، تھرکتے پاؤں
بات کہنے کے بہانے ہیں بہت
آدمی کس سے مگر بات کرے؟
بات جب حیلۂ تقاریبِ ملاقات نہ ہو
اور رسائی کی ہمیشہ سے ہے کوتاہ کمند
بات کی غایتِ غایات نہ ہو!¹

Rashed sent a version of this translation to the poet Carolyn Kizer in 1966. In the accompanying letter (in the NMR Archive), he refers to it as "Safdar's rendering," indicating probably that Safdar Mir had first written a version that Rashed later corrected. He also notes in his letter that in that version Safdar Mir had left out one line, which Rashed provided for Kizer in red in the margin. In the present version there are no major omissions, though certain repeated lines have not been rendered. Kizer finally published a rendering of Rashed's poem—probably with the aid of Safdar Mir’s translation, which he had sent to her—in rhyming couplets, in her 1988 anthology Carrying Over. It begins:

Paintbrush and lute-string or new modeling clay
Are ways of saying what we want to say.
But we, who once wrote of lovers coming together,
How can we speak, now, of the whole world’s weather?
What we would reach is always out of reach,
The end of art is not the end of speech.²

Muhammad Safdar Mir (1922-1998) is now best known as a journalist who wrote for The Pakistan Times and Dawn, often using the pen-name "Zeno." He was also a poet, an actor, and a professor of English literature at Government College, Lahore. Two of his letters to Rashed have been preserved in our archive, as well as several newspaper articles by him on Rashed. Rashed recommended him to Kizer as an excellent translator, and a good poet and critic. Kizer did publish a rendering of one of Safdar Mir's poems, which she entitled "Elegy."³

Keywords: #Carolyn_Kizer, #Government_College_Lahore, #Izhar_aur_rasa'i, #La_=_insan, #NMR's_translation, #poetry, #Safdar_Mir, #translation,typewritten

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1 Rashed, N. M. Lā = insān. 1st ed. Lahore: Al-Misāl, 1969. pp. 86-87. For a published version of this translation, see Noori, Fakhar ul-Haqq. Nūm Mīm Rāshid kī nazmeñ aur un kī Angrezī tarājim. Faisalabad: Misāl, 2013. pp. 262-263.
2 Kizer, Carolyn. Carrying Over: Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Yiddish, and French African. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1988. p. 72.
3 Kizer, Carolyn. Carrying Over: Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Yiddish, and French African. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1988. p. 73.

The Marriage of Abu Lahab — Translation by N.M. Rashed

N. M. Rashed. "The Marriage of Abu Lahab." Translation of N. M. Rashed's "Abū Lahab kī shādī". Trans. N. M. Rashed. 2 pp. 2 sheets. 8.5 x 11". Typewritten. English. Box 2. Folder 5: English translations of NMR poetry and letters to editors. 001. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

This is a typewritten copy of Rashed's own English translation of his poem "Abū Lahab kī shādī." The Urdu original of the first stanza shown above is as follows:

شبِ زفافِ ابو لہب تھی، مگر خدایا وہ کیسی شب تھی،
ابو لہب کی دلہن جب آئی تو سر پہ ایندھن، گلے میں
سانپوں کے ہار لائی، نہ اس کو مشاطّگی سے مطلب
نہ مانگ غازہ، نہ رنگ روغن، گلے میں سانپوں
کے ہار اس کے، تو سر پہ ایندھن!
خدایا کیسی شب زفافِ ابو لہب تھی!¹

For an online version of the complete poem (with the option of reading in the Urdu, Hindi, or Roman script, and other useful tools), see "Abū Lahab kī shādī" on Rekhta.org.

The bride and groom will be familiar figures to many Muslims. Abu Lahab was an uncle of the Prophet who opposed Islam in its earliest years and tormented his nephew with various acts. His wife Umm Jamil was equally malicious; she is said to have cast thorns in Muhammad's path. Abu Lahab is the only individual explicitly cursed in the Qur'an. Arberry's translation of Sūrat al-Masad reads:

Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and perish he!
His wealth avails him not, neither what he has earned;
he shall roast at a flaming fire
and his wife, the carrier of the firewood,
upon her neck a rope of palm-fibre.²

In Rashed's imagining of the wedding, something like the characteristics of Umm Jamil mentioned in the Qur'an are already present as she enters the scene as a bride. She carries firewood, and in place of a necklace she sports not palm-fibre but a mass of snakes.

The prolific Rashed scholar Prof. Muhammad Fakhar ul-Haq Noori of Punjab University has written about Rashed’s translations of his own work in his essay "Rāshid kī nazmeñ, Rāshed ke tarājim" (in Mutāli‘ah-i Rāshid. Faisalabad: Misāl Publishers, 2010.), and in Nūn Mīm Rāshid kī nazmoñ ke angrezī tarājim. Faisalabad: Misāl Publishers, 2013.

Keywords: #Abu_Lahab_ki_shadi, #La_=_insan, #NMR's_translation, #poetry, #Quran, #translation, #typewritten

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1 Rashed, N. M. Lā = insān. 1st ed. Lahore: Al-Misāl, 1969. pp. 51-52. For a published version of this translation, see Noori, Fakhar ul-Haqq. Nūm Mīm Rāshid kī nazmeñ aur un kī Angrezī tarājim. Faisalabad: Misāl, 2013. pp. 215-216.
2 Arberry, A. J. The Koran Interpreted. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. Ch. 111.