Faiz Ahmad Faiz: Poet of Love and Revolution

Faiz was born in Sialkot in 1911 and studied English and Arabic in Lahore. He taught, joined the Progressive Writers' Movement, served in the army during the Second World War and, after 1947, edited The Pakistan Times. In 1951 he was arrested in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and spent about four years in prison, where he wrote some of his finest poems. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962. After the coup of 1977 he lived in exile, much of it in Beirut, where he edited the Afro-Asian journal Lotus. He died in Lahore on 20 November 1984.

His collections include Naqsh-e-Faryadi (1943), Dast-e-Saba (1952) and Zindan-Nama (1956), the last two largely written in prison. Among his best-known poems are Mujh se pahlii sii mohabbat, in which the lover asks the beloved not to expect the old love, because the suffering of the world now claims him too; Bol, a call to speak while one still can; and Ham dekheñge (1979), which became an anthem after Iqbal Bano sang it in Lahore in 1986.

Faiz's poems are still under copyright, so we do not quote them here; they are widely published in Urdu and in English translation. To understand his roots, read the classical masters he renewed: Mir and Ghalib.