My Memoirs: Early Days of My Life by Sheikh Suhaib Hasan
Part 1 of 24
Since my birth in November 1942, in the princely state of Malairkotla (India) till my matriculation (the end of secondary school) in 1957, I had the prints of my future life due to the way I was brought up in a family with seven siblings; one sister and six brothers. I was the third after my sister and my elder brother Shuaib. My brother Shuaib and I advanced in education together sharing the same class and almost the same subjects (except for the last two years of secondary school) but I was the one who was destined to follow my father’s aspiration and his profession as a teacher of Oriental Studies and as a preacher of the true teachings of Islam. Incidentally, this is the very same period which has totally been devoted, by my father, to the Jamaat Islami which was established by Maulana Mawdoodi in 1941 and which my father joined right after its inception. His presence in Malairkotla, the state where my mother’s family has settled since long, was due to his full time teaching job on behalf of Jamaat. No exaggeration if I say that I have been brought up in the lap of Jamaat.
I recollect dim memories of my childhood in the state till our migration to Lahore in 1948, just after the partition of India into Bharat and Pakistan. I remember attending Madrasa in the Mosque where I learnt the Urdu alphabet. My hand-writing, the basis for my interest in calligraphy, was deep rooted in those pens made by sharpening the end of wooden sticks. I remember getting the applause from my first Madrasa teacher when I was able to write the letter ‘Jeem’ better than any other child in the class. By the time we left Malairkotla for good, I had become fond of reading short stories wherever I could get hold of them. The trains to Lahore via Amritsar, the seat of Sikh religiosity, had witnessed in those early days of partition, baths of bloodshed on the hands of the hostile Sikh. Some trains reached Lahore with corpses drenched in blood only.
On a hot day in May 1948, we were fortunate enough to have a safe passage through Amritsar station by midnight. It witnessed an ambush where plundering and looting took place in the rear carriages of the train but we, with the grace of Allah, were not affected. The family of six, the father, mother and four children arrived safe and sound at Lahore. My father’s affiliation to Jamaat kept him moving from one place to the other, during the next nine years.
We spent three months in a two-storey small house in the very famous old city of Rawalpindi with narrow alleys and unhealthy sanitation. In the small reception room on the ground floor, my eyes cast a glance at a wooden cabinet, the shelves of which were seen through the glass, bundled with books and magazines. With lust in my eyes for catching hold of some story books, it was curtailed by the father who said, “These have been left by the Hindu owner of the house who, like us, has migrated to India. We have no right to touch things that belonged to someone else.”
Our family moved back to Lahore to stay in the locality of Ichra, the headquarters of Jamaat at that time. For the next four years, before I was ten, our studies were done at home. We started receiving a children’s magazine entitled “Phool” (A flower) with an entirely Islamic blend. I was fascinated in reading whatever material I could lay my hands on. My happiness knew no bounds when a short story written by me marked the page of this children’s bi-monthly magazine.
My father was so engrossed in jamaat activities that he seldom had time to teach us. Mother took the major role in teaching us the Qur’an and Urdu reading and writing.
The first time I entered a proper school building was in Sialkot, a border town in Punjab, where my father was transferred in 1952 as an activist of Jamaat. He took both of us, me and my elder brother to Pakistan Modern High School (previously known as Khalsa School run by Sikhs) and handed us over to Master Muhammad Hussain, the headmaster and an activist of Jamaat as well. I remember myself crying to find myself in a multitude of boys all around us. We both were admitted to sixth class (the first of three years middle stage in those days).
As migrants speaking Urdu in a predominantly Punjabi gathering, we both were given a new title by the classmates: “Bhayya” i.e. little brother. No one called us by our real names. For the rest of the following three years, we were none but “Bhayya”. For the first time, we had a set curriculum to follow. Apart from Urdu, we had to read English, Diniyat (Islamic studies), history, geography, mathematics, and arts (drawing only). Our school day used to start with the general assembly of all school children who sang with a collective voice the famous poem of Allama Iqbal: “lab pe ati hay dua ban ke tamanna meri”. While in the classroom, we would sometimes recite, “twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are”. I have been fascinated with both, though later in life, Arabic had left no room for mastering Urdu poetry or English classes.
Hockey became a passion for me. Our first group of school mates started playing, not with hockey sticks, because they could not afford to buy them, but with hard twigs of tree branches which had a bend at the end. The only person to bring his own hockey stick was our goal-keeper, who remained throughout his career a shining star of the children’s team. We bought our own hockey sticks sometime later. A scar on my chin, covered up by my beard later, was a result of a strong blow by a player’s stick, and always reminds me of my folly, being on the wrong side of my fellow player. Though this passion lasted only three years of my middle classes (6, 7, and 8th), I have never been as fond of any other game as hockey itself. I loved watching hockey matches, no matter if I cannot play in the field. I remember sarcastic remarks of a Sikh, long after my days of education, when I started my career as an Arabic and Islamic studies teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. I could not resist paying a visit to watch a hockey match between Pakistan and Kenya. The ground was alive with Asian Muslims in support of Pakistan, and hosts of Sikhs to back the Kenyan team, which used to have a number of Sikh players. The remarks made by one of their spectators was “oh look at them (i.e. Muslims); their Molvis are here as well!”…
Read the rest of ‘My Memoirs: Early Days of My Life’ at https://drsuhaibhasan.co.uk/2017/01/09/my-memoirs-part-4-year-1962-1963/
More on the life of Sheikh Suhaib Hasan
Sheikh Suhaib Hassan - Part1/4 | Family & Early life in Indian/Pakistan | Young Smirks PodCast EP109
Watch here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy1pcIbV_ck