Faiz Ahmed Faiz Ai Documentary

Zita International

4/27/2025

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00:00In a time when silence was law and dissenter crime,

00:26In the history of poetry and protest, no name shines brighter than Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

00:41Born of fire and ink, Faiz was more than a poet, he was a witness, a voice against silence.

00:56Lahore, city of culture and intellect.

01:06It was here in the 1920s that a young Faiz arrived to continue his education.

01:13It all began with a poetry competition, judged by none other than a Lama Iqbal.

01:23A teenage Faiz recited verses that revealed a potential Iqbal instantly recognized.

01:35Iqbal urged Faiz's father, his friend from Cambridge, to send the boy to Government College Lahore.

01:42He studied Arabic and English at Government College.

01:51His passion for learning naturally led him into teaching and writing.

01:58Then came a brief chapter in the British Indian Army.

02:02Disciplined, fleeting, before he traded the uniform for the pen.

02:11Becoming editor at the Pakistan Times.

02:14But Faiz was no ordinary writer.

02:24A committed Marxist in a fragile new nation, he was arrested, accused of conspiring to overthrow the government.

02:36They took away his freedom, but they couldn't silence his voice.

02:39Behind bars, where hope flickers like a candle in the wind, Faiz wrote some of his most powerful verses.

02:53Four long years in prison.

02:56Four years of ink and iron.

03:03Upon release, he stepped into another arena.

03:06This time alongside Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a socialist leader with whom Faiz shared a vision of justice.

03:20He continued to write for magazines, for people, for truth.

03:25His words crossed borders, translated into Russian, earning him the Lenin Peace Prize.

03:41But peace is always fleeting in the eye of the storm.

03:48Bhutto's government fell.

03:49And then came the general.

03:54With a steely gaze and an iron fist, Zia-ul-Haq seized Pakistan's soul, scripting a saga of faith, fear, and ferocity.

04:09For a man like Faiz, a Marxist, a humanist, a lover of freedom, there was no room left.

04:21Deemed an atheist, watched by unseen eyes, he fled.

04:31Beirut became his refuge.

04:33Exile, his new companion.

04:42But even there, Faiz fought, with verses instead of weapons.

04:50He penned poems that pierced through Zia's theocratic veil.

04:53Invoking the words of Mansour al-Hallaj, the Persian Sufi mystic executed for declaring,

05:03Anna al-Haq, I am the truth.

05:09In the mystical tradition of Sufism, these words carry profound meaning.

05:14A declaration of the annihilation of the self, where the ego dissolves and only the divine remains.

05:21To Halaj, it was union with God.

05:27To tyrants, it was a threat cloaked in heresy.

05:33Faiz, ever the craftsman of metaphor and defiance, wove these words into a poem.

05:39A quiet act of spiritual rebellion against the regime.

05:43But when the poem reached the hands of his publisher, fear took hold.

05:51In the volatile climate of Zia's rule, such words could not see the light.

05:58The verses were removed, suppressed, erased.

06:02They never appeared in any local edition.

06:11Only in a rare 1983 publication in London does the full poem survive.

06:16A verse silenced by fear, buried in ink, waiting to be remembered.

06:29A verse silenced by fear, buried in ink, sit at the silence of hollow, was believing that the assault on the ground is a boundary.

06:47A verse silenced by bit, pray for me a

06:58GULO MEI RUNG BHARE, BAD NAHU BHAR چLE,

07:02CHLE BHI AOU, KEI GULSHAN KAI KARAUBAAR CHLE

Faiz Ahmed Faiz Ai Documentary

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