Karey na jag mein alaa-o tau shair kis masraf
Karey na sheher mein jal thal tau chasm-enam kyaa hai
What good is a verse that does not light up the world?
What good a tearful eye if it does not wash away the city?
– Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Pakistan's unofficial poet laureate, was born almost exactly a hundred years ago, on 13 February 1911, in Sialkot, the hometown he shared with Pakistan's national poet, 'Allama' Muhammad Iqbal. Faiz passed away in 1984, aged 73, in Lahore, the city he came to call home during the last years of his life.
While Faiz acquired the status of a living legend in Pakistan and throughout the world, it is not as widely known that his father was also one of a kind, one who led a more colourful life than Faiz himself. Sultan Mohammad Khan was a poor shepherd boy, the son of a landless peasant in Sialkot, when he was spotted as intellectually gifted by a local schoolteacher and educated in a local school. Once he had gone as far as he could in Sialkot, he ran away to Lahore to continue his studies, living in a mosque for poor, homeless students. By this time, he had taught himself Persian as well as Urdu and English. By chance one day in the mosque he met an official of the Afghan king, Habibullah Khan; impressed by the young man's linguistic skills and intelligence, the official brought him to the royal court in Kabul. There, Sultan Mohammad rose to become the king's personal interpreter and senior minister. He later moved to England, where he acquired a law degree at Cambridge and became friends with Iqbal. He eventually retired back to Sialkot as a practicing lawyer and gentleman of leisure.