Gul, my friend.

IN the early hours of June 18, 2020, retired ambassador Gul Haneef peacefully passed away after a protracted illness in Karachi. Gul, of course, in his inimitable way deliberately pronounced `retd` as `retarded`. All of us are immeasurably enriched by having friends, good friends, childhood friends, lifelong friends. And we are hugely impoverished when they depart from our lives, leaving behind a palpable emptiness, an absence of presence, a space filling with memories of infinite variety that will sustain us instead of the simple but always reassuring knowledge that they are there just as you are for them.

Gul Haneef was that rare person who was loved by almost every single person he ever came into contact with. But Gul then was not just an individual; along with his wife, Malika, they were just about the most popular, admired and loved couple in the foreign service. And that is no ordinary feat considering the many, many outstanding, beloved and respected individuals and couples who have graced our service since its earliest days. Such people bring out the best in institutions, enabling them to remain level-headed in good times and resilient in difficult times.

I was particularly fortunate to have been a friend of Gul for more than 70 years. We are both from Quetta. We went to St Francis Grammar School where young Gul was regarded by his teachers as a most promising exemplar of English essay writing.

He always had a fascination with books, in particular English literature and later Urdu literature. As for beliefs, he remained a firm follower of Bertrand Russell`s inclination to look askance at dogmas and narratives in support of which no facts were offered. That may indeed have been the influence of his eldest uncle who was an extraordinarily intelligent, self-taught, and tolerant person.

I first made Gul`s acquaintance as a fellow tenderfoot scout at around the age of six in 1948. Gul`s mother passed away in childbirth, and so he was brought up by his elder maternal uncles who showered unremitting love and affection upon their nephew whom they saw as their own child. His younger maternal uncle was Yahya Bakhtiar who became attorney general of Pakistan, and whose children Gul`s cousins have always seen Gulas their adorable elder brother.

Yahya Bakhtiar was a very close friend of my uncle Qazi Muhammad Isa. Both were lawyers, one was a politician. Pakistan, for all its birth pangs and early stumbling, was still the name of visionary hope...

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