A new book investigates poet Mustafa Zaidi’s death, still a subject of controversy in Pakistan

In Multan, in the southern part of the Punjab province, the journalist and writer Masood Asher learned of his old friend’s death. He wrote a remembrance of Mustafa.

He thought back to the year 1952, when Mustafa was studying for his final exams for his master’s degree in English literature. He had started his degree at Allahabad University, where he was known as Tegh Allahabadi, a rising young poet, who had adopted his hometown Allahabad’s name as his poetic pen name.

But when Mustafa moved to Lahore, in neighbouring Pakistan, a new country created for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent after the end of British colonial rule, Allahabadi was no longer the right moniker for him, and “move” did not aptly describe what had happened. In fact, Mustafa had been recovering from a suicide attempt in Allahabad, when his elder brother, Mujtaba, had come to the city and taken him to Pakistan in 1951 – yet another moving piece in the hordes of people deciding where to live on either side of the hastily drawn borders between India and Pakistan.

By 1952, Mustafa was living in Lahore, a city that was picking up the pieces after the bloody aftermath of Partition. The havelis of...

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