Hasan Abidi

Hasan Abidi (1929–2005), pen name 'hasan', was a Pakistani journalist, poet and political activist whose ghazal carried the evening light of Karachi — a city he loved and questioned all his life. Born Syed Hasan Askari on 7 July 1929 at Zafarabad in Jaunpur district, he was educated at Azamgarh and Allahabad, and moved to Pakistan in 1948, settling in Karachi. He began in journalism in Lahore at the daily Afaq in 1955, moved to the weekly Lail-o-Nahar in 1957 — then edited by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Sibte Hassan, both of whom shaped him — and later edited the women's magazine Akhbar-e-Khwateen before joining Dawn, where he worked until his death, writing a weekly literary column for its Karachi pages. He was president of the Karachi Press Club, an active trade unionist, and a member of the Irtiqa forum; his politics cost him spells in jail. His poetry collections are Navisht-i-Nai (1995), Jareeda (1998) and Farar Hona Huroof Ka (2004); he also wrote verses for children in Kaghaz ki Kashti and translated the essays of Eqbal Ahmed into Urdu. He wrote both ghazals and nazms, but his surest ground was the ghazal, while his nazms told the story of a society whose changing values he mourned. He died of a heart attack in Karachi on 6 September 2005, aged seventy-six, having handed in his latest column the evening before. He left a wife and three children.