The Last Song (Akheri Sandara)

By Rahmat Shah Sayel

Price: Rs.60

Available at Danish Kitab-Khana Peshawar

Reviewed by Dr. Yaseen Iqbal Yousafzay

(DAILY STATESMAN 24/11/2003) Rahmat Shah Sayel is one of the most popular nationalist Pukhto poets of our times. The term nationalism commonly interpreted as racism in Europe does not carry the same meaning in our Eastern societies but is used for anyone who has the talent, sense and a sympathetic heart to feel the pains of fellow beings or in other words, anyone seeking justice for his down-trodden people can be called nationalist. Therefore, considering the themes of Sayel’s decades long poetry and his association with leading reform movements of his times I feel no hesitation to call Rahmat Shah Sayel a leading Pukhtun nationalist poet. As a poet, he has established his name long ago and his lovely songs and revolutionary poems have impressed nearly every listener and reader of his mother tongue, however, to our great surprise, AKHERI SANDARA (The Last Song) unlike its name happened to be a collection of seven short stories. The language of the whole book is very simple and although rarely but complex Pukhto words/terms appear to have been avoided/replaced with common foreign words to make stories more fluent and readable.

The first story entitled “the last song” is comparatively simple (probably kept intentionally like that to encourage readers) appears completely different from the remaining six stories. It is about our national double-standards and contradictory attitudes towards our national artists. It narrates the story of a musical show where a singer who had devoted her whole life to singing of songs in her national mother-tongue retires. According to the story, everyone had been enjoying her every song and honouring her with each and every honour and title of her times when she was young but when got older, the nation had nothing to offer her except names like evildoer etc. as a cultural gift. She abandons her harmonium on the stage as if she hands over it to the custodians of her national traditions and culture-her fans…… The story ends with a begging pot in her desperate hands going towards the same street once used to be over-flooded with the same proud people to see a glimpse of her beauty.

Each of the remaining six stories takes its reader along a unique ocean comprising an admixture of human perception, understanding and conceptual development of the past, present and future blended with great colors of art and philosophy. The very philosophical and multidimensional nature of some stories makes the reader loose his sequence of events several times but the author keeps on reminding him of the frame he started with. It is difficult to compare the skills of Mr. Sayel in writing poetry and prose but his unique name in Pukhto poetry and the book under-review makes him a master of both these genres. Like most of his poetry, the author has coloured his stories with beauties of romanticism without loosing the humanitarian nationalistic pains in his unique style. Furthermore, in some stories, the author has been successful in sketching the insecurity, socio-political and economical uncertainty of the region and the helplessness of his indecisive desperate people.

I hope every “learned” Pukhtun will read his this collection to understand the great national philosophy hidden in the apparently simple personality of Rahmat Shah Sayel and explore the works of our great national literary talent.