BIOGRAPHY

• Date of Birth: February 13th, 1911Place: Sialkot (Punjab), Pakistan Faiz's mother was Sultan Fatima. Faiz's father died in Sialkot in 1913. Faiz's father was a learned man and enjoyed the company of well-known literary persons. Wrote the biography of Amir Abdur Rehman. Faiz was therefore, born in a respectable and literary environment and was a very promising student with a religious background.

• Returning from London in 1964 he settled down in Karachi and was appointed as Principal, Abdullah Haroon College , Karachi. Editorship of the monthly magazine Adabe-Latif from 1947 to 1958. Worked as Editor under the Progressive Papers Ltd, of the Pakistan Times, the Urdu newspaper Imroze and the weekly Lailo-Nihar. In the 1965 war between India & Pakistan he worked in an honorary capacity in the Department of Information. Acted as Editor of the magazine Lotus in Moscow, London and Beirut.

EMPLOYMENT

PUBLICATIONS• Naqshe Faryadi, 1941• Daste Saba, 1953• Zindan Nama, 1956• Mizan, a collection of literary articles, 1956• Daste-Tahe-Sang, 1965• Sare-Wadiye Seena, 1971• Shame-Shehr Yaran, 1979• Merey Dil Merey Musafar, 1981• Nuskha-Hai-Wafa, 1984• Pakistani Culture, Urdu & English

YADOON KAY SAYEBy Alys Faiz

AWARDS

• The real award for a poet is the love and appreciation of his fans. Faiz stands among those who enjoy both at one and the same time. Besides he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963, as the first Asian poet. Before his death in 1984 he was also a nominee for the award of Nobel Prize, but his association in later life, with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Movement, and the Editorship of Lotus, deprived him of the award because the Zionist element in the controlling body of the Nobel Prize is strong.

THE MESSAGE• Faiz is a poet of beauty and love. His

message is the reign of beauty and love in the country. The passion for enjoying the beauty of life, his deep attachment to love of self and the agony of the world, his love of humanity, his patriotism, his passion for revolution, his sense of justice, are all metaphors of the agony of love. That agony of love which is the soul of his imagination and feeling, on account of which he illuminates the beauty of both worlds with the desolation of his heart.