After not hearing from Fauzia Minallah for a while, it was a pleasant suprise to recieve an email from her. Fauzia was talking and we listened, as she described and elaborated on how she felt about the modernization of Islamabad at the cost of the permanent loss of centuries of tradition and art.
Fauzia’s latest passion of promoting the lost clay traditions of Saidpur, which she believes is a part of a very spiritual side of Islamabad , and has not been given due recognition. With the onslaught of the so called ‘Development’ process that is taking place here these days this spiritual side may be lost forever.
She told us that Islamabad is a new and an extremely artificial city but the land it was built on has history and the people who left their ancestral homes and lands where houses are built now, had very rich culture and traditions. There is no balance between modernization and heritage protection here. All the old monuments are time and again given new face lifts negating the very concept of heritage protection and the character of these monuments.
Having lived 35 years in Islamabad it is a city she loves and calls home. She says it is the best place on earth to raise her children. There is nothing like living with the beauty of nature, all year round being blessed with a riot of colors from the green of Margallah hills, to the blossoms of the Jacarandas, Amaltas, Kachnaar trees, filling the city with colors, it is like living in artist Ghulam Rasuls paitings. She is afraid that this absolutely beautiful city will lose the rustic charm she so cherishes with the onslaught of developers, contractors and land mafia.
She passionately pointed out how millions of rupees have been allocated for the facelift of Barri Imam’s Shrine, which she finds to be exactly the opposite of what this Sufi saint stood for, wandering in the forests of Hazara, retreating to Margallah Hills in Loi Dandi where in the lap of nature he remembered God and meditated in a cave there. It saddens her that even this space, still in its most pristine conditions will have fiber glass structures. Sufi saints did not have ostentatious luxurious lifestyles, it was the simple humble ways of the sufis that won the hearts and minds of the people and this simplicity was reflected in the structures they left behind and at the heart and soul of each is a magnificent Banyan or Peepal Tree, which in all heritage sites of the sufi saints of Islamabad are trapped in the construction all around it.
The vestiges of the rich culture of the Potohar region are slowly fading away and Saidpur is one of them. At least Saidpur has been lucky enough to still have some of its original residents and the Saidpur potters are some of those few people who have continued practicing the art of their forefathers. Sadly though there are only two potters Rahimdad and Niaz Mohd, and they are the only ones left in this area practicing this craft. Their sons are skilled potters too, but are not taking it up because they don’t find it as a viable option for a steady income. The frenzied work of turning Saidpur into a tourist village, may well be the last nail in the coffin. We owe these artisans a favor for keeping an art alive that would otherwise have been lost.
It has been almost 25 years that my mother sent me to learn pottery from Rahimdad, he gave me pottery lessons and I also had a traditional wooden wheel installed in our back lawn. But for me pottery was just a hobby at that time.
Instead of dealing with the real issues such as cleaning up the village and solving the problem of the total failure of sanitation and sewerage system, Saidpur is being bulldozed to be given a ‘new look’.
There is an important Hindu temple in this heritage rich village besides the legacy of Sufi saints here too, based on respect of nature, respect for the religion and traditions of others and respect for ‘women’. The Zinda Pir’s Bethak , is where the living saint Khawaja Khizr is believed to have sat on a platform and meditated, and the shrine of an unknown woman there right next to the most divine banyans may be the most, culturally and environmentally unpolluted spaces in Islamabad .
Her recent work is inspiration by the two hundred year old shrine of this woman. She was a single, unknown and nameless woman who looked after the Pir’s bethak, yet the people of the village still light diyaas at her shrine. It is so beautiful to witness this respect for a woman.
What could be a better medium than clay of Saidpur for this purpose. So for the triennial she made some diyaa holders. Many cracked, she wanted to have them glazed and went all the way to Pindi to a ‘Hukka’ makers worksop, but the glazing was not good enough. She is looking forward to meeting ceramists would be a great opportunity for me as my relationship with clay is only a month old and have to learn more about the techniques where I relied solely on the tradiotional ones.
Sadly the ‘Development’ monster is soon going to enter this spiritual space too. Flood lights will be lit near the Banyan trees ignoring the fact that there is a century old tradition of lighting diyaas every Thursday there. The legacy of austerity and simplicity of sufi saints is what one should find in this humble seat of worship of the Zinda Pir and the simple humble structure of an unknown woman’s shrine, not a fake tourist spot.
Had an experienced conservationist with extensive experience of conserving heritage sites like UNESCO, one could have relaxed, but in the absence of experts one can only hope that this village is developed into a tourist village with prior knowledge and respect of the history of this village and respect for the traditions of Saidpur.
Instead of reviving some of the lost clay traditions where most of the old houses have facades of fired clay bricks and other fired clay decorative motifs, Capital Development Authority architect employed stone engravers from Taxila to make niches out of shist stone. The only use of shist stone is in the base of wooden pillars in Saidpur. The fired clay flower that is placed on either side of an arch design around carved wooden doors would be aesthetically more pleasing and be politically correct. Niaz Mohd will loose the shop he inherited from his father, he says he has been promised to be given an alternative shop by the CDA, but he himself says ‘who knows what will happen?’ CDA has a lot of money and it would be well spent on these potters to revive these clay traditions
NGO’s protecting the environment of Margallah Hills National is another factor that should be addressed. They seem to be like wolves in sheep clothing adamantly pushing people out of the village. If they get their way than there will be no original residents left to carry out the living traditions of the village and when these people leave what kind of an ‘artificial and plastic’ village will it be?.
One can only hope that the NGO’s that brand the reidents as ‘illegal occupants’ will show the same mercy to these residents of Saidpur as they have shown to greater violators of Margallah National Park in the Madrassah whose seminaries burnt down a thousand year old Banyan ‘Buddha Tree’ venerated by the Buddhist community of Islamabad. The rich and influential in BaniGala and the GHQ (who by the way is also in MNP), have all violated the sanctity of the National Park, and since we are helpless and incapacitated to touch them then why not let these village people who are seventh generation in Saidpur stay.
Seeing how everything is changing in Islamabad, coupled with nostalgia, Fauzia has recently started visiting the craftsmen again after many years and asked them to revive some of the things they used to make and don’t do it any more. For example the Gharholi’ or a small water pitcher traditionally used to give a bath to the bride groom. It is decorated with clay flowers embellished with a mirror in the center and clay balls hanging like jewellery. I have asked Rahimdad to take impressions of the decorative motifs used in the old houses especially the clay flower; she wants to decorate the façade of her house with it and hopefully popularize it again. Pottery is a dying craft and events such as the ASNA triennial and Mela’s are always helpful in raising awareness about the survival issues of this craft, it opens new markets for the craftsmen. A craft only survives if it has a market.
Working with craftsmen she gets an urge to use that particular craft as a medium. While working with the slate engravers she just had to pick up a hammer and chisel and using her images of classical dancers transferred them on to slate.
Fauzia has enjoyed each medium while using it to express herself, from the editorial cartoons in Zia ul haq times to the books she illustrates using her mouseand Adobe Photoshop in my computer, or making paper out of the barks of different trees such as the wild mulberry and sheesham.
Never having developed a market for herself because of her life as an activist for somany different causes, she still has found time to bring some of the charred branches of the ‘Banyan tree (which was burnt down in 2003, by the seminaries of a mosque in E7) to use for her installation and artwork and present it to Buddhist community of Islamabad . Asking her why it was so important for her she said that she can never forget the tears of a Japanese friend who had asked her "Why?" Thousands of years of history burnt down in a few years and she had no answer for him. What really broke her heart was that despite all the torture it had suffered in 2003 the tree still had the will to live and go on, as if to accuse all of what had been done to it. In March 2006, the tree sprouted green leaves from its charred trunk as if in a final show of defiance to those who tried to uproot it, but any sign has been erased now, and all we have left is a mound of ash and burnt branches lying all over. The Madrassah is and has grown bigger at the cost of the Bhuddist temple being vandalized. Sadder still is that not a single organization has so much as raised an objectio to this crimnal murder of our heritage.
The branches were lying around for months, Fauzia got special permission from CDA to haul them off. She intends to use for her installation and artwork which she wants to present to Buddhist community of Islamabad.
We wish you the best of luck with all your endevours Fauzia and hope that you can reawaken a passion for our heritage in our callous and uncaring people. Please do share your pictures of your artwork that you present to the Buddhist community of Islamabad.