Opening my eyes: Trust School, Harbanspura

Islamabad diary

When you think of an angel of mercy, what name springs to mind? 99 times out of 100, Abdus Sattar Edhi. When you want to know how a hospital should be run what do you look at? Adibul Hasan Rizvi’s Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation. (And to give credit where it is due, when you think of cancer, what image rises in your mind? That of Shaukat Khanum, built by Imran Khan.)

How a school should be run I did not know until I got a chance to visit the Trust School in Aamir Town, Harbanspura. My eyes shone, my heart beat a bit faster because here was again a minor miracle on display: an excellent school, boys and girls sections separate, operating in a low-income locality (let us not mince our words) imparting quality education. It was wholly free for the first 10 years of its existence. Now they charge fees which are not too low but not too high – and 27 percent of the students enrol for free.

The Trust is running schools elsewhere too: Thokar Niaz Beg, Baghrian in Green Town, a junior campus in Sabzazar, a junior campus in Wapda Town. The driving spirits behind the Trust are a group of businessmen, retired civil servants, a doctor, a lawyer, etc.

The doctor is Prof T A Shah, formerly of King Edward’s Medical College. He wasn’t there but I gathered that every year he gives a sizeable donation (near about 50 lakh I was told) to the Trust. My low opinion of doctors in general I immediately take back. On New Year’s Eve let all persons of goodwill drink to the Prof’s health and long life.

There is a gynae doctor in Shadman, Dr Zahida Durrani. She has donated four kanals of her land (half an acre) in Shadman, one of Lahore’s richest places where the price of land is high, to the Trust. What can I say? There are doctors in front of whom regular pickpockets and sleaze artists look like pictures of respectability. Then comes along someone like Dr Zahida Durrani and Dr T A Shah, and Dr Rizvi of SIUT, and your cynicism takes a hit and you are left speechless. And the memory of all the cutthroats and rip-offs in the profession is forgotten.

A self-contained charge of energy is the Trust Secretary, Tahir Yousaf, who with his wife has been part of the Trust since the beginning, some 20 odd years back. And he is a lawyer. There is no shortage of outright scoundrels and ruffians in the profession, as members of the black-coat fraternity in their more candid moments would be the first to admit. I hereby take back, with interest, my confirmed opinion on the subject. (Journalists can be scoundrels too, and with relish and panache, but of that some other time.)

There are other names but let this column not sound like an exercise in hagiography. All I want to say is that jaded as my sensibilities are, and not moved easily to emotion or bleary-eyed sentiment, I was moved when I went to the Trust School because I was swept by the feeling that such schooling every child of school-going age in Pakistan deserves. Not only that, if at all our Republic has anything to do with Islam – and at present it has very little to do with it – such education should be every child’s birthright, like mother’s milk and the first vaccination shots.

What after all is Islam? Not more mosques and more raucous sound flowing out of high wattage loudspeakers. Islam is much more than ritual and prayer and false ostentation at which we as a society are so good. You have a hospital like SIUT and that is Islam. You have the Edhi Trust and that is the soul of Islam. Maulana Edhi, by the way, has a glad eye too which, at least in my estimation, makes him more of a human spirit. I like monks but laughing monks with a twinkle in their eyes are better, like Friar Tuck out of Robin Hood.

And good schooling is Islam which makes Cuba, with its wonderful system of education, a more Islamic country than all the sheikhdoms, emirates, monarchies and feckless republics gathered under the rubric of the Islamic Conference.

Until such time as we can feed and clothe our poor, until such time that we do more for education and health and stop all this hypocrisy in the name of development, let us do ourselves a favour: let us not describe ourselves as an Islamic Republic. Let us not banish the term. Let us hold it in abeyance as General Zia did the constitution and only bring it back into service when this is a slightly more egalitarian society and there is less all-round poverty.

Now the Harbanspura School is another example of what can be done to improve things. But it’s only been possible because of the dedication and hard work of a group of committed individuals. This is the old story of human resolve and motivation. Wonders are not to be created just like that. It takes a Castro to bring about the Cuban revolution, an Edhi to establish the Edhi Foundation, a Rizvi for SIUT, a dedicated team to bring up the school I am talking about.

In my imagination, or in my headier moments after reading a poem or a moving story or listening to something out of Beethoven or Wagner, I want to do similar things. But it is only there in my mind. It is only some of us, the most gifted and blessed amongst us, who can put flesh and meaning on their dreams.

Everyone is not an Edhi or a Dr Rizvi. Everyone is not the Layton, Rahmatullah, Burton Trust (LRBT) which carries out eye treatment and eye operations for free. Everyone is not an Imran Khan who can build one cancer hospital and even while being full-time in politics can set about building another Shaukat Khanum Hospital in KP. Find a thousand faults in his politics but you have to admire him for these things.

But lesser mortals can do what they can. Even if we are not Edhi, there are countless Pakistanis who give what they can to his Foundation. And they do so with eyes closed because they know their money will be put to good use and not wasted. They donate to SIUT and to LRBT and even while disagreeing with Imran Khan’s politics they give money to his hospital because there are no question marks on his financial integrity. Similarly people donate to the Harbanspura School, although I must hasten to add that it is on a scale much smaller than the other works of charity, or rather Islam in practice, I have mentioned.

I realise I am putting myself in a spot. After all this verbosity about charity and socialism and Islam, the question arises: how about putting your money (some of it) where your mouth is? A child’s education can be sponsored at the Harbanspura School for Rs40,000 a year. That comes to about Rs3000 and a bit a month. Now where do I get this money from? Ah, the supreme sacrifice I am called upon to make: I’ll have to cut into my bootlegger’s bill. So here goes and I think, if resolve does not waver, to the trustees I will write.

One thing about the ceremony I attended at the school sticks in my mind. Tahir Yousaf in his speech said that in three, four days of our marriages, those of our children, we spend more money than all the money spent on the education of our children throughout the year. That’s something to think about.

The money we spend on funerals and funeral khanas, the money spent on marriages and jahez. Whose idea of Islam is this?

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com