Photo courtesy Asim Amin
On Wednesday February 10th, 2021, we lost a very
dear friend. At 6:30 in the morning I got a text that he had died earlier. He had suffered a massive heart attack the few days back. By 5:30 pm I was on my way back home after his burial. It all happened
so quickly; something unheard in corona times. Imam Qureshi alluded to that in his prayers by side, that it's a privilege to be buried without delay. There was not a moment's hold up from the time he was released from hospital to his interment.
Entering New Jersey from New York out of George Washington
Bridge, you see a beautiful mosque on the north side of Interstate 95. It is Dar
ul Islah, commonly known as Teaneck Mosque. I always wished to be there but
never had an opportunity. I would have never thought that would be the place where I meet
Nadir Kamal for the last time and accompany him to his final resting place in Laurel
Grove Cemetery.
I knew him since 10th of May 1973, when a hundred
of us, the 20th
entry Abdalians, started our journey at age 12. We lived in boarding for five years.
Nadir and I were in the same house, Jinnah Wing. By the time we left, it was a fraternity. For each sixteen or so of us in each
of the six Wings, it was next thing to be a brother.
We all are similar and different in many ways, but he was more different. Quiet, aloof, but soft spoken and friendly. In those five years,
almost everyone would find one person or two to dislike, hate or to be
angry with. Not Nadir Kamal. I don’t think anybody had any issue with him.
He was good in studies and got recognition for that. He
chose pre-engineering, went to UET Mughalpura and then to USA.
Although not born in mountains, he spent a large part of his
life on them. I had accompanied him and others in two trips to Northern Areas
in our final year of Hasanabdal and the year after, but that was it for me. He,
sometimes alone and other times with fellow travelers like Shahid Ghafoor, have
been to almost every mountain range in northern Pakistan, including base camp of K2. One
part of his family hailed from the foothills of mountains south of Nepal. Perhaps
he carried some inborn inclination.
His search to see new places only grew with time. When I
reconnected with him after a while, I found out he was almost done checking the
last few states to have all fifty under his feet. He was also working on the
100th mark on countries of the world and
eventually surpassed that. He is the only one I know who has been to all the
seven continents including Antarctica.
Barring large cities, he almost never went to the same place
twice. If he went, he took a different route. He was not keen to write up about
his travels despite being urged about it, we would have learnt much more about him and his world. At a later date, at least, he started
putting pictures online. Some of them can be seen on his Facebook page.
It seemed like he was searching for something; a wandering
soul. What else took him time and again out of the comfort of home and familiar
places to the unknown and unpredictable!
Waqar Sadiq, said he was a Malang. Yes he was in a true sense.
He was in I.T. and worked at one time in a job which gave him the opportunity to
travel to different places. In good days
he had a deal with the company to have a few months off at a stretch, for his
international travels. Later when that became difficult, he moved on. He
had no issue when he left a job. He would go away for a few months to conquer
new lands.
Some twenty years back he suffered a big loss. Both of his parents died naturally the same night. He had
to adjust his professional life to take care of family affairs, being the only
brother among four sisters. He put his
family responsibilities ahead of his personal life.
In pre social media era, meeting him would mean meeting with
at least another twenty or so of your old classmates; if not eighty. He was
one keeping contact with almost everybody. After all he was the one who travelled most.
He never married, perhaps never had a long-term serious
relationship. That kept people guessing but did not bother him. He had made a
place in many hearts and it shows up now when the bereaved talk about him and find
him in each other’s heart. That is what we all felt when the same night his classmates met on Zoom, benefits of modern times, to mourn together, from California to Australia. Everybody had a personal story to tell about him.Friends in Pakistan were able to be together for Ghaibana Nimaz e Janaza in Lahore. Our old teacher and housemaster Mahfooz ul Rahman Sahib was kind enough to attend at age 81, from Narowal.
He lived an independent life, not owing anything to anyone
and by the time he left, he had fulfilled all his obligations to near and dear
around him. Many would wish such a contented exit.
True to his name, Javed Iqbal aptly said that he was Nadir and
he was Kamal.
He loved mountains and spend the most of his life tracking
and searching them. In his final days, he was perturbed by the tragedy in
waiting on K2 where mountaineers could not be accounted for. His last Facebook post is about the concern
he was sharing with his other mountaineer friends.
Three days later I was back in the cemetery with Zubair Niazi, who travelled four hours each way to visit him.
Nature chose a mountain for him for his last resting place. His
last worldly travel is to a serene slow uphill road, where he finally rested on
the top of the cemetery hill, next to Passaic River and Christopher Columbus
Highway, the Interstate 80. You can hear low humming sound of travelers. That would
keep him happy.
Nadir belonged to the mountains;
he is back there.
I had to mention some names to give the proper credit. Otherwise the post is a reflection of the collective sentiments of all of his 20th entry classmates.
My thanks to Naheed Usmani for letting me know at the right time. It would have been otherwise impossible for me to have a proper closure.
