EDITORIAL
Edhi: A Life Without
Parallel
I
t is a day all Pakistanis were dreading, a day without
Abdus Sattar Edhi. The passing of the man Pakistan
came to call “Maseeha”, or messiah, was met with
heartbreak, sadness, and widespread grief across a
country seldom united. The state announced a day of
mourning, and a state funeral — the latter, a predictable
response, but something the great man himself perhaps
would not have approved of. According to Edhi Sahib’s
way of life, it should have been the poor and needy who
came to pay him their respects, in the front lines at the
funeral — and the VIPs at the back. The irony then, that
at the Janaza of a man who spent his life in service of
the needy, the front row was populated by VIPs jostling
for camera space, while those who came from far and
wide, with just a wealth of respect and emotion for Edhi
Sahib, were left out of the stadium altogether, for the
security of the affluent and powerful. From the day he
brought a single ambulance purchased from alms, till today, six decades later, when the Edhi service is the largest private emergency response service in all of South
Asia, Abdus Sattar Edhi did not build his wife and children a home. The man seized with the desire to feed,
clothe, and house the homeless and destitute, owned
himself two pairs of clothing — one of which he is to be
buried in as ‘kafan’. Having dug his grave by his own
hand 25 years ago, Edhi acted as one never unaware of
his own mortality, and constantly in a rush to make his
every minute one that provided healing to some, comfort
to others, and consequently inspiration to 180 million.
Yet, when he was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2013,
and informed he would be on dialysis for the rest of his
life, Edhi chose a simple single bed in a ward at SIUT,
besieged though he was by offers of private treatment
abroad, by none less than former president Zardari and
current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — no strangers to
the comforts of foreign medical treatment. He refused
himself comfort, rest, and indulgence, living by a personal code so meticulously governed that he gave up
sugar in his tea, terming it wasteful. A life of continuous,
unrelenting, and untiring service of the very poorest, the
most vulnerable, and the abandoned; towards the end
of which he stated simply in an interview, “I am satisfied with my life.” Abdus Sattar Edhi leaves behind him
a legacy unparalleled. Many mourn selfishly, wondering what is to become of Pakistan without its Meseeha.
They forget that we had an Edhi, and we have an Edhi
still; her name is Bilqees. The lady who was a tower of
strength at her husband’s side, a soldier in his mission,
shouldered the mantle of running the organization after
Abdus Sattar Edhi’s health troubles began to exacerbate in 2013. In her grief, Pakistan mourns with her. And
in her mission, Pakistan stands with her. Edhi zindabad.
Pakistan paindabad.
7 | BOOM