NEWS

Zahid Farani Sheikh
(1940 -2014)
 
Invitation to honor a poet, to get to know his best book and to commemorate his family

Berlin authors and artists will remember: Zahid Sheikh Farani, the great Pakistani poet, was for nearly a decade our guest and friend in Berlin, where he had found refuge and exile from the military dictatorship of Zia Ul Haqh.
 

In his country he was a well-known poet and lawyer, but in Germany he was a stranger, whose work and language (Urdu-Punjabi) was hardly accessible in Europe. Even his identity was doubted by the German authorities until Benazir Bhutto, who was on a trip through Europe, confirmed his identity. Among the Writers' Union and the New Society for Literature he found collegial intake, but despite all efforts of his friends he did not succeed in getting a fair employment; he had to get through as a pizza baker to get a living for himself and his likewise exiled sisters. This was the initiative for the Writers' Union VS to set up a fund for writers in exile, which successfully campaigned for assistance in this case and many others. Up today this fund has been continued by the German PEN club.

 
In 1988, Sheikh Zahid Farani found in Ebrahim Ehrari, the Head of the Etching Workshop of the Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK), a person, who was familiar with art and literature of the Islamic world, a like-minded artist with whom he applied for a publication in the edition Mariannenpress. His ghazals, composed in Berlin, - in a German paraphrase of Erika Stöppler (+ 2015) - convinced the jury of this challenging project, which eventually got published bilingually – in German and calligraphed Urdu-Punjabi, decorated with Islamic ornamentation and illustrated with etchings by Ebrahim Ehrari - in 100 numbered and signed copies, printed on handmade paper.
 
Through an inventory mistake 30 copies of this edition had been misplaced and found again with the resolution of the Mariannenpress in 2009, as the author himself had already returned home after the fall of the military dictatorship in Pakistan and has started to work as an advocate at the Supreme Court in Lahore.
 
In 2014 we received through his sister in Antwerp the news that our friend, who in the meantime had married in Lahore and had become father of a daughter, was considering to return to Berlin as he was suffering of health problems but also due to the renewed political turmoil in Pakistan and his professional difficulties. While his friends in Berlin sought support by the Berlin Senate and the PEN Club, Farani Sheikh died unexpectedly after a botched surgery at the hospital. Since then his young wife and daughter in Lahore have to rely on the support of his family, who has also sought for help from his friends in Berlin.
 
We, that’s Ebrahim Ehrari and Hannes Schwenger have agreed in consultation with the House of Literature Berlin, which is the legal successor of the Mariannenpress, to present these retrieved copies of the book "The writing on the wall" in a bilingual reading, to remember our friend and to offer his book at a very special price of €90, - to support the family and in a charity event at the Galerie Berlin-Baku

on Wednesday, the 13^th of May 2015
at 7 pm
at the Galerie Berlin-Baku
Großgörschenstr. 7 (near U7 Kleistpark)

We are looking forward to welcoming you!