The Aleph Review: A creative writing anthology dedicated to Taufiq Rafat

“Literature is memories and literary reviews are, in a way, the compilation of those memories,” began the introductory speaker at the launch of the inaugural edition of The Aleph Review.

The stage was set in the middle of a large garden in a house on Tufail Road, Cantonment. Surrounded by trees, a light breeze, the mix of a soft piano melody, and the songs of various birds, Mehvish Amin launched The Aleph Review, a literary anthology of creative writing published by Broken Leg Publications and with the support of the Taufiq Rafat foundation.

The event was attended by a number of esteemed literary personalities, politicians, and socialites including Najam Sethi, Imran Qureshi, Ahmed Rashid, Shafqat Mehmood, Athar Tahir and Khwaja Shahid Hussain, Samina Rehman, and Shaista Sirajudin.

Mehvash Amin decided to collaborate with the Taufiq Rafat Foundation for the inaugural edition of the anthology. The Aleph Review, which is in English and is for works of English, fittingly chose to dedicate the first edition to the ‘father of the Pakistani idiom’ Taufiq Rafat.

The Aleph Review comprises of a historical cross section of English literature from Pakistan and while it has elements from the past, the anthology wears blinkers to make sure that the direction it looks towards is the future. The review contains poetry, poetic development, memoirs, screenplays, interviews, stories, and humor.

Mehvish Amin, the engine behind the project, spoke first to a thoroughly engrossed audience and began by thanking her friends, family, editors, and sponsors for making the review possible. She then introduced the chief guest, Najam Sethi, who had a long association with the man to whom the review was dedicated – Taufiq Rafat.

Sethi began by acknowledging some of the audience members like Imran Qureshi and Ahmed Rashid, inviting the latter to take the stage and eventually end the event with his poem The Sea. Sethi talked about working with Taufiq and his contemporaries in the late 1970s. He told incidents of Kaleem Omar and Jocelyn Saeed before moving on to the man being honoured, Taufiq Rafat.

He spoke at length about Taufiq and the time the two spent together at Vanguard Books in his ‘cave-like’ room. The audience members that knew Taufiq or were acquainted with his work were deeply affected by the tales of the often silent and inarticulate man that weaved words into poetry with seemingly little effort.

“We were living in the dark ages but in the dark cave there was a light – and that light was Taufiq,” Sethi said in his final words before calling up Taufiq’s son, Seerat Hazir.

Hazir spoke briefly about his father and read parts of what he had written for the review about his father, speaking of him as a sportsman, father, and son. Khwaja Shahid Hussain and Sahista Sirajudin also took to the stage to say a few words about both the review and the late Pakistani poet.

The launch was largely successful as the visitors bought signed copies of the review and expressed their satisfaction with the event. More so The Aleph Review may be on its way to becoming a regular feature as the Aleph team revealed that work on a second edition was already underway and that it would be completed much faster than the first.