Aamir was a huge presence in the lives of family, friends and colleagues.
His son Rafi organized a farewell ceremony on December 20th 2018.
Many photos below are from Aamir's last birthday party at La Gracieuse near Morges
two months before he died.
RAFI ALI - AAMIR'S SON
Thank you all for coming... Jack and Zafar have kindly agreed to say a few words for us today. For myself, I will just say that I have received an incredible amount of warm sympathy messages from many of you and from people all over the world. It is natural that they all say what a wonderful man my father was, but there are some words that appeared over and over again: humour, modesty, helpfulness, love of language, integrity and mentor.
I would just
like to tell you one anecdote before I ask Jack and Zafar to say their piece;
something that occurred a week before my father died. I choose to tell it for 2
reasons: first, it happened during what turned out to be the last real conversation
Kim and I had with him. Secondly, I think it nicely sums up his lasting sense
of humour and his way of playing with language even though recently he often
had great trouble getting out the words that he wanted.
So, the scene
is: Aamir is in his bed. Kim is spoon-feeding him his mulched up lunch. A nurse
comes in and puts some medicine on the next spoonful of food – some apparently
vile tasting powder. Kim gets some of it in his mouth and Aamir opens his eyes
wide in surprise.
“Tasty, is it?”
asks Kim.
“Hmmm. Very”,
he replies smiling, “but tasty the other way.”
Friends, Shakespeareans, y’all from everywhere:
Lend me your ears!
We come to praise Aamir, not to bury him.
The good that he does lives after him -
So let it be with our Aamir.
Here, under leave of Rafi and the rest
Come I to speak in Aamir’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just...
Yes, he became a friend, so delightful, so light in his
amity.
He started however as a friend of my father’s, since the
first ILO Asian Regional Conference in Delhi, in October 1947: Aamir already an ILO official, my
father a delegate from the brand new Government of Pakistan.
And then in Geneva, Clare and Aamir were friends with my
mother and father during their time at the ILO, and well beyond.
Certain instances come to mind. A special one relates to
the marriage of Aamir with Clare. He approached my father. “Anwar, I have a
problem. I am getting married, and my dear parents are able to make it all the
way from India.”
“Good, so what's the problem?”
“Well, you know me. I’m not into religious ceremonies.
Clare and I would be fine with only a civil marriage. My parents however would
expect a Muslim ceremony. I don't want some unknown Imam doing the honours. You
are one of the few practising Muslims I know. What’s your advice?”
My father took the matter up with the Imam in
Geneva, a fairly enlightened
fellow, who said: “In my view, any Muslim can perform this ceremony. Just
arrange for a couple of witnesses for both sides, recite such and such surah
from the Koran, and give them your blessings.”
When my father shared this information, Aamir was delighted at the prospect of
being married by his friend. And so my father officiated the wedding ceremony
for Clare and Aamir.
Then, I recall when my father was transferred to the New
York Office of the ILO we were to take the train to Genoa, and a ship from
there. Lo and behold, Clare and Aamir turned up to help drive us to the
station, and sent us off with a sumptuous packed lunch for the train journey.
When my father completed his posting in New York, it was
Aamir who took over from him as Director of the ILO office to the UN. At that
stage, my brother Asad had stayed on in New York for his Masters degree. He was
often a guest at Clare and Aamir’s home and recalls fondly babysitting a number
of times for our young Rafi.
Of course, I had heard about Aamir’s passion for
Shakespeare. My actual encounter with this passion came quite late in our
interactions. One day, my 12-13 year old son comes home from school, down in
the mouth. He tells me his class has to study Julius Caesar and … he finds it
boring!
I ask Aamir down for a coffee at the office: “Aamir, this
is my son’s first encounter with Shakespeare and it won’t do, for him to find
it boring … what to do?”
He responds: “What, a budding adolescent boy, finding
Julius Caesar boring?! The teacher must be useless...Never mind, give me a few
days, and lets see how we can motivate your son.”
Within three days, Aamir calls me down for a coffee, and
hands me an essay introducing Julius Caesar. He had dug up references, looked
at other plays and authors, and produced this marvellous essay for my son.
Couldn't have a healthy boy bored with Shakespeare!
A related story is how a friend of mine at the ILO one
day says to me: “Don't you think that TS Eliot is over-rated as a poet?” I gave
him the quick, easy answer – NO. But then I happened to run into Aamir, who was
retired by then. I asked him how he would respond to this question. His reply, “Give
me a couple of days – and invite me for lunch. I’m retired now, so you buy me
lunch!”
He turns up with a brief-case. The same one he would
bring faithfully to our periodic gatherings here in Morges, at the La
Gracieuse. In this brief-case, he had various examples of verse, by authors
prior to and post-TS Eliot. Notes explaining how Eliot fits into a line of
artists but at the same time makes a necessary break with one genre, leading to
another genre...Armed with this material, I go back to my philistine friend –
but to no end. He wouldn’t do his homework...and missed out on a lifetime’s
lesson.
Aamir of course never balked at doing his homework.
Until the last, he did his homework, and if anything he over-prepared for his
presentations to us, always overcoming his stage fright, his nerves. Until his
voice and hearing and sight all faded away, slowly and surely. That didn't stop
him. Not so long ago, he called, asking me to come over for a task, to help
him. We set to work on ways he had thought of, for overcoming his impaired
eye-sight, to allow him to use the computer and the telephone, to keep up his
communications with us all. Of course, it could not be done – because as Rafi
said, its not only the eye-sight, but also connections in the brain, what with
the strokes …
But that didn't stop him; until the last moments, he kept
trying to keep in touch with his friends.
Earlier this week, as my siblings called to condole, I
tried to encapsulate what Aamir was, is, what he has been, in a few words. Its
a task in vain. You can’t place Aamir in a box – although we have – to bury him
with faint praise? We can’t place Aamir in a box, because he always thought and
acted outside the box.
Here are some quotes from the ILO family on Facebook,
when they learned of his demise:
· He is
not gone – he lives in the memory of all members of the ILO family.
· A role
model! An ambassador…
· Aamir
was a brilliant man. I was blessed that he was my boss, my mentor and my
trainer.
· A major
high-light of the ILO experience., always witty, warm and helpful. The world
does not produce many such people – and fewer such who share their skills with
others.
· (and
from Fiona, who could not be here) Rest in peace, my hero!
Let me conclude with a story by Confucius, who had been
to visit the great Master Lao Tzu. Upon his return, his students asked him what
Lao Tzu was like. Confucius said something like this:
"As for birds, I understand how they can fly; with
fish, I understand how they can swim; and with animals, I understand how they
can run. To catch things that run, we can make nets; to catch things that swim,
we can make hooks and lines; and to get things that fly, we can make arrows.
But when it comes to dragons, I cannot understand how they ascend into the sky,
riding the wind and the clouds. Today I met Lao Tzu. Today, I have seen the
dragon.”
Today, and beyond, we are most blessed to have been with
Aamir.
**********
JACK MARTIN
JACK MARTIN
Aamir was a
very talented person. Among his many talents he was a great public speaker. He
had the gift of saying just the right things on occasions such as these. I have
been to several funeral services where in a very few minutes Aamir admirably summed
up the qualities of the deceased in perfectly chosen
words and with just the right tone, and I wondered to myself how he could do
that – apparently so effortlessly. Today, I find myself in that role, with no
Aamir to back me up. I feel as if I were passing an examination before him– I
can almost hear him saying: “Jack – you can do better than this”.
I first met
Aamir on Monday 22 August 1960. That was the day when I joined the ILO, a very
young man all wet behind the ears, and he was my first boss. I well remember my
first encounter with him. His first words were to tell me that he was building
a house, and that he had a baby son called Rafi who was just 4 months old. He
warned me that for these two reasons he would often not be in the Office, and I
therefore needed to learn the job quickly. He was joking of course – that was my first contact with
Aamir’s legendary sense of humour. He was never absent from the office. Nobody
could ever have had a better boss. He spent a great deal of time briefing me
about the ILO, its procedures, its structures and its personalities. He himself
had just come to his present post from the Director-General’s office where he
had been chef de cabinet. We shared an office (imagine a boss, a former chef de
cabinet, sharing an office with a complete newcomer!), so I met the various
people who came to visit him. Whenever he needed to pay a visit to another
official, he took me with him, sometimes to very senior officials. Within six
months, I knew a good deal about the ILO, and I had met numerous officials at
all levels, including the Director-General himself. I often think that the very
satisfying and successful career that I subsequently had in the ILO was due in
no small measure to the very detailed and complete introduction that Aamir gave
me during that initial period.
He was not
my boss for very long. After a couple of years I transferred to another
Department, and he went on to senior positions in different parts of the
Office. He will best be remembered as Chief of Personnel (a position that is
known today as Director of Human Resources), during a period when the whole UN
system was facing a crisis of its Pension fund. Aamir played a significant role
in the long discussions that took place in the Board of the Pension fund and
various UN bodies that finally resulted in the “two-track” system that still
exists today. He will also be remembered for the particular interest that he
took in the welfare of the staff, and most particularly for the initiatives
that he took to create links between retired staff and the Organization.
I never
served under him again, but the links that had been forged between us remained.
We had frequent contacts, formal and informal, we had lunches together, dinners
together with our wives Clare and Jean, shared jokes and had many disagreements
too, which always ended amicably. Soon after he retired he came to my office
bearing a document – the first issue of the Friends Newsletter, a publication
that he intended to issue all by himself to create links among retired ILO
officials and between them and the ILO, and he asked me what I thought. I told
him frankly that while it was a nice idea, it wouldn’t last long, nobody would
be interested, and in any case how could he take on such a huge burden
single-handed? Why didn’t he just enjoy his retirement? As so often in our long
relationship, I was proved to be wrong. He persisted, and the Friends
Newsletter became hugely popular not only among retired, but also serving
staff. Within months of my retirement several years later, he talked me into
joining him as assistant editor, and we were once again working together
(joined by Fiona very soon after). I also joined him in another venture that he
had launched soon after his retirement – the Shakespeare group of retired UN
officials who were interested in the works of the great bard. And in the
meantime he had also joined the Committee of the Association of retired
officials of the UN system in Geneva AAFI/AFICS, and soon became its Chairman,
a position that he held with great distinction over many years. For Aamir
retirement was not a period of leisure, but rather of greatly increased
activity.
The one
activity that he retained an interest in right to the end was the Shakespeare
group. It continued to meet without him in Geneva, but once every two months or
so the whole group came to La Gracieuse for a meeting and lunch with Aamir. Our
last lunch with him was due to be held just over a week ago, but Aamir was so
ill that it had to be cancelled. He died two days later.
After a lifetime
of close relations and friendship with a man of such enormous energy and
diversity of interests as Aamir, his departure to another world leaves me saddened
but at the same time hugely grateful. Much of Aamir has rubbed off on me, and
has greatly enriched my life:
-
His
devotion to the work of international cooperation, to the concept of an
effective and competent international civil service which he did so much to protect
and promote;
-
His
love of nature, his insistence on the need for much stronger world commitment
to the preservation of the environment which is at last becoming more widely
accepted;
-
His
sense of justice and commitment to helping those in need;
-
Most
of all perhaps his sense of fun and good humour. He could end an argument or a
particularly tense meeting with a joke. And his writings for the Friends
Newsletter or for Cabbages and Kings
should become required reading for those burdened with depression, evil
thoughts, doubts and problems.
I have no
doubt that Aamir is now winging his way to that special corner of Heaven that
is reserved for those specially gifted mortals who have left their mark on
humanity. While he is there he is sure to meet one William Shakespeare. Be sure
to put to him, Aamir, the question that is greatly exercising your Shakespeare
group: did he really write all those plays himself, or did he just plagiarize the
work of others?
For the blog on the Shakespeare group a few years ago, please go to
