The first was a bombshell of a tiny NHS doctor, who arrived in a storm and dealt with all his problems aptly and immediately. “Where did you come from?” I asked (meaning Bournemouth, maybe). “Lahore,” she gabbled. “And why is this name Irfan Husain so familiar to me? Ah yes! He is indeed my favourite journalist on Dawn. Oh wow, oh wow...he is so famous of course!” She was overcome with excitement that she would actually meet the great man.
The second was that his gentle, generous care giver, Shelley, muttered to me on Tuesday night, “He’ll be all right you know.” It all came tumbling out. How, when Irfan’s son, Shakir arrived on Sunday, he was accompanied by a matriarch of great wisdom. Shelley was surprised that she was not evident the next day, but she felt her presence and warmth so clearly and often, that she bowed to her several times as doors opened mysteriously. She recognised that it was Irfan’s mother, Hameeda from a big photo downstairs. “She has come to take him soon.” They had always been extremely close.
The third was my daughter’s lockdown cat, Meme, who was left with us all year. Irfan has always had a special affinity with animals. He treated them with care and love - his dog Puffin was central to our lives for 15 years, his Time Pass Kitten in Sri Lanka was a constant at his elbow on his desk. When he died at 4.15 am, she had already spent the night on his feet in bed and usually ran downstairs with me to be let out and fed. Not that day. She did not move until his body left home.
Irfan was a very funny, clever, charming husband, who was much loved by my friends and family. My four daughters were a revelation to him when we married in 1999 in London. He had grown up with four brothers. They were soon won over by him waiting for them to approach him. Then, like Meme, they never left him alone. They too shared many of his enthusiasms - books, the sea, Bitcoins, theatre, Peter Sellers, reading The Guardian, watching Star Trek and The Simpsons, art, music – jazz and sitar mostly - ping pong, oysters, Chinese takeaways and filling the kitchen with friends, arguing about politics over steaming curries - walking and talking and learning from him about so much.
Irfan was beautiful as a youngster and always meticulous about his clothes - they were clean, they were pressed, they were mended and they were looked after well and so was he. His hour-long routines of washing, shaving and dressing were a pleasure to him; his breakfast was always the same. He was never late. He had a most eccentric bunch of catch phrases: ‘Taste is come’ and ‘Don’t do takalluf’ , ‘ howdy pardner’, ‘squid pounds’ ‘you duffer’. ‘come to me like a homing pigeon and I’ll be there like a jumping jack flash.’ My children called him The Famous Grouse. His most important and unbreakable habit, wherever we were, was always to touch base daily with Shakir, his dynamic and devoted son, who was staying with us in Dorset over his death, but usually lives in California. Irfan was immensely proud and fond of him, his wife Sheila and of his grandsons, Danyaal (14) and Suleimon (10).
Irfan was beautiful as a youngster and always meticulous about his clothes - they were clean, they were pressed, they were mended and they were looked after well and so was he. His hour-long routines of washing, shaving and dressing were a pleasure to him
When I came to Rawalpindi in l976, I stayed with Hamid and Zakia Jalal and walked up the dusty road to the PM’s secretariat to work daily. I worked alongside Hamid and Irfan Husain and Agha Ghazanfar and Yusuf Buch for much of two years. I accompanied photographers all over the magnificent countryside; we squabbled over worldwide contributors to a book about Pakistan and eventually it was published.
Fast forward to me researching a book in Calcutta, which led to a reunion with Irfan in Karachi. When he came to England, we first lived in a scruffy part of Kensington in an enormous cheap rambling house on a busy road from which we travelled a lot to Wales, Scotland and Ireland and in Europe with the children. Also, to America to promote his book and to St Andrews, New Brunswick to enjoy cousins, to Kenya (to stay with his old friend Javid Aly Khan, our eventual Best Man, who is cooking pheasant korma here today) and South Africa, touring India, Morocco and to Vietnam. Then we bought land on a remote unspoiled beach in Sri Lanka, stopped travelling and built a house there. His mother aged 90 came to stay and so did many friends and family. The greatest pleasure for us both was to have time to chat at length with old friends about every subject under the sun and to admire Nandi’s culinary skills - she and Irfan communicated only in Urdu, she had worked for his brother in Karachi.
We gave a lunch party for the usual mix of Pakistani and English friends in London in 2019. It was to celebrate Irfan’s 75th birthday. I was sure it would be unwise to postpone till he was 80. He had an incredible number of very good friends - both male and female and of several generations - all over the world and kept in touch with them frequently - WhatsApp was a great boon.
I feel so lucky to have loved such a remarkable, original, sweet-natured, fascinating man for so long. We were happy, laughed a lot and enjoyed each other’s company - the lockdown summer among the roses in our garden in Dorset near the sea was a treat. He used to say with a wry smile that he was “the yardstick by which sanity is measured.” For me, that was true.