“I’m really happy with you, Begum Sahib, because you’ve looked after me and our children very well.”
Naila Tariq, widow of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founding chairman Azeem Tariq, still remembers the words her husband said just hours before he was assassinated in their home. She saw him bathed in blood, moments after being struck on the head and back with a blunt object — the blows rendering her nearly unconscious.
“I could never have imagined what was about to happen,” she said, adding that he had appeared completely calm and composed, looking elegant in a white kurta-pyjama.
She was speaking to me by phone from the US.
Just a month earlier, she and her family had observed the death anniversary of her eldest son, Amar, who had died in a road accident.
“I was doing my graduation from Karachi University when I got engaged to him. We were happily married in 1983 three and a half years later,” she recalled, reminiscing about the good old days.
“He never called me by my first name, not even Begum Sahiba — he always called me Begum Sahib.”
“I was never involved in politics, nor did I have much interest in it, but on a few occasions I did ask him about his political views, the Mohajir phenomenon, and so on. He would politely try to explain the injustices faced by the Urdu-speaking community — but all of that was before we got married,” she added.
Except for one or two occasions, I hardly ever visited 90, Azizabad, or met MQM founder Altaf Hussain. “My husband always avoided political conversations with me or the family. At home, he strictly stuck to family matters,” Ms Naila said.
Sometimes, when I urged him to quit politics and focus on his career, he was very qualified — he would just smile and say, “Ammi ne kaha hoga tum se yeh kehne ko,” referring to his mother.
Without pointing fingers at anyone, she simply recalled what really happened on that fateful night — May 1, 1993.
“I was making plans to visit US to meet my two children who were staying with their grandparents, while our other two children were with us. That morning, I decided to visit some relatives to say goodbye. He asked me to leave our youngest daughter, who was just a few months old, with him. I told him that if he needed to go somewhere, he should leave her with my sister, who lived on the ground floor — we were on the first floor,” she recounted.
“When I came back, I noticed that the guards who normally stayed with us on the top floor had been replaced. I didn’t interact much with them, so I assumed it was a routine change and didn’t think much of it.”
Since my youngest daughter was with him, I returned home by the afternoon and asked if he had eaten. “Aap ne sabzi nahi khai hogi (You must not have eaten the vegetable dish). Main bhindi bana kar gayi thi ( I cooked okra before leaving),” I said with a smile. He replied just as warmly, “Jee Begum Sahib, main ne khai hay, bohat mazay ki thi, (Yes, I ate it and it was delicious), she recalled him saying before he left for his political work.
“He came home a bit early that night — around 10 or 11 PM — and we were both standing in our gallery when he suddenly turned to me, looked straight at me, and said, ‘Begum Sahib, I’m a lucky man to have a wife like you. I’m very happy that you’ve looked after me, our children, and the family so well.’”
She paused, recalling that moment — a moment she would never forget.
“Never had I imagined that such a beautiful moment would be followed by the most horrifying night of my life,” she said. “It was late at night. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but someone hit me with a gun butt — I nearly fainted. When I regained consciousness, I saw the most unbelievable scene. Our two children were asleep, and he was lying in a pool of blood. I screamed.”
Her voice choked as she recalled what happened next.
“I could hear heavy gunfire outside. My sister and other family members rushed up from downstairs. Some people took him to the hospital, and I followed. All the way there and inside the hospital, I kept asking everyone I encountered: ‘What’s his condition? Is he alive?’ I begged the doctors and nurses to save him. And then came the news I never wanted to hear — that he was no more.”
“I don’t know for sure, but my gut tells me the attackers had come to kill all of us. Maybe he pleaded with them to spare us and take his life instead,” she said quietly. “Perhaps, deep down, he knew what was coming—that’s why he spoke to me so lovingly that evening, as if trying to leave me with something beautiful.”
Before her iddat period was over, authorities advised her to go to the US and take the other children as well. “That’s when I left Pakistan for good,” Ms Naila said.
Tariq was among the few who resurfaced months after the entire MQM leadership went underground following the June 19, 1992, military operation. Ms Naila still remembers that two women who played key roles during that period were Ms Salma Ahmad and Madam Khanum Gohar Aijaz.
When he resurfaced, I and a few other journalists met him at his Clifton residence.
“Yes, they used to visit us after he returned,” she added.
After he and some other MQM leaders came out of hiding, tensions within the party began to rise. Tariq started his political activities from a house in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area near the police station. However, Ms Naila recalled, “He always spent the night at our home in Dastagir-15.”
Tariq, along with Altaf Hussain, Dr Imran Farooq, Ahmad Saleem Siddiqi, Ms Zareen Majeed, Tariq Javed, Aminul Haque and a few others, was among the founding members of the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO), which was formed in 1978. The APMSO later gave birth to the MQM in 1984 — a year after Tariq got married.
From grassroots student politics to building one of the most organised middle-class parties in Pakistan, MQM, Tariq was regarded as one of the most disciplined and mature political figures in the party’s early days. He was initially proposed as the party’s ‘founder’ when MQM was formally established, as Altaf Hussain was in the United States at the time. But it was Tariq himself who withdrew his name and instead proposed Hussain as the party head.
His murder remains a mystery to this day. The party struggled to recover from his assassination — an unresolved tragedy that was followed years later by the high-profile killing of another key leader, Dr Imran Farooq. MQM is now officially split into three factions: MQM-Pakistan, MQM-London, and MQM-Haqiqi. The faction led by the self-exiled Hussain was unofficially banned in 2016.
As Ms Naila recalls, “He had been contemplating quitting for quite some time. I don’t know the reason, as we never discussed politics — party matters or otherwise — but at times, I found him under mental stress.”
The writer is a columnist and analyst of GEO, Jang and The News
X:@MazharAbbasGEO
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect Geo.tv’s editorial policy.