From the memoir: Political activist Tariq Ali on his long friendship with artist Tassaduq Sohail

In October 2017, just a few months after the seventieth anniversary of Indian independence and the partition of the subcontinent, the Pakistani painter Tassaduq Sohail died in Karachi. The anniversary was celebrated with dazzling military displays: the centrepieces in both Delhi and Islamabad were nuclear missiles. Partition was history now, we were told, but for Sohail and others who experienced it first-hand, the memories had never lost their force.

In January 2000, after forty years in Britain, Sohail had decided to return to Pakistan. A week or so before he left, I got a call. He spoke, as always, in Punjabi and by common agreement we avoided using any English words – a common practice that enraged him. It was a test I sometimes failed. Sohail was seventeen years older than the country he sometimes called home and sometimes hell. Usually when he rang, he would recite a few lines from the Sufi poets with gaiety in his voice, and occasionally he even laughed at my attempts at Punjabi double entendres. But this time his tone was sombre.

“I’m going back.”

I was taken aback. There had been no hint of this in recent conversations. “Why?”

“To die.”

“Why?”

“Everyone has to. I thought it best to be close to…

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