A Tribute to Irfan Khudi Ali

Irfan Ali, with Khu­di Ali as his social media alias, was a peace and human rights activist belong­ing to Haz­ara com­mu­ni­ty. Last month, when two bombs blasts on Alam­dar Road in Quet­ta tar­get­ing Haz­ara Shias took more than 100 lives, Irfan was one among who died. He got mar­tyred in the sec­ond blast while help­ing those who injured in the first one. Both his life and death are an inspi­ra­tion for his friends and fel­low activists. Here are some mem­o­ries and views about Irfan Ali and his life.

Rajab Ali (Friend, Activist)

Who would have thought that a young ener­getic guy of 32 years with curly hairs and per­sua­sive way of dis­course would leave us so ear­ly when we need­ed him the most? Words some­times are not the medi­um to express our feel­ings and emo­tions. Irfan and I had the inti­ma­cy that today I still can­not believe that he is no more with us. His ideas were my ideals and his thoughts became my ide­ol­o­gy. I used to try to imi­tate him. The way he stressed some words had the pow­er to attract any stranger he met once in his life. Today he is though phys­i­cal­ly killed but his mar­tyr­dom has made him immor­tal.

Roohul­lahGulzari (Friend, Activist)

I met Irfan a few times and he always inspired me. He want­ed to bring Haz­ara issue on the twit­ter trend list to high­light our plight. But there came the day when his own name #RIP­Khu­di­Ali appeared at the top of trend list. That was a heart wrench­ing moment for me. For me, he was a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of hon­esty, com­pas­sion and brav­ery.

BeenaSar­war (Jour­nal­ist, Activist)

I met Irfan in July in Karachi for the first time at the Social Media Mela, but we had been in touch for some time via email. He was such a bright, smil­ing, coura­geous, and com­mit­ted young man. Irfan was vocal and out­spo­ken on many plat­forms. His pres­ence will be sore­ly missed but his lega­cy of fear­less activism remains. The best trib­ute we can pay him is to con­tin­ue fight­ing those very forces that killed him.

Ahmad Shu­jaa (Wash­ing­ton based Afghan Ana­lyst recall­ing a recent con­ver­sa­tion with Irfan)

It took me a while to notice, but some­where dur­ing that con­ver­sa­tion Khu­di had bro­ken down, silent­ly cry­ing. I had imag­ined him as a hard­ened activist who had grown used to con­ver­sa­tions about loss because he dealt with it so often. But that night he seemed just as hurt and vul­nerble as the rest of us, pained by the mem­o­ries of the friends he’d lost, the dis­tances the attacks had cre­at­ed between the Shia-Haz­aras and the non-Shia, non-Haz­ara res­i­dents of Quet­ta. In some ways, he was more hurt than me because, while I react­ed to the blood­bath from the safe­ty of Wash­ing­ton, he was in the mid­dle of it, occa­sion­al­ly pick­ing up the dead bod­ies and, as every so often hap­pened, pieces of bod­ies….

Activism in Pak­istan, as in many devel­op­ing coun­tries, tends to be an elite pre­oc­cu­pa­tion. Peo­ple who wor­ry about their next meal rarely lead cam­paigns, rarely go on hunger strike and almost nev­er coin rev­o­lu­tion­ary Twit­ter hash­tags. Peo­ple who have a fam­i­ly to feed and clothe are usu­al­ly too busy to go to attack sites and res­cue vic­tims, to hos­pi­tals and give blood, to protest ral­lies and chant slo­gans.

So, in a way, Khu­di was an elite. But he was in the thick of it every­day. He wasn’t a dual cit­i­zen, didn’t have a safe perch, didn’t con­tent him­self with online peti­tions or after-work sit-ins.

Shi­raz Has­san (Blog­ger, Friend, Activist)

This is heart-wrench­ing. I can­not for­get the smil­ing face of Irfan Ali. He gave a voice to his voice­less com­mu­ni­ty and his words are still echo­ing in this gloomy atmos­phere and ask­ing the gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty agen­cies to pro­tect its cit­i­zens.

Taimur­Rah­man (Singer, Activist)

RIP Irfan. Your knowl­edge of exis­ten­tial phi­los­o­phy, love of music, sup­port for human rights, wom­en’s rights, and defense of shias touched all of us. We promise to con­tin­ue your strug­gle my friend.

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 7)