Tribute to Sabeen Mahmud

Sabeen Mahmud, a Young Global Leader (YGL) with the World Economic Forum, was assassinated two weeks ago in Karachi.  We asked Abid Butt, one of her close YGL friends, to write a tribute.

I knew Sabeen Mahmud, but not as well as my brother had. As she said at his retrospective exhibition, she had met him when setting up The Second Floor: “I didn’t want mundane paintings or posters on the walls. A friend suggested I meet this mad chap, Asim Butt, who had been running around painting elaborate murals outside shrines.” I would like to believe that there is a special branch of T2F where they both are right now, with Asim painting murals on its walls.

T2F was the centerpiece of Sabeen’s life. To the unsuspecting observer, T2F was a café, bookstore, and venue for artists from different disciplines to express themselves. But for Sabeen, it was much more. She imagined a place that could bring social change, an oasis in a city polluted with smog, crime and intolerance. She wanted to create a safe haven for the free exchange and expression of ideas, from talks on current affairs, science, and philosophy, to poetry and short story readings, from art exhibitions to music shows.

T2F epitomized Sabeen. Like her, it was generous and welcoming to everyone.

She ensured that T2F never kept away from difficult discussions in a largely intolerant society. T2F spoke for those who didn’t have a voice. She would smile at the hurdles and never let the surrounding hopelessness affect her.

In her brief life that was tragically cut short, Sabeen had become a public figure despite her discomfort with attention. She touched hundreds of thousands of people, but to my family she was simply Sabeen, Asim’s friend.

Since his death, she had been the daughter my parents needed. She arranged a tribute at T2F for Asim two days after he passed away, mourning with my parents and providing emotional support like even I could not. Later, she was instrumental in getting his work catalogued, getting his exhibition off the road, and getting his monograph published. Our family will stay in her eternal debt, and are crushed by her loss.