Remembering Shakil Qaiser: A photojournalist who chronicled the UAE's rise

This is not the first time I use this column to mourn friends or former colleagues who really mattered to me but returned to their heavenly abode after a short or long innings.

Many of us just act out and leave the scene without much ado, while some others leave a long trail of imprints that no shifting sands of time could easily cover up.

Shakil Qaiser was one such soul who touched you in more ways than one. He was a master photographer who captured not just the historical moments in the UAE’s growth story, but the little moments of the hoi polloi that threw light on the toils behind the making of a nation — from swathes of arid land to a capital of superlatives.

The writer and Shakil in 2000

From elements to edifices, arts to architecture, sports to space, pastors to presidents, catastrophes to conflicts, nothing escaped Shakil’s wide angle of artistry. Proving that the lens is mightier than the pen, he broadened the line between a photographer and a photojournalist. With his master clicks, he froze history making moments of a young nation for future generations.

As an editor responsible for the production of Khaleej Times for decades and who had rummaged around bundles of images Shakil would click on a daily basis, some of his published visuals are as vivid and immediate as they were as I write this encomium decades later — a streak of lightning reaching to feel the brim of a wine glass-shaped water tank in Dubai’s Safa neighbourhood, two little birds in an amorous lip lock, Sheikh Mohammed lifting an Asian child in the midst of an animated crowd at Dubai’s Global Village, a peach of a red ball delivery from Wasim Akram shattering the wicket stumps at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, the winning split second at the Meydan Racecourse etc.

Shakil trusted his images with me as much as I trusted him to deliver the visuals I needed for the front page. We worked on some of the daring editions for Khaleej Times. On the day the Babri Masjid was demolished in India’s Ayodhya on December 2, 1992, Shakil confronted me in the evening with a pack of pictures from a spontaneous protest rally that rocked Dubai.

“What are you going to do with this? Reject as too sensitive or print and become part of history making?” Shakil asked, his ever-smiling visage clouded by anxiety.

It was the biggest dilemma in my career spanning 43 years: To print or not to print. Back in time, Khaleej Times didn’t have a pantheon of decision makers. It’s going to be a single man’s decision that would risk himself and the brand. While the chief competition confided that they wouldn’t dare use them, I took a couple of hours to take a call.

A protest rally was unprecedented in this part of the world and the situation was so egregious, no one in his senses would attempt to publish them. Shakil hung around like a murder convict waiting in the courtroom to hear his sentencing.

“Go home, man. Trust me.” I said, and the rest is history. It was a milestone moment not just for Shakil and myself, but also for the nascent media industry in the UAE.

There were also moments when Shakil and I locked horns in major photography competitions, until we both were barred from contesting the Minolta-Cosmos contest after winning the prestigious award thrice.

All this great portraiture of a perfect photojournalist blurs past you when you get to know Shakil’s inner strength. He was already battling the Big C when I met him in 1989 after I moved to Dubai. Despite being a friend and colleague, he never mentioned he had leukaemia, diagnosed in 1984, and had since been surviving with the help of frequent blood transfusion in Abu Dhabi.

And never once did he show he was sick. He was so effervescent and hardworking it was hard to believe he was in the clutches of cancer.

It was not the first time I have shed a tear or two on the death of some of my good friends in Pakistan. Wifey struggled to calm me when good old Jamil Aktar passed a few years ago, when I took to this column to remember him. The death of Tahir Mirza, my pipe smoking predecessor in Khaleej Times in the late 90s, touched me so badly that I decided to give up smoking.

Shakil, Jamil, Tahir and Pakistanis of that ilk were classic examples of how people from both sides of the Line of Control co-existed peacefully on the neutral grounds of the UAE and Khaleej Times. We celebrate life with so much camaraderie, love and respect.

When war clouds gather around in South Asia and hate overpowers wisdom, I dare shed a teardrop to remember a friend from the other side of the fence. His life-saving bone marrow transplant in London’s Royal Marsden Hospital in 1986 was a resuscitating moment for India-Pakistan friendship. The staggering medical cost of £100,000 was met in large part by an Indian businessman and philanthropist, thanks to a fundraising campaign by Shakil’s daughter Sobia.

While recuperating in London, he called me in Singapore from his hospital bed, to thank all those who helped in his 40-year battle with the Big C. That’s Shakil, full of gratitude and full of heart.

So long, my friend. 

wknd@khaleejtimes.com