Shahab Nama

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Shahab Nama is the autobiography of Qudrat Ullah Shahab. It was finished in 1986 just before his death. It was published the same year and soon he became a household name in Pakistan.

[edit] Prologue

The book starts with an opening chapter Shahb wrote in President Zia's era. He briefly introduces himself and tells the readers that Zia had recently offered to make him Education Minister. He also writes about ill feelings of a few politicians and journalists towards him. Many Pakistanis knew him to be a close aide and an advisor to President Ayub Khan. Many tough acts relating to journalists and writers had wrongly been attributed to Shahab.

[edit] Initial Chapters

In the opening chapters, Shahab has described his life and childhood in Jammu city. His father had been a state employee of Maharajah of Kashmir in Gilgit and had settled in Jammu after retirement. When he was six, plague broke out in Jammu and his parents sent all children to Chamkor in present day Indian Punjab to live with his grandmother. He studied in a Sikh dominated school where he was bullied by Sikh classmates. Later he went to Prince of Wales College Jammu and won a scholarship. His main aim was to join Indian Civil Service in which he succeeded. He was appointed to various districts mostly in Bihar. In one chapter, he describes his encounter with the ghost of a dead girl in a haunted house.