Introducing this form of art for the first time in Hyderabad’s history, promoting cultural diversity, Kailashi group originally from Chitral performed their cultural dance and music. It was organized in collaboration with the Pakistan National Council of Arts. Foreign scholars, after returning from the International Conference on Alexander in Indus Valley organized by EFT visited Besant Hall and attended the program.
The Speech Dr. Robin Lane Fox Delivered On That Day .
What an honour to be speaking to you at the end of our wonderful Alexander Conference. Nearly a year ago, I received by email an invitation from a group whose name I did not know, the Endowment Fund Trust, asking me to come to Karachi to speak on Alexander all the way from Oxford. I said yes and then I thought it’s the Internet. This is too good to be true. So, I wasn’t sure whether to come and they explained that it would be an important conference, but here is what they do not explain. We have had the most wonderful time. We all of us go to conferences all over the world. We have never had such a generous and entertaining and demanding and intellectually intelligent conference anywhere. We have never had such biscuits. We have never seen such friendship, and I would like to pick on perhaps 3 or 4 things.
You are all so musical. We heard Abida Parveen imagine singing for us in Karachi. What an experience! Even those who like myself who are not Sufi will remember this for all our lives. We heard wonderful Sindhi singing last night in the Sehwan fort. We saw wild dancing of excitement in the Sufi shrines we are changed by it. We came to discuss Alexander, the conqueror who entered Sindh and is still world’s famous figure.
This might have been difficult. Alexander fought battles here he killed people. Some of them did way back probably in your families. But we learned to think what we know of Alexander. Did he leave anything important? And we learned that above all, he left a legend. I’d like to share two things from Alexander’s legend.
Some time ago, in fact, longer than I wish to remember, I went out with the fishing boats in the Aegean Sea off the island of Mitilini. And the weather was very bad. I was nearly sick. And the fishermen stood in the front of the boat and shouted to the sea in Greek “the great Alexander is alive and is king” and amazingly, the storm stopped and I was not sick and the weather all was quiet. And I said to him “does that often happen?” And he said, “Always.”
So, Alexander, maybe if you call on him the next time, we hope it will be less awful, he can stop the flooding of the river Indus. This would be wonderful. But there is something about the people we have met everywhere and tonight in Sindh that touches all of us who have spoken even more than the conference.
Once an Englishman divided people into those who have said “yes to life and those who say no to life.” Whereas every single person we have met says “yes to life in Sindh” and it is so touching and exciting for us. We are all in it together. We have one life here and you are people of kindness, hospitality, joy, and thoughtfulness in a degree that really almost shames us English people who can be rather shy and think they are sometimes a little too good for other people. No way, you are too good for us.
I want to end after all that we have learned first by thanking the wonderful organization of our conference by the Endowment Fund Trust.
We have seen again and again all that Dr. Akhund and his team do for the good of Sindh. We have been amazed by his kindness, all the thought, all the guards, all the meals, and his wonderful ladies, Sobhia and, Amal who have organized something very difficult perfectly. We want to take them all away and have them in England but we are glad you have them instead. How well we have been received more than anywhere, I mean it; I have ever gone to speak. I’d like to tell a story from the romance of Alexander. It’s a touching story.
We are told that Alexander’s mother, before she died, told Alexander to give a banquet and invite everybody in Greece who had never known sadness in their lives and her son heard the words and his mother died. So he arranged a big banquet, not quite as big as the banquets we have been enjoying, and he sent the invitations out all through the Greek world on the day he waited, and he waited, and he waited, and nobody came. And then he realized everybody in the world has known sadness, and that was what his mother wanted him to understand. We have learned a different lesson. We have learned that all over the world, there are people who can give happiness. And especially, there are concentrations of people who say “yes to life, yes to knowledge, yes to the world”, however difficult, however the economy is difficult, the weather is difficult, the floods are difficult. You triumph over it and you to us are a revelation. Thank you so much.
