My grandmother kept his spirits up – he was her favourite and she believed great things lay in store for him. She loved him so much that she would slip him extra meat and the cream off the milk while she went without. But it wasn’t easy to study as there was no electricity in the village in those days. He used to read by the light of the oil lamp in the hujra, and one evening he went to sleep and the oil lamp fell over. Fortunately my grandmother found him before a fire started. It was my grandmother’s faith in my father that gave him the courage to find his own proud path he could travel along. This is the path that he would later show me.

而祖母却总在鼓励他。父亲是她最疼爱的孩子，她相信好运一定会降临在这个儿子身上。她对父亲疼爱至极，宁愿自己不吃，也要在父亲的盘子里多塞一片肉，或多给他一点牛奶里的奶油。当时，村子里还没有电力，学习不是一件容易的事。父亲往往是在会堂里点着油灯读书。有天他去睡觉时，油灯倒了，幸运的是祖母在火灾发生前先找到了父亲。正是祖母对父亲坚定不移的信心，鼓励他骄傲地走出一条属于自己的路。而这也是后来父亲指引给我的道路。

Yet she too got angry with him once. Holy men from a spiritual place called Derai Saydan used to travel the villages in those days begging for flour. One day while his parents were out some of them came to the house. My father broke the seal on the wooden storage box of maize and filled their bowls. When my grandparents came home they were furious and beat him.

不过，祖母也对父亲发过一次脾气。当时，几个从圣地迪赖.赛耶登来的圣人常常在村子间游走，乞求面粉。有一天，他们在祖父母出门时来到家里。父亲撕开了放着玉米的木箱上的封条，帮他们把碗装满。祖父母回到家时，简直气炸了，揍了他一顿。

‘It’s not that passing books on is a bad practice, ’ he says. ‘It’s just I so wanted a new book, unmarked by another student and bought with my father’s money.’My father’s dislike of Baba’s frugality has made him a very generous man both materially and in spirit. He became determined to end the traditional rivalry between him and his cousins. When his headmaster’s wife fell ill, my father donated blood to help save her. The man was astonished and apologised for having tormented him. When my father tells me stories of his childhood, he always says that though Baba was a difficult man he gave him the most important gift – the gift of education. He sent my father to the government high school to learn English and receive a modern education rather than to a madrasa, even though as an imam people criticised him for this. Baba also gave him a deep love of learning and knowledge as well as a keen awareness of people’s rights, which my father has passed on to me. In my grandfather’s Friday addresses he would talk about the poor and the landowners and how true Islam is against feudalism. He also spoke Persian and Arabic and cared deeply for words. He read the great poems of Saadi, Allama Iqbal and Rumi to my father with such passion and fire it was as if he was teaching the whole mosque.

“把旧书留给下一个人使用并不是什么坏事。”父亲曾说，“只是我真的好想要一本新书，一本用我父亲的钱买的、没有被别的学生写过的书。”因为不喜欢祖父的过于节俭，反而使父亲成长为一个在物质上和精神上都很大方的人。他下定决心从自己这辈开始，结束族人、亲戚之间争斗的传统。当校长的太太生病时，我父亲捐血救她。校长感到非常震惊，并对自己过去百般的刁难行为致歉。当父亲跟我讲起他童年的故事时，他总是告诉我，虽然祖父是个很难相处的人，但他给了他人生最重要的礼物--教育。祖父送父亲去念公立学校，学英文，接受现代教育，而不是把他送去念伊斯兰学校。虽然有些人指责祖父，认为他身为毛拉，不应该这么做，祖父也毫不动摇。祖父的引导使父亲对学习和知识产生极度的热爱，并对人权问题非常关注，父亲也把这一点传给了我。祖父会在周五传道的时候谈论穷人与地主，还有真正的伊斯兰教为何反对封建制度。祖父会说波斯语和阿拉伯语，并且非常重视文字。他读伟大诗人萨迪、阿拉马.伊克巴尔和鲁米的作品给我父亲听时，充满热情、激情四溢，仿佛是读给整个清真寺的听众听一样。