THE CORE STEPS: HOW TO DISCOVER FAIZ
STEP 1: Get yourself born into a middle-class family in Karachi where books are considered the least useful of all forms of pulped wood—including pulped wood itself. Ensure that your father, who used to read Jasoosi Digest until a few years ago, now reads only Aurad-o Waza'if (Book of Daily Devotions and Prayers). Ideally, your mother should be an expert on all kinds of waza'if, big and small.
STEP 2: To really get going, however, you need even more discouragement. Pick an inauspicious moment, such as right after your parents' shouting match over your mother's shopping habits. Ask your father with great trepidation if he has a book of Faiz's verse. Hear him tell you flatly: “Beta yeh sha'iri to bhand, mirasiyo'n aur kanjaro'n ka kaam hai; tumhara iss se kya lena dena?” (“Son, poetry is for wags and pimps—what do you have to do with it?”) Please note that while saying this, he will have his gaze fixed on a handsome saas on TV conniving against her sexy bahu.
STEP 3: Now go to the nearest bookstore (which also sells cheap plastic toys and boardgames to keep the business on lubricated tracks) and ask the bookstore owner—a man most accurately described as a talking heap of flab piled on a chair, reeking of paan—if he has Faiz's book of verse.