Editor’s Note: Mohammed Hanif published a review of this film in Urdu at the BBC. A translation into English by Zahra Sabri is published below with Mr. Hanif’s permission. The film is the definitive story of Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani to win the Nobel prize. It captures in vivid detail his life’s journey—from a small village in Pakistan to worldwide scientific acclaim—and his fraught relationship with his homeland, where he faced rejection for being a member of the “heretical” Ahmadiyya movement.
by Mohammed Hanif, translated by Zahra Sabri
Dr Abdus Salam had once said, “It became quite clear to me that either I must leave my country or leave physics. And with great anguish, I chose to leave my country.”
I heard these words in what is probably the first documentary film ever to be made on the life of the Nobel prize-winning Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam. The producers of the film are two young men from Pakistan, Omar Vandal and Zakir Thaver. I’ve been hearing these young men go on about Salam since some ten years. They have been labouring over the film for more than a decade.
I had suspected that these two men might lose interest in this topic similar to the way that the whole nation of Pakistan has washed their hands of Salam, having labelled him a kafir. However, their efforts have borne fruit and the film Salam: The First ***** Nobel Laureate is ready for screening.
The asterisks in the title stand in for the space where the word ‘Muslim’ should have been, but since this word has been expunged from the inscription above his grave in the town of Rabwah, the filmmakers have used asterisks to describe Salam so as to evade the possibility of a fatwa. Read more »