Wings of Duty — Page 33
33 to take the thing he held most precious in his life to Lahore. I was instructed to diligently protect it and deliver it to Shaikh Bashir Ahmad, who was at the time the local head of the community in Lahore, by calling him to Walton Airport. He also said that I had to tell Shaikh Bashir Ahmad to safeguard this item in his, that is Huzoor’s, own words. I was to then take a receipt of delivery from him and come back and give it to Huzoor. Owing to the immaturity of youth, I had the rather silly notion that perhaps Huzoor was entrusting me with a box of jewels. However, after giving me my instructions, Huzoor got up and from the next room brought me a small canvas travel bag that had seen better days. Even its zip was broken. The bag was full of papers. Huzoor placed it in front of me and said that though a part of the tafsir of the Holy Qur’an that he had been working on had been published, another part of the work was still not printed and the major portion of it had yet to be written. Since writing this tafsir was one of the major objectives of his life, he said that he had a habit that whenever a new insight came to him regarding an explanation of a verse of the Holy Qur’an, whether by day or night or during any sort of engagement, he would write it down on a