Sajid Hussain

Born on 16 January 1981 in Nezarabad, Kech District, Balochistan, Pakistan, Sajid Hussain received most of his education in Karachi. He held a BA in Economics but his main interest was literature, and in 2012 he completed his MA in Balochi and English at the University of Balochistan, Quetta.

In 2002 Sajid Hussain joined the Baloch Students Organization (BSO) which, in addition to organizing Baloch students, also has a political agenda. (235) After a few years, however, he abandoned his political activities and devoted himself increasingly to writing. As a man of the written word, Sajid Hussain was first and foremost a journalist. His English was excellent and he had a flowing pen. He achieved great success as a journalist, and before going into exile he worked for Pakistani newspapers such as Daily Times and The News, as well as for Reuters. His writings covered sensitive topics such as drug trafficking and human rights violations in Balochistan. In 2012, he had to flee Pakistan due to threats made against him because of his journalistic activities. He spent some years in Oman, Uganda and Dubai before coming to Sweden in mid-2017.

In 2015, when he was living in Dubai, Sajid Hussain founded the online magazine Balochistan Times. (236) This English and Balochi news magazine addresses current issues in Balochistan including human rights, political violence, abductions, and killings, as well as social and cultural issues. It also contains a literary section, where pieces are published in Balochi and English. Due to the broad scope of the work, he recruited a number of talented co-workers to help run the magazine, and even after his death articles and literary pieces continue to be published on the Balochistan Times website.

Soon after his arrival in Sweden, Sajid Hussain got involved with the Balochi Language Project at Uppsala University. (237) Together with Professor Mousa Mahmoudzahi of Velayat University, Iranshahr, Iran, he launched a Balochi-English online dictionary in February 2019. (238) He was furthermore engaged in authorship, text edition, and translation work. Sajid Hussain was also Carina Jahani’s main source of inspiration while writing A Grammar of Modern Standard Balochi, which was published in December 2019. (239)

In an interview with him carried out by Hammal Haider in February 2020 and posted on YouTube on 1 May the same year, (240) Sajid Hussain endorsed the orthographic system for Balochi proposed by the Balochi Language Project. This script system was also adopted by the magazine Balochistan Times in spring 2020.

Sajid taught Balochi at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University. In January 2020 he was admitted to the MA programme in Iranian languages at the same department and began writing his MA thesis on Balochi argument structure as illustrated by religious sermons and political speeches. He was busy with this work when, on 2 March 2020, he went missing. On April 23, after several weeks of searching, he was found drowned in the River Fyris just north of Uppsala.

Sajid Hussain was a true lover of literature and was very well read in both English and Balochi literature. His love for the written word led him to engage in literary criticism as well as creative writing. The short story published in this anthology, Darándhéhi pa Saré o Shegán pa Saré (Facing Exile, Facing Taunts) is semi-autobiographical, and although he claimed in a note to the original text that the characters in the story are purely fictional, it is clear to anyone who has known Sajid and his friends and co-workers that these personalities are largely inspired by his close friends and acquaintances. No one will miss the refined sense of satire in the story.