Alys Faiz, nee George - 1915-2003 - was the England-born wife of the Pakistani poet, writer and leftist, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who died in 1984. I first met and interviewed her in Lahore in June 1995. Imran Khan was then about to marry Jemima Goldsmith and bring her to Lahore, so we sought out her view of life as an English wife of a prominent Pakistani in the capital of Punjab. Later in this interview she also talked about her own memories of, and reflections on, Partition.
I met and interviewed Alys Faiz a second time in Lahore in October 1995, and talked to her at much greater length about joining the Communist party in London and getting to know Indians there, coming to see her sister (Christobel, married to M.D. Taseer) in Punjab, and meeting Faiz and marrying him in Srinagar in 1941 (with the nikah conducted by Sheikh Abdullah). She also shared her memories of the Partition violence and of Faiz's writing of his most political poem, 'Freedom's Dawn'. The audio of this second interview is posted below.