Claflin University had an open house on Saturday, April 04. I volunteered to keep the Writing Center open. The day was passing by normally, as expected, and according to schedule until I learned from Dr. Zia Hasan, vice president for planning and assessment, about the passing of Dr. Syed Hassan. While staying in the care of his mother and brothers in New York, Dr. Syed Hassan died on April 3.

Dr. Hassan was a loving family man, renowned professor, cordial colleague and, above all, a very gentle, respectful soul. He resided in Columbia with his wife and three daughters. In the spring of 2007, he and his wife, who worked that semester as an adjunct at our university in the Department of English and Foreign Languages, commuted to the campus each day. Everything seemed to be going so well for the couple, and they seemed extremely happy, always walking around together with a smile and a greeting for everyone. However, in February 2008, Dr. Hassan suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while coming to work. He was admitted to the Regional Medical Center by colleagues and then moved to Columbia He remained under doctors’ treatment.

The last time I saw Dr. Hassan was on the day he attended the Faculty Institute on Aug. 15, 2008. During the interval between the meetings, as I ran into him, I greeted him, saying, “How are you, Dr. Hassan? It’s good to see you.” Dr. Hassan seemed unwilling to talk about his health. A modest person, he did not like being fussed over.

Since the day’s schedule was tight, we had to rush from one meeting to the next and then to the workshop. Not seeing him during the next two or three days at work, I asked my colleagues about his well-being and learned that he had to undergo a few more medical tests. Dr. Syed Hassan, a 55-year-young professor, had lost part of his memory when he suffered that fateful stroke. And everything, every aspect of his life, changed so rapidly and drastically for him. As a result, it seemed as though he lost his desire to live.

That one episode of illness exemplifies how life can change instantaneously. And no one is either immune or invincible.

Dr. Hassan joined the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Claflin University in August 2000 as an associate professor of English. He had a master’s degree in English literature and European history from the University of Dhaka. He received his Ph.D. in 1994 from Purdue University. Dr. Hassan wrote his dissertation on the poetry of William Butler Yeats.

Dr. Hassan’s other publications are as follows: Rubaiyats, Random Thoughts, Between Barbed Wires, Inner Edge, and Ashes and Sparks. Provincial Books and the Writers Workshop Publications published his works. Dr. Hassan has been recognized as a poet in the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, published by Routledge.

“Hassan is,” writes Professor Leon A. Gottfried, chair of the English Department at Purdue University, “a potent poetic voice in the expanding network of East-West literary connections.” The content of his poems, Pakistan of Partition, the Portraits of Mussolini, Imperial Dragons and Splintering of National Liberation, though politically motivated, are not confined to one region or era.

“His poems fluctuate impressively,” writes Dr. Timothy A. Brennan, professor of English at Purdue University, “from scream to whimper without losing their intensity.” Life hurts, but not every pain is painful; this human paradox is explored throughout his volumes. Under British rule, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were one country. In 1947, Pakistan bifurcated from India, and then, in 1971, Bangladesh separated from Pakistan. Dr. Hassan writes in his poem “Pakistan”: My heart bled and I could not see / By raising walls how a people could be free / From Khyber to Teknaf the land is one / But you insisted on dividing the sun / Now the East is totally cut from the West / Like a cancerous lump from the mother’s breast.”

Though away from his motherland, Dr. Hassan still served his country as U.S. correspondent for Holiday (one of the leading English-language weeklies in Bangladesh).

I featured Dr. Hassan in The School of Humanities and Social Sciences Newsletter, April/May 2002 edition. Knowing how deeply he loved his mother, I had asked him to write a poem for his mother. He wrote: “Dear Mother: Madly in love and forever blessing / On the heavens of undying grace, wrapped in / Tenderness and with a radiance comforting like the setting sun / Here all that is human has a rendezvous with sublime / Embellished with secrets not yet revealed. / Replica of the angels on earth called ‘Mom’.”

Now what saddens me the most is that his 75-year-old dear mother has to bury her beloved firstborn. However, being as kind-hearted as Dr. Hassan was, he wouldn’t want us to be sad. Reminding us that life hurts, but not every pain is painful, he would quote Thomas Browne: “Sleep is a death; oh, make me try / By sleeping what is to die / And gently lay my head / On my grave as now my bed.”

We goodbye to Dr. Syed Hassan and we thank the heavenly father for sharing this good man with us. He will be missed.

n Mandakini Hiremath is a Claflin instructor and coordinator of the university’s writing center.

You must be logged in to comment.