Dear Editor,
The passing of Feroze Mohamed has touched our hearts – my heart, indeed. I join with many others—his friends and PPP/C colleagues – in expressing condolences to his family. Glowing remarks from GAWU are apropos: “Undoubtedly, our nation is poorer with his passing but stronger for his work and contributions.” And Mr Anil Nandlall’s words resonate – “a towering giant in the party, which no one before him could have or any in the future will ever measure up to”; and, about his speech in the National Assembly on the 1980 Constitution which “ranks as one of his most glorious moments in the political annals of this country.” Unquestionably a protege of Dr Cheddi Jagan—the “profound influence on my life,” Feroze said.
Many party colleagues knew Feroze far better than I do—but I want to focus on provenance: Feroze’s beginnings—and, often I tried to apprise myself of how and what he was doing during those troubled years of the command system pre-1992 – when so many thousands left Guyana. This was before the internet days.
Yes, we were teenage friends prior to his committed party activism. I vividly remember the early sixties when we attended seminal PYO meetings in the Canje-Rose Hall plantation area where we grew up. Imbued with nationalistic ideals aligned to our formative socialism, I remember Feroze as being more passionate than all of us—uncompromising about the sugar workers’ plight which became his ideological grounding, perhaps when some of us appeared ambivalent or conflicted. Geo-political angularities aligned to Cold War tropes might have informed our consciousness.
Feroze’s humanism bonded our friendship—even as I was away from Guyana. But memory—like the soul itself – remained. Vivid recall: The sixties when he asked me to adjudicate the PPP’s poetry competition. (I was a recognised poet by the National History and Arts Council). And on his first visit to the Soviet Union, he brought back for me a specially bound copy of Mayakovsky’s poems—which started my love of Russian poetry. (Later in Ottawa I would meet celebrated Andrei Vosnezensky.) And see, it didn’t pass me by that in delivering the eulogy at Dr Jagan’s State Funeral, he quoted the Russian novelist Nicolay Ostrovsky. Feroze had a genuine literary sensibility.
With Guyana’s politics becoming internecine, I often sought out information about Feroze from his family members and close friends. I’d also asked Dr Jagan about him—his well-being – when serendipitously we met at a Guadeloupe-organised conference. Feroze and I would meet up again in Ottawa after long years; and there was immediate affection, our being facile El Toro boys again – our teenage adolescent identity.
After I won the Guyana Prize for best fiction in 2006/7, Feroze invited me to a “comradely” lunch at the Pegasus Hotel with Dr Frank Anthony, Donald Ramotar, and Komal Chand; and then, for dinner at his home and to meet his wife. In our discussion, he was concerned about Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s stance in international politics.
Feroze also alluded to the many problems he faced as Home Affairs Minister. My own Public Administration background and working with Canadian politicians was somehow evoked. Most of all, I figured Feroze’s stance is what is enshrined in Dr Jagan’s New Global Human Order.
Now the personal tied to memory becomes the monumental as I mourn Feroze’s passing. For me, this is what ultimately endures, beyond party politics and ideology. My affection for him is what I hold dear. Rest in peace, good Comrade!
Yours faithfully,
Cyril Dabydeen
