Sabiha Rumani Malik - Personal Life and Background

Personal Life and Background

Sabiha Rumani Malik was born in Pakistan to a family related to Abul Kalam Azad, one of the foremost leaders of the Indian independence movement and a scholar and poet who supported a united Indian identity. Continuing the family tradition of scholarship and creative activism, Sabiha’s father studied at north India’s centre of learning, the Oriental College, where he completed a degree in Persian and Arabic. He was one of a small group of young men led by Aligarh Muslim University alumnus Muhammad Dhawqi Shah, a journalist, political activist, and the head of the Sufi Chisti-Sabri spiritual order. In the late 1940s the group was discussing the future state of Pakistan with its future founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, their shared hope for a secular state upheld by an elected parliament, qualified executive, independent judiciary and a free press. Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in 1948, barely a year after the birth of Pakistan. Thereafter, Sabiha’s father limited his activities to writing classical Urdu poetry and teaching Persian.

As a young girl Sabiha Rumani Malik was a protégé of the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's wife, the writer and social activist Alys Faiz, and for a number of years Sabiha's poems were published in The Pakistan Times. Sabiha completed University of Cambridge International A-levels at the age of 14, and too young to gain admission to Barnard College at Colimbia University, she spent a year in New York attending lectures on art and sitting in the visitors’ gallery at the United Nations General Assembly sessions. When her family circumstances made it difficult for her to continue sculpture, painting, and architecture studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she transferred to an MPhil in art and design at Punjab University, and later also completed a BSc in clinical psychology and an MA in psychotherapy from De Montfort University in England.

At 16, she married Michel Aertsens, 37, the Rosey-educated son of a First World War hero. A year later, after the birth of her daughter India Knight, she separated from Michel Aertsens and worked as a translator at Petrofina - a Belgian oil company - to financially support her daughter and herself and continue her studies. She was close to her parents-in-law and her older friends included Elena and Antoine Allard, an artist, peace activist and founder of Stop War, and the art collector Léon Lambert.

After nine years of separation, in 1975 Sabiha Rumani Malik, age 25, married the journalist Andrew Knight, 34, who became the editor of The Economist. Sabiha was influential in The Economist’s turn to regular coverage of the Palestinian struggle for independence, and the establishment of the weekly ‘Asia’ section featuring developments in India, China and the Middle East. Sabiha and Andrew's home brought together wide-ranging connections that enlivened cross-disciplinary discourse and inevitably sparked the evolutionary developments within The Economist.

The marriage with Andrew Knight lasted 17 years, and Sabiha and Andrew had two daughters. In 1991 Sabiha married a close family friend, the architect Norman Foster. The marriage lasted until 1995.

Sabiha Rumani Malik lives in London and Paris. She has three daughters: India Knight, Amaryllis Knight and Afsaneh Knight, and two stepsons Casimir Knight and Jay Foster.