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A tribute to Sharief Khan

Feb 25, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
I was taken by utter surprise when I read of Sharief Khan’s sudden death. I was fully aware of his health condition, especially since he received treatment in Arizona some years ago for his heart condition.
Despite this health disadvantage, he battled on and conducted his journalistic profession without any worry that such a situation could pose any handicap to his taps on his computer keyboard.
I became closely associated with Sharief when I served in Washington. He contacted me regularly to obtain updates on numerous issues related to Guyana-US economic and political relations. And this association improved even much more during President Cheddi Jagan’s hospitalisation and subsequent death at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington when he telephoned me at least twice daily to get first-hand updates.
Significantly, it was he who first put Guyana’s news on the Internet when he associated with my son in establishing a temporary Guyana Chronicle page on the Guyana News and Information website back in 1997.
Over the years, we maintained contact by e-mail or the occasional telephone call, and I recall dropping in at his office for long conversations whenever I was in Guyana. Despite his business-like approach, he was always jovial while his memory was full of oral history as he reminisced about some stories that he covered in the past.
Perhaps one of his best pieces of reporting on Guyanese historical events was his stories surrounding the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney for CANA in June 1980. A few years ago, he told me that he had lost his original “telex” reports he sent to CANA (from Georgetown on these events).
Fortunately, I had copies of these which I sent to him and he promised to safely file these away. Now that he has departed, I urge his relatives to preserve all his writings which surely will be of immense historical importance.
Sharief and I shared our last communication just before I moved from Caracas to Kuwait. His was a congratulatory e-mail; mine was a “thank you” with the hope that we would continue to keep in touch. Sadly, this will no longer happen.
To all his family, I send my deepest sympathy on the sad departure of Sharief from this life. To them, and to all who associated with Sharief, I can easily say that this “little man” without any fear stood up as a real giant in the journalistic field.
Odeen Ishmael
Ambassador of Guyana to Kuwait

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