KARACHI: St Joseph’s Miss Fikree passes away By Mahim Maher
Tuesday, 24 Nov, 2009 KARACHI, Nov 23:
**Shafiqa Fikree, the headmistress of St Joseph’s Convent High School’s Cambridge section, passed away early Monday after a brief illness. She was 76. **
**Miss Fikree, better known as ‘Senior Fikree’ to generations of students, was born in Aden in 1933 to Ebrahim and Shaharaban from Bastak, Iran. In 1939, after WWII broke out, Ebrahim, fearing that Aden would be overrun by the Germans, decided to move the family to Karachi. **
**Miss Fikree studied and then taught at Jufelhurst Girls School. After an MA in English Literature, she joined St Joseph’s in 1962 as a Geography teacher. **
**And it was teaching this subject that made her famous. “She was renowned all over Pakistan,” said long-time colleague Faiza Kazi, referring to how students would beg, borrow and steal her notes that were an A-grade guarantee in the O’Levels. **
**Miss Fikree was so meticulous that one year the Cambridge examiners suspected that the St Joseph students had cheated because their map-making was so perfect. The students were retested under careful invigilation. **
**But even the second time round, their work was so good, in fact even better, that the examiners never questioned St Joseph’s again. **
**Miss Fikree also taught Literature, Commerce and then Economics. As she did not have a background in the latter two subjects, she taught them to herself first before she undertook the syllabus in the classroom. Colleague Nina Sethna recalled how she tried to emulate how her teaching methods. Miss **
**Fikree would actually sit and do the entire exam herself first by writing out all the answers before marking the student papers. “I used to even try and copy her handwriting,” said Mrs Sethna. **
Over five decades of teaching Miss Fikree never raised her voice; her mere presence would ensure pin-drop silence in a classroom. Even though she was headmistress she never had an office of her own. She was such a tough marker that a 4.5 out of 10 would be cause for celebration. But as many a girl will testify, this policy stood them in good stead when the O’Levels rolled around. “She underestimated the students – they always did well,” said her niece Fauzia Fikree, who herself is an icon of St Joseph’s.
Miss Fikree was buried in the Mewashah graveyard. Soyem is on Wednesday between Asr and Maghrib. St Joseph’s Convent High School will be organising a service and Quran Khwani as well.