Pakistan celebrated the birth anniversary of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The man known as the father of the nation survived barely a year after changing the world’s map but remains a guiding figure.

The Quaid’s last day was spent travelling from Quetta to Karachi after his sister had already been told that there was little hope for his life save for a miracle.

After a two-hour flight to Karachi’s Mauripur Airport, the nation’s founder took another two hours to reach his bed in the Governor-General House in Karachi as his ambulance broke down and had to be replaced.

The founder of the nation passed away just after 10 pm.

Across the many accounts written about his life and his last days, there are two versions of what the founder of the nation said just before he breathed his last.

The first version comes from Fatima Jinnah, the Quaid’s sister and companion right down to the last moment.

In her memoir ‘My Brother’, edited and published after her death, she recounts the last time Jinnah spoke to her.

After the ordeal with the ambulance was over and Jinnah was safely taken to his bed in the governor-general house, he slept almost two hours without a distrubance.

Upon waking he signaled to his sister to come close and whispered, “Fati, Khuda Hafiz. La Ilaha Il Allah Mohammad Rasul Allah.”

Fatima called out to the doctors who rushed to the Quaid’s side immediately, but he had departed.

Lieutenant Colonel Ilahi Bakhsh, the physician who tended to the Jinnah in his last days described a different story in his memoir ‘With the Quaid-i-Azam During His Last Days’.

According to him, when Jinnah was finally carried to the bed in the governor-general house, the doctors tried to give him a tonic but he was so weak that the ‘potion dribbled from the corners of his mouth.’

The doctors then tried to inject a drug into his veins but could not as the veins had collapsed.

Dr Bakhsh told Jinnah, “Sir, we have given you an injection to strengthen you, and it will soon have its effect. God willing, you are going to live.”

Even on his death bed, barely thirty minutes from his death, the Quaid had not lost his sense of clarity.

He simply replied, “No, I am not.”