Sheherezade Alam

Alam was born in Pakistan to Mahmoud Alam, a Pakistani former tennis player and his wife, Surayya, in Lahore.[3] She had two brothers, Asad and Shaban. Brought up in Lahore, she completed her FA from its Kinnaird College.[3] She went on to obtain her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Design with a distinction in ceramics from Lahore's National College of Arts (NCA), where she studied under the country's first ceramist, Salahuddin Mian. She later became an artist-in-residence at Yale University. She taught at the NCA, as well as at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey).[3]

In 1971, she married Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999), a painter, and the couple had two daughters, Jahanara (1974–1999) and Nurjahan (b. 1979). Zahoor and Jahanara were murdered in their home in Lahore in 1999 by a visiting acquaintance, Shahzad Butt, a roti merchant of the city. The killer could give no reason for having turned his gun on them.[4]