What was going on when I was born?

It was just about a year ago when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar convinced himself that his time had passed. He said it was time to leave quietly, so that his skills wouldn't fade before the critical eyes of the world. Yet, he was wrong about himself, and he hasn't stopped proving himself wrong. Yesterday afternoon, playing before 16,287 fans at the Garden and a national television audience, Abdul- Jabbar scored 29 of his 39 points in a furious second half in which he converted 11 of 15 field-goal attempts, and he added 10 rebounds over all to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to a hard-fought 119-114 victory over the Knicks. Abdul-Jabbar's point total tied Bernard King for game-high honors, and it was a point shy of his season-high, which he tallied earlier this month against Houston and the famed Twin Towers - the rookie center Akeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, the player who has often been called his heir apparent. At 37 years old, he is the game's oldest player, but he is averaging more than 22 points and 8 rebounds in a season he said was going to be his last. Clearly, Abdul- Jabbar is not finished adding to his legacy.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1985 Companies The mortgage losses recently revealed by the Bank of America reflect a pattern of defaults that have stung other California institutions and cheated mortgage investors across the country, according to bankers, lawyers and law-enforcement officials. While there appears to be no mastermind responsible for the problem, some of the same people crop up as borrowers, lenders or middlemen in apparently disparate circumstances. (Page A1.)

By the time Doug Flutie settled down and began to work his magic for the Generals today, their game against the Birmingham Stallions had been lost. Flutie, in his first regular-season game as a pro football player, did not complete his first pass until the 13th minute of the third quarter, and by then the Stallions were far ahead, 31-7. Birmingham won the game, 38-28, but Flutie did enough in the final quarter to sustain the speculation and curiosity about his role with the Generals and in the United States Football League. Will he be a failure or a success, or something in between?

When American and Japanese negotiators sit down at the bargaining table Monday, the Americans will find themselves in an anomalous position - for a change, they will be the ones defending themselves against charges of closed markets. The market in question is the sky, and the charges the latest in a long and increasingly acrimonious series of negotiations on aviation rights. Since 1952, when Japan and the United States signed an aviation treaty in the last days of the American occupation, the Japanese have charged that the treaty was heavily weighted in favor of the United States. Negotiations to revise the treaty have gone on continuously for more than 30 years.

Traveling between his home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and his classes at Boys and Girls High School never bothered Darryl Johnson. He said he always felt safe on the block he called ''my home'' and in the school he called ''my high.'' But that security dissipated on a stark afternoon last month. While he was walking home from school, Darryl said, a man with a gun approached him, accused him of teasing the man's younger brother and shot him in the arm. Now, between his geometry books and his loose-leaf notebook, the 10th grader carries a screwdriver or a razor blade.

As they sift through piles of documents, bankers, lawyers and law-enforcement officials are concluding that startling losses by the Bank of America on mortgages reflect a pattern of defaults across the country. And they say that losses from the defaults have stung other California institutions and cheated mortgage investors around the nation. In perhaps half a dozen other recent episodes, financial institutions have lost money in circumstances with all the earmarks of the Bank of America case, investigators say. They say that it is unlikely that a single criminal mastermind has created the problem and that it is more plausible that various shady operators have exploited the same weaknesses in the mortgage markets. But, it is also true that some of the same players crop up as borrowers, lenders or middlemen in apparently disparate circumstances.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt urged the Reagan Administration today to invite Israel and members of a joint Jordanian- Palestinian delegation to the United States to lay the groundwork for direct peace talks. Mr. Mubarak said in an interview that he was willing to act as host for such a meeting in Cairo, or to attend one ''anywhere'' that was agreeable to all parties. ''Why not?'' he declared. ''We are ready to help.'' The President said he was ''very encouraged'' by Israel's decision to withdraw from Lebanon, but reiterated his position that more progress had to be made before Egypt would return its ambassador to Israel, who was withdrawn after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Fred L. Hartley has been both unconventional and conservative, delivering what many analysts describe as steady, above-average results during the nearly two decades that he has run the Unocal Corporation. Yet, like most large oil companies confronted with excess worldwide production and flagging demand, Unocal, parent of the Union Oil Company, has struggled. Profits fell for the first time in eight years in 1983, then rebounded by 12 percent last year. Moreover, it has been more than four years since Unocal's stock reached its peak of $56.50 a share late in 1980. Stockholders also receive one of the sparest dividend payments among the major oil companies, with a yield at about 2 percent of the current stock price.

The Government of Pakistan operated inside the United States for nine months in an attempt to illegally obtain timing devices whose main function is to trigger nuclear bombs, according to court documents and Federal officials. A Pakistani agent, Nazir Ahmed Vaid, a 33-year-old from Lahore, was seized last June by Federal agents while he was trying to smuggle 50 of the devices, known as krytrons, out of Houston. Customs Service agents, operating under cover, had been monitoring his activities since October 1983, when he first placed the order for the devices. When they made the arrest, the Federal officials involved later recalled, they were convinced that they were dealing with a foreign agent. At that time Customs agents seized a series of letters directly linking Mr. Vaid to S. A. Butt, who was identified as a director of procurement for the Government-run Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Butt is widely known to American and European arms-control officials as the key operative in Pakistan's successful attempts in Europe in the 1970's to obtain the technology and resources for the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of plutonium.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1985 International Egypt's President urged the Reagan Administration to invite Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the United States to lay the groundwork for direct peace talks. President Hosni Mubarak said he was willing to act as host for such a meeting in Cairo, or to attend one ''anywhere'' that was agreeable to all parties. He praised the joint peace framework outlined by King Hussein and Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, ''as a very good achievement,'' and stressed that the cooperation agreement, made public on Saturday in Jordan, was ''only a first step.'' (Page A1, Column 6.) Israel responded coldly to the peace principles announced by King Hussein of Jordan and the P.L.O.'s chairman, Yasir Arafat. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said the proposals in no way amounted to an ''opening to peace.'' He said the Arab countries neither were ready for nor desired peace and that Israel continued to stand by its adherence to the Camp David agreements and its readiness to conduct negotiations with Jordan without preconditions. (A1:5.)

The fruit trees are still bare and the herb gardens are banked with protective straw, but New Yorkers and tourists flocked to the Cloisters yesterday to savor the sudden, untimely promise of spring. ''It feels wonderful, even with no flowers,'' said James Kahn, who rode his bicycle from West 81st Street to Fort Tryon Park and surveyed the glorious day from the stone ramparts overlooking the Hudson River. ''I guess we can still have another snowstorm before it's over, but on a day like this you forget that winter may still come back.'' On the third consecutive day of balmy weather, winter-weary New Yorkers like Mr. Kahn took to the streets, parks and playgrounds to luxuriate in the sunshine that brought record high temperatures to the eastern third of the country.

The Reagan Administration renewed its campaign for covert aid to the Nicaraguan rebels after concluding that open aid could cost the United States the support of its most important allies in Central America, according to senior Administration officials. Open aid to the rebels, a State Department official said, would be ''close to a declaration of war,'' and in the view of the Administration could force the United States to break diplomatic relations with Nicaragua. Few allies of the United States, perhaps not even all the nations of Central America, would be likely to support the United States by breaking relations with Nicaragua, the officials said, And that, they added, would be a major political embarrassment for Washington. A particular concern is that Nicaragua's neighbors, Honduras and Costa Rica, might refuse to cooperate with United States policy if aid to the rebels was overt, they said.