{"id":401,"date":"2019-10-11T13:34:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T13:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/?p=401"},"modified":"2019-10-11T13:34:45","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T13:34:45","slug":"the-crossing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/2019\/10\/the-crossing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crossing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Picture1\"BY S’HA SIDDIQI<\/span><\/p>\n

Ajaz Khan ran, his little sister cradled in his arms as he raced through the high grass in the smoke-clogged night. His heart pounded as he barreled towards the tree line, the sound of gunshots thundering in the distance. His legs burned, calf muscles straining as he snagged his foot on the underbrush. He tripped, crashing them both down to the dirt.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe men had machetes and rifles,\u201d he\u2019d recalled. They had been armed with an assortment of rusted second-hand weapons. People had been screaming and he\u2019d been afraid that he would be caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ajaz Khan was my grandfather. He passed away in August 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

He recalled his flight to Pakistan in a conversation with me in March of that same year, just a few months before his death. Until then, I never had paused to consider the implications of.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time we had this discussion, he was an eighty-seven-year-old government retiree living in Islamabad, a city he\u2019d helped design at its inception in the 1960\u2019s. If prodded, he would smile and tell you about his contributions to the capital\u2019s master plan. He had tremendous national pride, but he had been born five-hundred miles away \u2013 in a country he had not set foot in since 1947 and hadn\u2019t wanted to leave in the first place.<\/p>\n

He had been a young man in university when Pakistan and India gained independence after WWII. His family had lived in a majority Muslim district of Delhi. Their once vibrant neighborhood had become quiet, half the homes abandoned as gangs of vigilantes patrolled at night. Those who stayed were often beaten and those caught trying to leave were killed \u2013 the aftermath of the war leaving a vacuum of power that intensified political unrest.<\/p>\n

The British Raj had been recently dismantled, and the new replacement governments were ineffective. Without a mediator, centuries-old tensions between the various religious communities had escalated, leading to public executions and internal conflict. Woman were mutilated and charred remains of infants were found rotting on roadsides. Modern estimates put the Partition death toll at 1 million, with an additional 15 million individuals displaced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually my grandfather\u2019s family had attempted an escape, lured by the promise of a new homeland in Pakistan<\/span>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Recently, I asked my mother, Ayesha, if she\u2019d ever heard this story. She told me yes and that he hadn\u2019t actually wanted to leave India.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad had always been a bookworm,\u201d she said. \u201cHe argued with his father because he didn\u2019t want to leave his college, he just wanted to be left alone and study […] Partition made it too dangerous.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This sounded more like the man I was familiar with, perpetually huddled in a blanket with a wool cap \u2013 newspapers and cups of tea always within easy reach.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was the type of person who enjoyed playing solitaire on his computer and faithfully self-monitored his intake of Splenda. It was hard to imagine that same man in the context of his past, forsaking his birthplace to take part in one of the largest mass migrations in human history.<\/span><\/p>\n

During that conversation, he had told me how his family had left their home in Delhi in the morning. They had taken nothing with them and said goodbye to no one. The seven of them had pretended to go to school, work, or market in order to belie suspicion as they individually made for the station. It had been crowded, filled with other families trying to cram themselves into the train compartments \u2013 all carrying tickets for too few seats.<\/span><\/p>\n

His parents and sisters had managed to squeeze inside but he and his elder brother had to go up on the carriage roof, open to the elements as they made their way out of the city. The two men next to them began to squabble and one pushed the other out of anger. He\u2019d toppled over.<\/span><\/p>\n

The train didn’t stop for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point in his retelling, my grandfather had paused again to refresh his tea, pouring himself a second cup \u2013 this time without Splenda. His doctor had warned him not to have too much.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trains had been the hardest part, he\u2019d told me. Groups of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs civilians had roamed the countryside \u2013 all angry and seeking unwarranted retribution against each other following British withdrawal from the subcontinent.<\/span><\/p>\n

His stepmother had made them face away from the windows but he hadn\u2019t had that option as they passed the bodies lining the tracks. \u201cShe told my siblings, close your eyes,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every now and then he\u2019d see carcasses pulled further away, their clothes peppered with bullet holes and piled together carefully. Other times he\u2019d notice black smoke curling from raided villages as they crossed Punjab province towards the border.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During that time, food was sparse. Occasionally they\u2019d stop, refueling or changing trains \u2013 sometimes braving the fields on foot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then one night, they came face to face with one of the marauding parties. They\u2019d begun traveling with a small group of other migrants, but the sight of the armed men had them all scattering \u2013 screaming as they raced into the crop fields. Some weren\u2019t fast enough and collapsed as they were shot. Others were caught by men holding meat cleavers or harvest sickles.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the memory my grandfather had started our conversation with. It had been that night that he\u2019d fallen while running with his younger sibling.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He had scrambled up, ignoring the scrapes on his knees as he tried to hush his little sister in his arms \u2013 the echo of footsteps growing closer.<\/span><\/p>\n

To his shock, it hadn\u2019t been the outlaws. Sikh refugees emerged from the woods ahead, making their way to India in the opposite direction. The subsequent confusion had been enough to buy him time, escaping around them to reach the rest of his family.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I had asked him what happened next, he\u2019d given a small shrug and told me he\u2019d eventually arrived in Karachi. He hadn\u2019t wanted, apparently, to linger on the subject \u2013 preferring to discuss his work as a Pakistani civil servant in his later years.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother had more to add to the story<\/span><\/p>\n

She told me that my grandfather\u2019s extended family lived back on the same block in Delhi as they had. Their home had been raided, and records showed most had died or disappeared in those initial years of Partition after they had fled. No one on the street had survived.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t want to go, and it was really hard, but I\u2019m so glad he left,\u201d my mother said.<\/p>\n

Despite his initial reluctance to leave Delhi, I think my grandfather was happy with his decision too. Not only did he escape the violence, but he embraced his adopted country and joined the civil service \u2013 trading the blood-soaked capital of the Old British Raj of his youth for a new capital in independent Pakistan that he helped design.<\/span>