The Wall of Water

PARKASH DROPPED ME IN Amritsar from Jalandhar. The old man had come to meet me in Chandigarh. We reached Jalandhar by bus in the morning and then had lunch in his home; then he drove me to Amritsar in his son’s car. I had a booking in the guest house at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. Although a bit distant from city, the university was beautiful. The guest house was even more so. It had large, spacious rooms, and mine was on the second floor, up a wooden staircase. I had arrived in India just after the Lohri festival, and it was winter. The rains chased us all the way from Chandigarh to Amritsar. The old man had given me a meal, but he also told me that his wife didn’t know I was from Lahore, otherwise she wouldn’t have allowed me in the house, let alone offer me food. “She is firm believer in purity, and in caste,” he told me. And then he gave me his trademark mischievous smile. Not only had I eaten lunch at his home, but I had wandered all through it. It never occurred to me to think of purity and pollution.

The old man dropped me off at the guest house in the afternoon. We’d had tea from a roadside eatery on our way. The old man didn’t come up to my room, saying that he had to travel back as far as Jalandhar with his son. I was supposed to cross the border from Amritsar to Lahore after two or three days. Ten or twelve days had passed since I had arrived. I spent one week in Delhi and a few days in Chandigarh. I had come with some singers, but I was only a minor poet. Everything had just opened up. The chief minister of our side of the Punjab had recently visited East Punjab, and everywhere there were pictures of him side by side with the chief minister of East Punjab.

The old man went away, embracing me tightly. Emotions welled up in me. It was the third consecutive day we had spent together. He suddenly seemed to realize this, and he quickly dropped me off outside the garage next to the guest house gate and then disappeared in his car without so much as a wave of his hand.

He knew I was going to cry.

I wasn’t particularly close to the old man. I didn’t really know him at all. We had met through a poet from London who was visiting Lahore. He was originally from Jalandhar but had been living in London for a long time. He shifted from a hotel to a friend’s home the day after he arrived. We took good care of him and showed him around Lahore. This old man was a friend of his. I didn’t have a visa to go to Jalandhar: Pakistanis get visas to India only for particular places, and that wasn’t one of them. I rang the old man from Delhi. He said: “Don’t worry, I’ll come to Chandigarh. It is only two or three hours from Jalandhar. I’ll stay with you, we’ll wander around and meet some writers.” The old man was a famous short story writer, but I didn’t know about that. He wrote stories about forbidden relationships between men and women. There was a gap of about twenty-five years between us, but we became fast friends.

The day I came to India, I was on the verge of tears. I had come alone but was accompanied by all of my mother’s stories about Batala, Peeran Bagh, and Gurdaspur. My father was from Batala, and my mother was originally from the village of Peeran Bagh, near the city of Gurdaspur. I had come primarily to see Gurdaspur and Batala for myself, but I also came for my mother, for all the memories and stories she had carried and given to me. I wanted to go to Batala the next day, but so far nothing had come together. I stood at the gate of the guest house, thinking. There was some open space outside the gate. Beyond it was a big garage, where a man was standing, watching me get out of the car.

It started drizzling. It was evening, and it appeared as if someone had laid green grass carefully over the earth. It was near the end of Magh, late in winter, when the sun appears only occasionally to give a breath of warm air as a promise of the coming month of Phaggan. The man quickly came towards me. He was tall, with a white moustache and beard, a tightly tied turban, and a neat and clean uniform. He appeared active and fit, but there were signs of his age in his movement. Evidently, he was the watchman for the guest house and, I learned later, also a retired soldier. I was frightened by the grave expression on his face and by his red eyes.

He greeted me with “Sat Sari Akal” and told me to go inside, to the front counter, and they would take my luggage up to my room. I didn’t have much with me from Lahore, but I had collected a lot of books, some as gifts. I was puzzled by the layout of guest house. Why was there such a big gap between the gate and the garage? Leaving my luggage and making a dash to get out of the rain, I entered the guest house. There was nobody in the large entrance hall. As you came in, there were armchairs and some small tables near the door. To one side was a reception area, with a small room just off it. There was a man inside the room, and when he saw me through the glass, he came out immediately and called out my name. He also called out something about “Pakistan.” It seemed to me that the guard out at the garage had overheard this and suddenly became wary.

The attendant then brought a key from his small room and gestured for me to follow him. We climbed the wooden stairs and stood in front of a door.

“This is your room, please keep the key with you. If you need anything, please let us know.” I asked for tea, and then a phone. Mobile phones didn’t exist at the time. “For the phone,” he said, “you will have to come downstairs.”

“Okay, I’ll take tea downstairs.” I spoke in Punjabi, and he replied in Hindi. He was from the east, from Bihar or eastern Uttar Pradesh. I had been listening to stories about people from that area coming to Punjab. “All Pakistanis speak Urdu,” he complained, in response to my speaking in Punjabi.

I placed all my things where they belonged, washed my face and hands, and locked the door. I went downstairs. Night came out like a thief under the cover of the rain and threw a sheet of darkness over everything, hiding the world from view. A soft wind blew over the grass, as if treading with cautious steps. The dining room was closed, but some chairs and tables were placed near the door. The reception area was dark; only the small room attached to it was lit. I was standing in the area adjacent to reception, and I peered through the glass. The room was empty. I sat down on a sofa to wait, facing outside. The guard was sitting in the empty area next to the garage, and he stood up immediately when he noticed me. There was a wall of rain between him and me. There was light inside the garage, but the space between us was half lit and half in darkness. The rain itself seemed like a sheet of glass. On the other side of it, his eyes would appear at times, shining, and sometimes would blur away. The voice of the rain in the grass merged with the song of the air.

The attendant brought tea. I asked about the phone, and he gestured towards the counter outside the room with the glass wall, where the phone lay. Forgetting my tea, I called Harminder. I had met him in Lahore at a poetry gathering and then we saw each other again at a party. We exchanged phone numbers, and I told him that my parents were from the district of Gurdaspur and how much I longed to visit my family’s ancestral place. He told me that he would facilitate my visit there whenever I came from Lahore. I had already informed him about my arrival from Chandigarh, and he was eager to meet up. He picked up the phone at once when I called and told me to get ready, he was on his way. What did I need to get ready? I made a few more calls and then sat waiting for him.

The rain became fierce, and the man standing outside by the garage looked soaked. He was hardly visible because of the torrent of rain. The dim light coming from the room seemed like stars in the rain, and the light was swimming, slipping, shining, secretive.

Batala is so near! They say it only takes an hour. One thing that my mother said had eaten me up: “Your maternal grandfather would say about my paternal uncles, ‘You were seven brothers, and you all reached safety along with your families. I had only one son, and he . . .’” All of my paternal family had been in Batala. Mother had also come to Batala to live with her maternal aunt, who was my paternal grandmother as well. My maternal and paternal grandmothers were sisters. It was fortunate that my mother had come to Batala, because she was able to come across with everyone else. One of my uncles was a clerk in the Laat Sahib’s office, in the Punjab Secretariat. My eldest uncle also had a good job. My father and two other uncles worked in the Electricity Department. The uncle who worked in Laat Sahib had brought all his brothers and their families on a rented truck with guards. But my maternal grandfather and one Mama, my maternal uncle, had stayed in my mother’s village, Peeran Bagh, near Gurdaspur.

Mother was the last one left from her family. Her sister, brother, and parents had all died before, during or soon after Partition. Even her husband passed away when he was still young, leaving her alone with the little ones.

Harminder had still not arrived. I tried to extricate myself from the memories and stories and ordered another tea. The rain poured down. The remains of my paternal grandfather were in Batala, and I also had to visit the graveyard. My grandfather was quite well-off, but he was murdered in 1928. He had been appointed patwari of his original village, Qila Desa Singh, about sixteen miles from Batala. We had acres of land there, but the people who left my grandfather’s dead body at our home in Batala early one morning said, “Do not try to come back to the village again.” We were allotted a house of only fifty square yards in Krishan Nagar in Lahore after Partition; that included the allotments of both my mother and grandmother. My elder uncle was the wealthiest of all, and he was allocated a big house in Krishan Nagar, but he soon sold that house and built a big mansion on a quarter-acre plot in Gulbarg, a nicer area of Lahore.

The rain lessened around seven o’clock, but the wind was still strong and wet. At around quarter to eight, it stopped altogether. I recognized Harminder immediately. He was average height and wore thick glasses. He was wearing a short jacket and tie. “Oh,” I realized. “He had to come on a scooter. That’s why he had to wait until the rain stopped.” Once he arrived, we left the guest house at once.

Sitting in the garage, the guard must have watched us go. But we were so happy to see one another that we were not aware of anything around us. Harminder talked nonstop, full of enthusiasm. In ten or fifteen minutes, he rushed through all the details of the plans for the next day.

I would have to reach the Golden Temple, in the centre of the city, on my own. He would meet me outside. Then we would have to do some shopping. “Amritsar’s vadian snacks are famous. I want to buy some for you.” I was preoccupied with how I was going to get to Batala the next evening. I didn’t have a visa to go to Batala, so I would have to go there secretly, staying overnight and returning after visiting my parents’ house in the morning. Harminder stopped once or twice on our way and came back with something wrapped in paper. “I’ll tell you about it when we get to my place.”

The first thing he unwrapped at home was chicken; he gave that to his wife. He told her that I had come from Lahore, and his son came to greet me with “Sat Sri Akal.” Then he unwrapped a bottle. “I couldn’t complete my service for you without whisky, could I?” he asked with a laugh. He leaned closer and said quietly: “I was once assaulted while coming home one night. I was on a scooter, drunk. They demanded my wallet. I was drunk, so I tried to fight them. I said: ‘You motherfuckers, I am not giving you anything.’ There were two of them. If there had only been one, I could have beaten him. They attacked me with a knife before they ran off, cutting my chest. I sat down, holding my chest, bleeding. Soon somebody passed by, and the police came. I survived somehow but remained in bed for many days. I still have the scars. But I had to stop drinking after that. My wife—you are my brother, so think of her as your sister-in-law—won’t let me touch it. I got special permission today because of your visit.”

Raising his glass, he said, “To your beautiful city of Lahore,” and drank his glass in one gulp. Then, who knows how, but the bottle got finished while we kept talking. Then his wife came in and gave Harminder a long look. “It is almost midnight,” she said, and then started serving dinner. “Just sleep here,” he said. But I told him, “I have to be out tomorrow night, and it won’t look good to be out two nights in a row. I hope to go to Batala tomorrow, and I don’t have a visa. Please, would you drop me at the guest house?” His wife listened attentively. “No,” she said. “Our son Jaswinder will drop you in the car. The rain is terrible.”

While Jaswinder got the car out, Harminder gave me some books. I sat in the front seat with Jaswinder, and Harminder and his wife sat behind. “I wouldn’t allow you to go alone,” his wife said to me. “Who knows what might happen? Conditions are very bad here,” she added. “I could have taken a taxi,” I told her. “I’ve caused you so much trouble.” She dismissed me. “Be quiet. What is all this crying about a taxi? How could we let you do that?” I kept my mouth shut after that.

There was some problem between Harminder and his wife, and they talked nonstop the whole way. By the time we reached the guest house, it was something like two in the morning. They dropped me at the garage and left straightaway. I ran to the big gate, fleeing the rain, and found it locked. I shuddered with sudden fear. I had forgotten to tell them that I would be coming back late. But there was a light on inside, and the guard opened the door slowly. He had a blanket over him and might have just gotten up from bed. I was still quite drunk. I looked at him and gave him a little smile, and then quickly climbed the stairs. For a moment, I heard the breath of someone running behind me. And then a thud of someone falling.

I hurried to get out of my clothes and fell into bed. I was drunk, so I fell asleep in an instant. I slept deeply, but had nightmares all night. People are banging at my door, yelling slogans. Then suddenly the door breaks open, and someone pushes my Mama and he falls on his elbows. Someone is on top of him. There is tumult everywhere. He puts up his hands to try to defend himself. He is struck by a sword, wielded by the guard at the guest house, with a tightly tied turban and red eyes.

I look around my room and notice that there appear to be drops of blood splattered on the wall. The rain continues, and the grave of my father is eroding. It is the lone grave in one of the open fields that belonged to my grandfather. “Now you have come to say your prayer for the dead,” my Mama says. “You have come after sixty years to give me a shroud.” Mother puts her hand on his face, she is wearing a suit the colour of henna. Mother once told me that when she arrived in Batala, she was wearing a henna-coloured suit.

I woke with a start, got up, and stood by the window. It was still dark, and there was no sign of dawn. I didn’t know what time it was. There was a dim light at the garage. It is said that when Partition happened, it was during the monsoon, and it rained a lot. Everything was washed away in the water. Suddenly it appeared to me that the lawn of the guest house was soaked in red, and I could see the faces of the dead swimming in water there. I immediately backed away from the window and sat down on the bed.

My heart seemed to sink, as if I just couldn’t bear it all. Oh my God, I am going to die here, I thought. I should never have come. The moment I crossed the border, my heart had begun palpitating, and it was as if I couldn’t breathe. Was it because of my uncle’s murder? I don’t know. Just a kind of distrust started growing, and I had the feeling that I would die.

The sound of steady rain came in from outside. It had been drizzling all night. Finally, it was six in the morning; I had slept for barely four hours.

Sometimes the blood spilled by our own hands never dries. It courses through the coming generations, keeps flowing inside us for as long as we don’t openly confront its source. And they didn’t allow us to do that, to confess, to name that blood and what we did to each other. They do not allow us to meet. Otherwise, we could come together, sit and face one another, and ask, “Oh brother, why did you kill us?” Otherwise, we could go back to our lost places and find peace. Then people would say that whenever Punjabis meet, they talk and weep together. But when did you ever let us weep, when did you let us embrace each other? You could decide to move one place to another, perhaps, from here to there. But Amritsar will always be twenty-two miles from Lahore. You demolished the signs along the way, so that we would forget those living across the border. But where have they really gone, Lahore and Amritsar? They will be there, in the same place, as long as the world is here.

Now what has my generation done wrong? Why do our hearts remain soaked in this blood of the past? Whose hatred do we live with?

It is said that in everyone’s life there comes a time when people look back and want to know where they came from. They remember their origins. This can happen at any time—in youth as well as in old age. Sometimes someone born in the next generation starts probing the past, grandchildren searching for the abandoned places of those who came before.

My grandfather had sprung up out of nowhere, like a mushroom. Almost fifty years had passed, and I had never thought about him. I had never seen a photograph of him, nor had I heard anything in particular about his life. When it finally occurred to me to ask about him, there was no one left to tell me. I didn’t even remember anything about my own father, let alone my grandfather who’d been murdered in his village thirty years before my birth. But I did remember how my uncles would sit for long hours talking. And we children would sit by and fill the hookah bowl with tobacco. Mother used to say: “The women in the neighbourhood would say to grandmother, ‘Dear sister, let your sons leave your house one by one, lest someone cast an evil eye upon them.’” My grandmother had seven sons. When my grandfather was murdered, my youngest uncle was just six months old. When my father died, my youngest brother was also six months old. All my uncles went at least as far as tenth grade in school. But my youngest uncle was the most successful. He became a judge. Having left the village after the murder, my grandmother took care of all her sons in Batala, all by herself, weaving cots and hair tassels for girls. She never accepted handouts. There was an amazing kind of self-respect in my grandmother that was inherited by all her sons.

Grandfather’s story, though, did find its way down to our generation, at least through innuendo and rumour. It was said that our grandfather was a great drinker. That he kidnapped a Sikh girl from his ancestral village, Qila Desa Singh, and then couldn’t ever return there. That he was murdered by Sikhs. And so it was: we were ruined in our own version of the scourge of 1947, which was already history when Partition happened. The elders knew the whole story, but our generation rarely spoke openly of it. Once, at a wedding party, one of my paternal cousins got drunk and accused all his uncles: “You are a bunch of cowards. Did anyone ever take revenge for grandfather’s death? That is why grandmother lost her mind in her old age. They took all our land.”

We were told only that our grandfather was great. There were horses and acres of land in that village. He was probably from the first batch of patwaris appointed by the British in 1915. When my elder, more religious, uncles would fight with my youngest uncle about his own drinking, he would reply through his stupor, “I am walking in my father’s footsteps. You are the ones who have abandoned our father’s ways.”

One of my elder cousins told me, “A friend of your father used to live in Model Town, in Lahore. He was from Batala. He got all my uncles admitted to Batala schools. He would joke with my grandfather: “How it is that you have a son ready for school every year? Let our sister-in-law take a breath.”

Now my grandfather has come alive for me. After one hundred years, he seems very close. Do bones wait for the living? People don’t ever really die—they are just hidden from view. They live as remembrances in the house of the mind. People die only when they are wholly forgotten.

There was a knock at the door. The attendant had arrived to ask when I would have breakfast. I started. I looked at the clock and saw that it was already eight.

I bathed, got dressed, and went down to the dining hall. It was open now, and a few people were having breakfast. I ate mine quickly. I didn’t see the guard from out front at the gate. Maybe he wasn’t on duty this morning. I don’t know why a wall of fear and doubt had risen between us. He must be a spy, I thought, keeping an eye on Pakistanis: whom have I been meeting? where have I been going? who is arriving to meet me? If I hadn’t returned to the guest house last night, would he have reported on me?

There was no rain now, but the clouds were running wild. They appeared to be racing towards Lahore. It had been twelve or thirteen days since I had come, and I was feeling homesick. But knowing Lahore was so close was a comfort.

But then I remembered Batala. It was as close to me now as Lahore was.

Harminder had promised to meet me outside the Golden Temple. I went by auto rickshaw, and, passing through the streets along the way, I got lost in the magic of the people, shops, and places. Finally, I arrived at the Golden Temple grounds. I met up with Harminder, and we wrapped some cloth over our heads like caps, took off our shoes, and entered. There was a long queue to visit the interior of the gurdwara. I felt the place keep me moving, here and there, among the crowds. But I also felt a strange sense of calm and happiness, and I thought of the shrine of the Sufi saint Mian Mir, who was said to have laid the foundation stone of the Golden Temple. Even though I had never been here before, I had been to Mian Mir’s shrine in Lahore many times. Whenever you visit his shrine, there is always a special quiet and contentment in the courtyard. The chirping songs of sparrows drift from the ancient trees surrounding the courtyard. But we always left quickly and did not linger to listen.

“You are leaving tomorrow,” Harminder said. “Who knows when we’ll have the chance to shop, so if you want to get anything, do it today.” So I bought Kashmiri shawls, and he bought me the local snacks—vadian and pappar. Then he dropped me at an old book shop, promising he would come get me soon. The shop was originally in Lahore, and when the owner learned that I had come from there, he was thrilled. Though he had never himself seen Lahore, he felt that he had seen something of it, seeing me. He arranged for some food to be brought over from home, and we chatted without stopping. I didn’t know where Harminder was; it was afternoon, and I was supposed to go to Batala today. At last he came back and drove me on his speeding scooter to the house of a professor, where he left me again. The professor told me that a friend of his was on his way from Batala and that he would escort me there. He was the manager of a bank, and he would take care of anything, so there was nothing to fear. “Harminder told me that you don’t have a visa,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I visited my ancestral home in Sialkot without a visa. I was asked only to take off my turban when we crossed the bridge at the Ravi River. Now things are good. Your chief minister was just here. He was given such a grand reception that the queue of people lined up to welcome him was almost half a mile long.”

We waited for some time. The professor had to attend a marriage party in Chandigarh, and he was in a hurry to leave. He finally received a phone call, and then he told me the bank manager had said that I should be dropped off at Punjab Club and that he would meet up with me there. Harminder took me to the club right away and told the people at the gate that I was the Sardar Sahib’s guest. They had already been informed about my coming, and Harminder left as he had some work to do. He told me to phone him when I got back in the morning. The club was from an older time when everything was made of wood except the walls and roof. There were big open chairs and beautiful old tables. The cabinets at the bar were in the same old-fashioned style. A few people were sitting on stools, enjoying their drinks at the counter. It was quiet and very peaceful. Perhaps because it was evening, there weren’t many people around.

The waiters invited me to sit on a vacant chair and asked me what I would like to have. “The Sardar Sahib will be arriving shortly,” they told me. I said that I would prefer to wait for him. But they said, “We have been ordered to serve you. Please have something to eat or have something from the bar.” The bar was full of foreign whiskies. I gestured towards one and took my seat with my glass. After a while the bank manager appeared and brought his hands together in greeting, apologizing for coming late. He was a gentleman through and through, probably about my age or a bit older.

He placed an order, and the waiter brought kebabs, tikkas, and some other dishes. He asked for his favourite whisky and raised his glass in a toast: “To your ancestral city, Lahore.”

Then he said: “Partition destroyed us. Batala was a prominent industrial city. Batala Engineering Company was a big name. We heard that later its owner transformed it into the biggest company in Lahore. How could we have sent away such a diamond of a person? He was known as “Saabun” Sahib, because he started out selling soap on his bicycle. Batala is still where it was. Amritsar is in the same place. But we have been locked away from each other. Lahore and Amritsar were once connected; now Amritsar is the last city of a new Punjab. Traffic has stopped; trade is finished. If the border were to open now, Amritsar would come back to life.”

He talked without pause. Then he asked me to recite some of my poetry, and he recited some of his own, too. We discussed almost the whole world, and I drank a bit more. I wanted to forget Batala. Listening to him talk nonstop about Batala made me miserable. At last I gripped his hand and said, “Please don’t talk about Batala. I can’t bear it.” It was my thirteenth day in India, and Batala had been walking beside me the entire time. We used to tease my mother by mentioning Batala.

His wife came around eight that evening. She had done a lot of shopping. Sardar Sahib said with a laugh, “Trips to Amritsar are very expensive.”

His wife gave me a warm greeting and said with a sigh, “I know this grief. We are originally from Lyallpur, west of Lahore. My elders went to live there when the British gave out allotments in that area. We went to Lyallpur from Jalandhar and then came back again to Jalandhar fifty years later, having lost everything. We are Kahlon Jats. It wouldn’t rain for many days in Lyallpur, and when rain did fall, it would instantly disappear into the earth.” She spoke in one long breath, as if she finally had found someone to talk about these things with after so many years. But then Sardar Sahib indicated that she should be quiet and ordered dinner.

The drinking was having a bad effect on me. I was flooded by thoughts of my mother and Batala. It all seemed like a dream. I was going to Batala. For almost fifty years I had been listening to its stories from my mother and other elders. The Sardar Sahib saw that I had become quiet, and he understood. He seemed very wise to me. His wife seemed to like talking with me about Lyallpur and listening to me talk about Batala. I discovered a strange kind of connection with her. His own parents were actually from Batala. Indeed, the family was from the Ramgarhia community, which had settled in Batala even before the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

It was already past ten by the time we ate dinner, and later still when we left the city. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. There was only the blackness of the road. I was lost in my drunkenness, which helped to hold back my tears.

They had me sit in front with the driver, and they both sat in back. Their car was quite roomy and fancy. The driver was attentive and had promptly opened the door for me. I sat silently the whole way, while they discussed their own things in the back. As we arrived in Batala, they told the driver to avoid the city. The market was already closed. Only some dim lights were visible here and there. It was like Krishan Nagar thirty years ago. Silent lanes, few people, and little movement. Most of the roads were dark, but shops were scattered here and there. Nothing seemed unfamiliar: it was as if I had seen it all before and then forgotten it, like some lingering fragrance in ancient places. A fragile light somehow burned in the darkness of my unconsciousness, like the shining eye of my mother.

They stopped at one point and gestured at an empty plot. This had been the home of Saabun Sahib, who owned the Batala Engineering Company. “C.M. Latif,” I said. I had read his name outside a mansion opposite the Governor’s House in Lahore. He was now the owner of PECO, one of the first steel factories in Pakistan. We sat there in the car for a while. I wanted to get out and kiss the road, but I stayed where I was. I had become very emotional, but I kept silent, slowly wiping my nose. He asked the driver to move on.

We soon reached their own home. It was like a small palace. A large house, a sprawling lawn, with a few cars parked outside. They took me into the drawing room, and then his wife showed me up to my room. I thought I would simply take off my clothes and go to sleep, but his wife had the servant bring me nightwear and slippers. I had just changed my clothes when an invitation arrived from Sardar Sahib. He was seated in a lounge-like room with a TV set. He had a bottle and glasses in front of him and was waiting for me. I was wonderstruck. “I had heard that Sardars could drink,” I said, “but now I have seen it.”

We had drunk so much at the club, but he wasn’t finished. “Do you come here every day? What will happen tomorrow? If the border closes, no more meetings. Who can trust these governments?”

It was late. His wife was sitting nearby. It was quite cold and gas heaters were burning. The room was cozy and warm. The servants must have been ordered to arrange everything beforehand. Snacks were served: fresh fruit, dried fruits, and I don’t know how many other things. I was not in a mood for any of it. Batala had made me sad. All my desire to come here had turned to grief.

Who knows, perhaps Sardar Sahib wanted to entertain me. In any case, he started asking about my family, about the murder of my Mama and all the others. But then he said, “You don’t have the exact address, do you? Hard to say whether you will find the house or not. You can have a look around Batala, and I’ll send two servants with you. They know the city. You can visit the main bazaar—but there is no graveyard.” And so what of my grandfather’s grave? I could not find my voice. “There is one shrine not far from the main bazaar, your mother must have told you about it. Even now they still light lamps in honour of the saint buried there. The city hasn’t changed much: it has the same old neighbourhoods and streets. It’s only when a house finally falls down that a new one is built. Only then do the maps need to be changed.” I don’t know how long he kept talking and drinking. Finally, his wife mentioned that it was time to get some rest.

I had nightmares about my grandfather and my Mama, my mother’s brother, all night long.

The door is forced open, and someone kicks him. He falls on his elbows and tries to protect himself with his hands. Blood falls on the ground, falling and falling, and it is raining, raining. Meanwhile, the grave of my grandfather dissolves and slips away.

I woke up late in the morning. Sardar Sahib had already gone off to the bank. The maid was sweeping the floor. As soon as I opened my eyes, she went to call the Sardar’s wife. She asked me whether I’d slept well and then told me to get ready for breakfast because the two people who would take me around Batala were already there.

I quickly took my bath, had breakfast, and went to the city. They had a scooter—only a scooter could go everywhere. I wanted to find my neighbourhood and the family home.

In the main bazaar, in front of a huge door to something like a fort, I saw two small turrets. On one side was a lion and, on the other, a horse, with a huge clock between the two. In the days just prior to her death, Mother said over and over again: “There is a horse on one side, and on the other a lion; there is a horse on one side, and on the other a lion.” Today the secret of it was disclosed.

The family house was supposed to be located on the highest ground, up the hill. Once I was there, I had to find the brothers’ courtyard, as it was called. The hill was there still, but the brothers’ courtyard was gone. All the people nearby were new, among them a family of jewellers from Sialkot. When they found out that I was from Lahore and that I was looking for my ancestral home, they started to insist on giving me a meal. “You can’t leave until we eat together. We won’t let you go.” At last I agreed to sit with them at a shop and have a cup of tea. There, one story flowed, and then more, words cascading like a flood. I just wanted to sit off to one side for a time.

I tried to send the people with me back, telling them to fetch me later. One said, “Sardar Sahib told me that we shouldn’t leave you alone, that we should remain with you at all times. You don’t have a visa for Batala.” I remembered the guard at the guest house. He might have me apprehended even now, as I had been away all night. And then I started to think of other things. What is there in the relationship between these two countries that has anything to do with their people? Our governments have put all their energy into separating people from one another, not allowing them to visit their ancestral places. But then I thought, what will be, will be. Let me just see Batala: who knows when I will be able to come again? So I said to my companions, “Go and have some tea or something, and leave me on my own for a bit.” They agreed, and I began to wander through the market.

My first thought was that I had been longing for this place for no reason. I wasn’t born here, nor had I ever lived here; it was all new me. What is there here for me? My parents had ties here, and they were gone. That story was over. But then again, from my whole family, from among all my grandfather’s seven sons and their children, I was the only one out of more than one hundred who had been able to visit the ancestral home. Is it the pull of the past? Why can’t we forget our roots? Why do people want to return to them, again and again? Why aren’t they just allowed to live, without this pull? And why are we forced to leave our lands in the first place? And then not return: is this some kind of punishment from the past that we have to endure? Were we ever given a choice?

Sometimes I think about my grandfather and try to add colour to the image I have of him. What shades do I use, after eighty or ninety years have passed? The graves have disappeared; there is no stone, no sign of them. For neither grandfather nor Mama. All that remains are the words and memories that mother shared with me all through her life. The thought of them intensified the pain of my separation from her. Memories of her infused my conscious and my unconscious with grief.

There is nothing for me in this city, I thought. It is just like all cities, nothing special. The only real place is the one where we live. Why do the shapes of these other places rise up in our dreams? Who is it, whose breath sends them floating through our minds in the white clothes of death, even as the grave is dissolving? Why do such nightmares return? Why do they devour us? Why doesn’t 1947 ever come to an end?

Of all that was left here, it appeared nothing remained. My mother was only thirteen or fourteen years old when she left Peeran Bagh and Batala, and, having settled in Lahore, that is where she remained. She used to talk tirelessly, for hours and hours, about her ancestors. She spoke less about her mother and sister, and more about her father, who had come to Lahore by himself, and her dead brother.

I reached the green shrine. I thought it would be good to pray. The shrine was still in use, with fresh candles lit and new sheets laid out upon it. I kissed the grave and touched my forehead to it. The scent of incense filled the air. The voice of my mother rose up in me, and she was telling her story:

Our village was Peeran Bagh, a mile from Gurdaspur. When the land was divided, we left everything and came to Lahore. In our old village, we had a garden of mango trees. My father, Ghulam Farid, had his shop; mother’s name was Zainab. There were ten, maybe twenty homes of Sikhs, ten or twenty of Christians, and ten or twenty of Muslims. Some people owned land. There were shrines to Sufi saints in the village, and there used to be an annual celebration for the saint, and a big festival as well. Qawaali singers used to come from Gurdaspur to perform:

Piran dia pira, sach dia piria

Purday kaaj dia pira

You the leader of all saints, you are the leader of truth.

You are the pir who encompasses everything.

My brother used to recite for the Prophet’s birthday: “O God! That country is the most beautiful, where I have been searching for you from place to place.”

We had a mare, a buffalo, and a cow, and about a quarter-acre of land. There were just two rooms in the house: one was used for animals, and the other for sleeping. My father was the imam at the local mosque, and at the time we left our home, he had gone to read the Eid prayer at another village called Khokhar. My one elder sister was married into the family of my maternal grandmother in Batala. I came to Batala one month before Partition. My father left me there, to go to Pakistan with them.

My older sister had already died. I was five years younger than my brother who was martyred.

It was announced that the attack would come on the third day. My brother led the Eid prayer in Peeran Bagh.

When Pakistan came into being, the Sikhs said, “Leave on the third day.” There was one household of Shahs, descendants of the Prophet. They had given away acres of land to people. The Shahs said to my brother: “Please come to our home, the women are alone. We will bring a truck and a military guard from Gurdaspur.”

When we fled our home, the hen had laid eggs; two chickens had been slaughtered and were ready to be cooked; the flour had been kneaded; the clothes had been put out to dry on the wall after washing. The milk was set to boil, and there was a sack of wheat in the kitchen. The greens had been picked and put to the side . . .

The Sikhs came and said to my brother: “You are the son of Ghulam Farid and we don’t want to kill you. Run away.” But when they came on third day, my brother was still there, at the Shah’s house, because the women had been left there while the men had gone to Gurdaspur to bring the truck and the military. Maybe the Sikhs knew that the women were on their own, without protection. They warned: “Come out. If you don’t, we’ll cut through the roof.” When the attack came, he faced them on his own.

He opened the door. One sword hit him on one side, and another on the other, and finally one hit his neck, and he was killed there in the courtyard. Everyone was forced out from hiding. They took the women and went away.

I saw it in a dream. They were slaughtering a camel. He was wearing a simple white tunic and a dhoti. That’s what he always wore, even though he was a scholar of literature and learned in Arabic.

As they were taking away the women, they met the army convoy. The soldiers took back the women. My father was hiding in the home of a Christian, behind some sacks of cow fodder, and so he was saved. Then he came home and drank the milk. I had silver coins in a money box, but it was left behind. My father didn’t bring any of the gold and jewellery that was hidden in the walls. He just brought two suits of clothes and nothing else. I don’t know how he reached Lahore after locking the house. Then he left me on my own after just a few years, dead from the grief of the loss of his son.

Mian-ji, my maternal grandfather, taught the Qur’an Sharif to the whole neighbourhood. There was a huge banyan tree in front of our house. Girls would sit beneath it all day long, knitting and doing embroidery. There was a real sense of harmony. People came to the well, and the daughter of the Shahs would come with her spinning wheel. There were jujube, pomegranate, and mulberry trees all around.

And neem trees. My father was young and strong, like iron. He would bring the ground wheat on his horse, with two sacks on one side, and two sacks on the other.

FOLLOWING my mother’s memories, I reached the end of the bazaar. It was time to turn back, and suddenly my heart and mind drained of everything. I started moving quickly, from the high point at the end of the market back towards the lower ground. I asked people about my home: “The brothers’ courtyard, on the high ground.” I got no information. I just kept wandering in the lanes. The houses were quite old. Some had debris in front of them. The walls along the paths were made of the old Nanak Shahi bricks, from the time of Ranjit Singh, with their fissures and gaps, through which the shy centuries peep. The lanes were the same as ever; only time had gone astray. The homes were the same, but their inhabitants had changed.

Closed rosewood doors had locks and chains. The softly carved wooden lattices on second-storey windows were falling apart. I reached the shrine.

The man who brought me was waiting. “I didn’t find my home,” I said. ‘Shall we go?’

I didn’t find it, but I did find something. “Rabb Rakkha —may God keep you” I said to my grandfather, ‘Alam Deen, and Mama Hamid. I looked up and saw pieces of grey and white clouds moving quietly along in the blue sky, with the sun dodging in and out of their shadows. Phagun is the month when the sun and clouds play games of hide-and-seek.

I sat on the scooter.

Sardar-ji was waiting for me, and lunch was ready. I met a woman at their home. Amazing. She looked exactly like my elder sister, and when she said that she lived in Qila Desa Singh, I felt sad. The same features, frail and slim, and the very same voice. I talked with her for a long time. I was thrilled that she was from my grandfather’s village, and I tried to forget that this was the same place where, some eighty years back, people had lifted my grandfather’s dead body and brought it to the house of my grandmother, who later went mad. That woman from Qila Desa Singh: she wore a dark yellow shawl, and her hair was grey.

“I heard that you had come from Lahore to visit your ancestors’ place, and I said that I would like to meet you.” When I told her that our village was Qila Desa Singh, she kept insisting that I visit it with her, because it was not far from the place she lived. But at that point I wanted to go back to Amritsar. I might not have a visa for Batala, but I had seen it. That was enough.

After lunch, I returned to Amritsar by bus. It was just a forty-five-minute journey from Batala to Amritsar, and from there only half an hour to Lahore. Out of all my grandfather’s seven sons, none was able to come back again. All of them died wishing more than anything to visit again.

It was evening by the time I returned to the guest house. Rain was coming yet again. In truth, I was afraid of the guard: he might call the police to find out where I had spent the night. Seeing me, he came right up and shook my hands with a “Sat Sari Akal.” I was surprised that his hand was warm.

“Did you have a good visit to Batala? Did you see the places you wanted to see—did you find the home of your ancestors? You are fortunate to have had this opportunity.” He spoke to me all in one breath. “Going back tomorrow?” he asked. “Yes, I’ll go back in the morning,” I said. He seemed to want to keep talking, but I climbed the stairs of the guest house. “He is acting friendly, but he is still trying to get information,” I thought to myself. “He knows everything.” I was sure that he was a spy. But maybe he wouldn’t turn me in. Maybe, I kept thinking, I would get out safely tomorrow.

I fell onto the bed and immediately went to sleep. I was exhausted from the day. I had no idea how much time had passed when I was awoken by a loud banging on the door. The guest house attendant was standing outside. “Calls were coming all day long,” he told me, “and you weren’t around, and then you didn’t come back at night. Now I’ve put the phone on hold, please come take the call.” I splashed water on my face and came down to the phone. It was drizzling outside. Harminder was on the line. He said: “I can’t come now. It is raining. And you are tired. We want to drop you at the border if you can stay just one day more.” I told him that my visa would expire the day after next. “Whatever happens, I have to leave. Next time, for sure.” I had no way of knowing that this would be our last meeting—that he would leave this world only a few years later in a road accident with his entire family.

It was nine at night. I must have slept for two or three hours. Now how would I get back to sleep? The servant served my meal. I ate sitting on a chair near the entrance to the guest house. There was a light drizzle of rain. I didn’t see him anywhere. I had always seen him sitting in the garage or standing outside it, attentive, in his neat and clean uniform. There was a kind of furtive swagger in his manner. You couldn’t really look at him, but you also couldn’t ignore him. I had been afraid of him since the day I arrived.

I watched the rain fall in a steady stream as I ate my meal and drank my tea. How long would it rain? If it hadn’t been raining, I would have gone out to a telephone booth to call home. Then I realized, perhaps it isn’t possible to call Lahore. I would see in the morning. As I drank my tea, he appeared from somewhere, I’m not sure where. He reached out and took my hands, in a gesture of welcome, and held on for a long time. The warmth of his hands bored through the wall of my suspicion. He had removed his uniform and was dressed in normal clothes. “I took the day off today. I thought I would sit down with my friend from Lahore. I got some stuff for you. I know folks in Lahore call whisky ‘stuff.’” Then he slapped a hand against mine and gave a loud shout of laughter that echoed through the whole hall. When the servant came to take the empty cup, I started to order another. But he waved the servant away. “Go up to your room,” he said. “I will be there in a minute.”

I really didn’t want to drink with him. But what was I to do? I still didn’t trust him. His show of open heartedness had created a crack in the wall of my doubt and mistrust, but the wall was still there. I kept on doubting him, fearing him. “He really isn’t someone to fear,” I told myself. But then, who knows? Maybe he wants to get me drunk and learn my secrets. Trapped in indecisiveness, I returned to my room. He immediately followed me, accompanied by the servant who was holding all sorts of snacks in his hands. “My dear friend, you have spent too much money,” I began to say. But he cut me off.

“If you are from here,” he said, “I am from there. My family home was in Badana village, in Lahore District not far west of the border. When the time came to leave, I was in the womb of my mother. I had three brothers and two sisters. Jawaala Singh—a general in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army—was also from Badana. Some of my brothers became Muslims in order to hang onto their land; they are still living there. The others came here. My father sent us to Amritsar to live with my elder uncle, and he refused to leave his village, his home, not even at the last moment. He slept with the buffaloes. He kept saying, ‘This is the land of my ancestors, why should I leave it?’ We didn’t even know where our village would be, this side of the border or other. Partition came so suddenly. People who had been living together for years became enemies. It was only when Partition happened that we found out our village was in Pakistan. It was attacked that very night.”

He offered me his glass. “Cheers—to your Batala and my Badana,” he said, and then emptied his glass in one gulp. His eyes were wet, and he grasped my hand. “Brother, I am a retired army man. This is the first time I have sat with a Punjabi from the other side. You are from my city. When the servant first announced that you were from Pakistan, my blood boiled. Someone like you killed my father and uncles. But why did anyone kill someone else? We were devoured by greed, eager to seize land and wealth, and we gave that greed the name of religion. When I found out that you’re from Lahore, though, I wanted to meet you. Even so, my blood would grow hot again, at times. But now I am calm and at peace. I would love to see Lahore, and I could also visit my village, just as you have gone to Batala. You are fortunate.” He told me that he had entered his village during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan and had seen his ancestral home. But he couldn’t fire his gun towards Lahore, “How could I fire towards my own city?” he said.

We kept talking, on and on, for God knows how long. We shared our grief and exchanged phone numbers, but it was all in vain. It was not easy to come together and meet. He got drunk and kissed and embraced me and then fell asleep. I don’t know what time it was. I had lost all sense.

The guard from the guest house—his name was Hardayal—woke me early in the morning. He brought down all my luggage, despite my insisting that he shouldn’t. Harminder arrived at ten with his son. Outdoors, the sun was shining. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but Phagun’s chill breath of wind was still in the air. Hardayal embraced me tightly, “Okay then. Rabb Rakkha, Sat Sri Akal.” His eyes glittered in the sunlight. I looked at them closely, and they were a kind of rosy colour. I thought for a moment that they might be red with anger, remembering all that he told me. But then I saw that the corners of his eyes were wet.

As I crossed the border, it seemed to me that a piece of sunshine was left in Hardayal’s pocket, like the remembrance of his warm hands. I suddenly felt the cold of the passing winter. The terse behaviour of the staff at the border made the whole experience seem like a dream. And everything was contained in those dreams.

The dreams kept coming to me in Lahore, and I no longer knew whether they were of the streets of Krishan Nagar, Lahore, or Batala.

But there was one dream that I dreamt only after returning from Batala.

It is Batala’s old bazaar. On one side there is a lion and, on the other side, a horse. A little girl, seven or eight years old, is wearing a henna-coloured suit. She is running towards the high ground, at the end of the market. Off to the side, my uncles and older uncles are all sitting together, wearing white cotton tunics and dhotis and smoking the hookah. I see the base and immediately recognize it. I used to heat up that hookah in childhood. Its silver water basin is shining. They are all sitting in a circle except for one man who is standing, his hand tucked into the cloth at his waist, and he is looking closely at the others with a half smile. It must be my grandfather. One can see it from how he stands. There are women and others around. Just for a moment, I see my grandmother and my elder sisters; their heads are covered, and they have tight ponytails. Then they all vanish. The little girl running through the bazaar passes by me without looking towards me. Running on, she recedes into the distance, and then it appears that she has flown away and disappeared into the wind like a bird.