I was a dreamer , not in the literal sense but one ‘who finds his way by moonlight and sees the dawn before others do it’. Sitting by grandmother’s side , listening to one or the other anecdote of her life, I often weaved my own world- a world of dreams and fantasies. In our world, devoid of storybooks , comic strips and animated films grandmothers and mothers were the only story tellers. They were also our chroniclers. Their quivers were full of tales, not only about fairies, jennies, kings, queens, princes and princesses but also about the contemporary times.
During summers as temperatures started soaring most of the families in our neighbourhood shifted to kanis, the airy top floors of their houses. The kani, for a couple of months turned into a living room, drawing room and bedroom for children and elders. Sitting by the side of my grandmother, I loved watching from the top floor of the house the azure skies and the sparkling snow-capped mountains in the West. At dusk, as the sun turned golden and everything around gleamed in the golden light, I often asked my grandmother what was behind those beautiful majestic mountains. She sighed involuntarily and took a deep breath as if I had scratched a fresh wound. She replied ,”Oh ! Behind those mountains there is a country created single-handed by a man of indomitable will’…his name was Jinnah-that is Pakistan. On saying tis, she would feedl nostalgic and remembered that tall and lean leader speaking to the surging crowds at te Muslim Park barely some hundred meters from our home. She started narrating the whole story , how she and her friends had squatted for hours on the lawns of the park. Like Edgar Allen Poe’s , gallant knoght Gaily, she sand song in search of El Dorado.
“Where can it be
This land of Eldorado ?”
“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon
I Could see the pain in her eyes brimming with tears. She remembered many young men of our mohalla including some friends of my father who had crossed over the mountains to the new-born country. Or for fear of persecution by the Emergency Administration led by Sheikh Abdullah had boarded buses and lories for taking shelter in Muzaffarabad and Rawalpindi. Some classmates and friends of my father for their political beliefs had been coerced to leave their homes. Grandmother remembered names of some contemporaries my father at Islamia High school, Ali Mohammad Malik, Mohammad Yousuf Buch and Abdul Gani Rentoo, promising bright minds of our ‘downtown’ who had been sent into exile for their subscribing to the ideology of the great South Asian leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
My grandmother also remembered Ali her grandson the most. He too had crossed over to the other side. I had not even faintest idea about my eldest cousin . He might have scaled the peaks that were distinctly visible from our house to crossover to Eldorado, when I was yet to learn to crawl. Nevertheless, his shadows in our childhood were looming so large at home, that in my make belief world I had weaved his images no less than a legendery knoght who braved the darkest woods.
He was son of my grandmother’s eldest daughter. Long before my birth his parents had died. He had been engaged to a cousin sister. After his crossing over to Pakistan, his in-laws were interested in getting their daughter married somewhere else but my grandmother believed, one day Ali will return. She visited every friar in the locality, beseeched Majzoobs – men known their spiritual attainments and tied ‘knots-of-wish’ at every Astana for his return to home.
I remember accompanying her to a peer sahib. We boarded a boat at one of the Ghats of Nallah Mar near Naid Kadal. Somewhere before the Dal Lake- perhaps in Abinawpora we disembarked from the boat near a humble thatched-roof house. The fair complexioned Dervish with sunken and sparkling eyes surrounded by his disciples and devotees carried a spiritual aura around him. His name was Ama Sahib. Squatting on the grass-mat, I watched him talking to people with all curiosity. My grandmother with tears trickling down her cheeks narrated the whole story about her grandson’s, what was called as Pakistan-Chaloun “escaping to Pakistan” to him. The Dervish gave her an old piece of cloth, some taweez and asked her to place these along with a bunch of nettle leaves in his used clothes in the attic of the house. He assured my grandmother that her grandson will feel the nettle rashes, wherever he will be and feel restless to return to home. And with absolute confidence roaring like a tiger, he said to her, “Be assured he will return home.” On reaching home, I got fresh long stems of nettle and these were placed in old clothes of my cousin. It was after a month that first letter from Ali was received at our home. The letter had been posted more than a month letter. Then letters from Pakistan were censored at New Delhi and at Srinagar. Sometimes, the letter was accompaniment with harassment from sleuths – the sleuths interrogated the recipients about the Contents of the letter. The first ever letter from Ali strengthened my grandmother’s faith in Ama Saib. She started waiting from him with more intense belief…And one day Ali returned at to the excitement of everyone at home. But my father’s classmates and friends never returned from their cherished Eldorado.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
