The Proposal

Trembling from muscle fatigue, Taro’s thighs were weak from squatting for an hour to wash and massage Seema’s feet.

Seema sat comfortably above Taro and on the charpoy and adjusted the circular brocade cushion behind her back.

Taro, whose parents had sent her to work for Seema when she was six, had spent twelve years in this house.  When she first arrived, she replaced her sister, Khadija, and dusted the furniture, while the cleaning lady swept the floors. Later when she had learned how to cook, and her sister got married, she replaced her again, this time in the kitchen.

Every morning, before the male servants needed the bathroom, Taro took a quick bath with the blue plastic bucket that she filled at the water pump.  Sometimes she wore the same clothes she had slept in, but she always braided her thick oily hair with a black cotton purandah lengthening the braid and making it swing seductively around her buttocks as she passed the male servants’ charpoys.

Taro never looked back at the men who were still half asleep, but could feel their desire as she sauntered past toward the outdoor kitchen where she prepared parathas and tea for their breakfast.

But when she wasn't cooking, she took care of Seema’s personal grooming, washing and ironing her clothes, braiding her hair, and massaging her body, when it grew tired of the tedium of sitting on a charpoy deciding with personal and financial disputes.

Regularly, Taro trimmed Seema’s nails with a blunt nail clipper and rubbed her heals with a terra cotta pumice stone.  But Seema had left home for some time, and her yellowing nails and blackened heal cracks were testament to enduring two weeks of scorching heat in Mecca and Medina for the Hajj.

As Taro pulled the second foot toward her to soften it with the olive oil, smelling mysteriously of mustard oil, she looked up at Seema.

“Bibi, I’ve heard there’s a new cream that makes your skin white, and softens it till it glows.  The TV Ad goes,…’black skin becomes fair and fair skin will shine like the moon’”, Taro mimicked the sing-song jingle.

Seema half-smiled in response:

“Get lost, idiot, the lemons from our tree lighten my skin, and the olive oil that Amman sends me makes it soft. You haven’t wasted your Eidi on the cream, have you?”

Taro was saving her Eid money to watch the “The Sign of Honor” a Punjabi movie playing in the theater across town with Ashraf the driver.  They would slip out in the afternoon when everyone was sleeping, but Taro wasn’t going to tell Seema, or anyone else, so she looked away.

“No Bibi. When you were gone, I never left home.  And anyway, I got only five rupees from your Amman, Baray begum sahib for Eid because she didn’t have any more change.”

Seema’s nostrils, swollen from travel-induced allergies, restricted her ability to smell the penetrating rose scent of the cream that Ashraf the driver, had given Taro for Eid, the celebration after Hajj.  Even if she could smell it, she was too pre-occupied.

She wiped the mucus from her nose with her head scarf, cleared her throat, turned her face away from Taro and spat.  Then, looking directly at Taro, she announced:

“Sakeena is coming next week to propose for her son, the school teacher, and I’m going to say yes.”

Two years earlier, when Taro’s sister had married Sakeena’s eldest son, and Seema had sent her off without a dowry, Taro knew she would be next to be married at discount.

“Will Ashraf the driver take me without a dowry?” Taro wondered.

“Are you deaf?” Seema’s mood exposed through her bulging eyes.  

“When the maulvi asks you if you want to marry Akhtar, you’ll have to say yes.”

Taro stared at the green sputum on the floor and continued rubbing Seema’s foot, the oil dripping on Taro’s favorite yellow kameez, creating a stain that would remain until the kameez would be torn into dusting rags.

Mulberry Trees

“Rancid rice and lentils ravaged my liver!” Chanting relentlessly, rolling her eyes, beating her breast, shuffling her encrusted feet on the parched ground, Aashan, the washerwoman, mesmerized her audience.  The women encircling her joined the chant, clapping in unison, a human drum.  Eyes shut, face to the sky, body arched as if dancing the limbo, she collapsed in a heap on her back; Sheedan, the cleaning maid, replaced her immediately with a quickened pace.  As the beat reached a crescendo, the circle parted as her body trembled in ecstasy.  Tearing at her hair and clothes, she changed the chant to, “I tear at the white ants that bite me.” Sexual innuendos in every gesture. Giggles, guffaws! Village women in mismatched shalwar kameez, heads half draped with chadors revealing multiple levels of earrings in one ear, red glass bangles harmonizing to the beat of the empty water pitcher beaten with a broken plastic slipper and a shard of broken pottery - Sweat, dust, thumps, claps, and raucous laughter.  Village women in Lyallpur, descendants of the original natives, entertained themselves on a stifling summer night under the pair of aging white mulberry trees.

This pair of aging white mulberry trees sheltered us in worship during the scorching summer afternoons, using dried Neem fruit as rosary beads, the bitter smell lingering on our fingers for the rest of the day after hours spent reciting in Arabic, “Exalted is Allah, and All praise is to Allah, and there is no God worthy of worship except Allah” on each fruit being pushed through sweaty fingers to complete the lakh, hundred thousand repetitions, required for acceptance.  The Neem tree, somewhat like the American buffalo, covers all human needs: its leaves are edible if cooked, the branches can replace a tooth brush, and its oil can be used in cosmetics and as a cure for malaria. But since the dried fruit was in such high demand, sometimes it was replaced with dried date pits, gathered, in my imagination, after an enormous date fest.  The worship would also include Friday afternoon prayers during Ramadan, which required similar repetitions during namaaz.  Parched with thirst because of the fast, exhausted with the heat, we would find the long needed respite during sajda, “Allah is great!”, eyes closed, forehead pressed on the hardened dusty ground covered with an even dustier mat, damp from the previous decades of monsoon rains.

The end of Ramadan, Eid, was also celebrated under the pair of aging white mulberry trees on the peeng, creaking rope-swing hanging on the hollowed out branch.  Always in pairs.  One would stand thrusting her pelvis forward to give the swing height, and the other would sit pushing her legs backwards to increase the speed.   The seat was Aashan’s washing stick softened by years of beating the blue Robin Neel out of the yellowed white kurta shalwar,the starched white clothes worn by the boys, who never sat on the swing, but were always there to receive Eidi, money to celebrate the end of the month of fasting.  Crumpled ruppee notes, with the image of the founder of the country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, hidden deep in sweaty socks, no need  for wallets or purses, were immediately  rushed to the village store.  Shrouded in a mud colored chador, Hazrann, the Punjabi version of Hagar, was a savvy business woman, and extremely determined, not unlike her name sake. Once a week, she transformed her tiny hut into a child’s dream filled with piercingly colored unwrapped hard boiled sweets, fuscia colored bubble gum that stained sticky lips and cheeks if the bubble exploded, psychedelic mouth watering tangy powders, sweetened puffed rice, all unhygienicly scrumptious. 

§§§

Memory can distort events; the distortions are magnified with repetition.   Like drops of water chiseling a rock, magnified distortions become reality.   My selective memories of growing up in Lyallpur, the Manchester of Pakistan, might follow a similar pattern.   For more worldly Punjabis, affiliation to Lyallpur would be somewhat akin to a Californian’s connection with Bakersfield.  Traveling from San Francisco to LA down highway 5, you don't have to see Bakersfield, you can smell it.  The daily commute to school from my grandfather’s farm in Lyallpur required the same olfactory immunity during the annual month-long buffalo market.  “Mela, Mundi, Mawashian” the poetic roadside sign announcing “Fair, Market, Cattle” was unnecessary.  But there was no escaping the stench with no air conditioning in the sky blue Cortina with windows rolled down to catch the early morning breeze we listened to the high pitched but melodious rendition of "repeat Allah’s name and don't give anyone pain " on the radio and in the late dusty afternoon returning from school the sound of my yet unmarried uncle’s collection of sexy Bollyood hits on his mobile vinyl turntable. 

Sitting in the front seat between my father and my uncle, always smelling of the best imported cologne available, with my three sisters in the back seat, usually with a fourth passenger, maybe an aunt or a cousin who needed a ride to the city, the hour’s drive I would doze off or wander into the unknown future.

I don't remember the sound of the morning school bell because we always arrived as our classes were already lining up for Assembly.  Being one of the shortest, I stood in front as the Catholic Sister Angela, a local, and Sister Gabriel, an Italian immigrant, lead us through the English translation of Surah Fateha, the lord’s prayer.  After being delivered from evil, we took the path to our classes.  Sacred Heart High School, where Jesus stood in a glass cabinet under the stairs  reminding us of the sacrifice he had made so that we could study in the private school while the real Catholics studied in the school next door, St.  Joseph.  We wore blue sweaters and they wore red! We paid tuition, they didn't! We were taught in English, they in Urdu.  We could have joined them during recess, but we didn't.

The half-hour recess was spent screaming over the heads and shoulders of other girls dressed in white frocks and shalwars, now wrinkled and sweaty. “ Three samosas”, “a coke”, “two chips”, “daal”, stretching across the greasy counter, waving notes and coins under the nose of the bespectacled Italian tuck shop owner, who had fallen in love with the school groundskeeper on his trip to Italy and had returned with him to join the Italian sisters running the school for predominantly Muslim  families.

Catholicism was brought to Punjab by Belgian Capuchins in the late nineteenth century over two centuries after the California missions were established. But like the missions in California, there was a strong connection between the need for spiritual redemption and the secular labor.   So after the Chenab irrigation project of the 1880s, there was a sudden rush of mass conversions from the local primarily untouchable Hindus to Catholicism.  Newly irrigated land meant jobs for those creating the new towns and villages.  Those who had no chance of receiving land allotments found a way to employment. 

Near Lyallpur, Friar Felix a Capuchin monk from Belgium founded the Christian village, Khushpur-a literal translation of his name, Happy Town- ironically is known for being the home of martyrs:  Bishop John Joseph, who committed suicide in 1998 protesting the Pakistani constitutional blasphemy laws, and the politician, Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, who was assassinated in 2011 for doing the same. 

§§§

“How little notice we take, as a nation of our achievements! When an American city springs up in the wilderness, and hosts are attracted thither by greed of gold we hear all about it.  Our papers are full of cable grams reporting its wealth and greatness, its expanding population, and its explosive crimes.  But who had heard until the other day of Lyallpur?  How many even now remember that they ever heard of Lyallpur?  How many know why Lyallpur should be Lyallpur, and not Jonesville or Bryantown?  You will only find Lyallpur in very recent maps, for it is situated in the midst of what was six years ago a scorched, sandy waste in the heart of an uninhabited, waterless tract of the Punjab.  Sir J. B.  Lyall was at that time Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, and irrigation schemes then undertaken have converted the desert into a fertile, prosperous region. With a flourishing population of 200,000 agriculturist.  Lord Curzon happened to mention the fact in reply to an address of welcome presented to him in the Punjab, and by that means the British public-which takes an interest in Lord Curzon, who was once in the House of Commons-became indirectly reminded that British Rule in India works with a magician’s wand, touching the deserts and changing them to level expanses of rich crops from horizon to horizon.  But Lord Curzon has spoken of other topics since; and Lyallpur is forgotten.”

Lyallpur would not be forgotten as anticipated in this newspaper report on April 13, 1899. Even after it was renamed Faisalabad, it stayed in the forefront but not as prosperous or prominent as the American city springing up in the wilderness, attracting the hordes of immigrants looking for gold.

Whereas the Paris of the West, the home of Tony Bennet’s heart, San Francisco, was financed by the gold rush; the Manchester of the East, the Utopia of India, Lyallpur, was seminated by the Grand Canal Plan of the Raj.   Only two years before San Francisco’s rebirth from the ashes of the great fire, Lyallpur became a district.  As San Francisco embarked on its intellectual journey becoming the center of the liberal world, Lyallpur steamed into the next century becoming an agricultural and industrial center with the third largest city in the sixth most populous country in the world, Pakistan.  These two cities, separated by oceans and an even greater chasm of language and culture, embody the yin and yang of immigrants like me. They represent immigrants learning languages and cultures so foreign to their own, and thereby creating an anomaly astounding even to the individual morphing into the new reality.

The Indian Utopia! Few today would agree with Lord Curzon’s description in his address to the immigrant natives of Lyallpur at the magistrate’s house on April 3, 1903.  He would be extremely disappointed to know that in just over a hundred years, the town he serenaded as a supreme accomplishment of the Raj would become the safe house for Guantanamo internee, Abu Zubaydah, enemy of the free world.  Had he known, he might have agreed with the immigrant natives’ request for the epitome of British organization, a cantonment, but like a child’s unnecessary request, they were turned down.  This was neither the time nor the place for such a request.   The 1857 experience, the Indian Revolution (or Mutiny depending on the side one takes) was still too fresh, and maybe the British Government had anticipated that Lyallpur would become the center of unionist movements, and the birthplace of Bhagat Singh, the Sikh anarchist and socialist, who became a martyr to the independence movement. 

A century later, the British High Commissioner Mark Lyall Grant, the great grand nephew of the founder of Lyallpur, Sir Lyall, would revisit the city to try and clean it up, and also complain about the name change. In 1977, Lyallpur had been renamed Faislabad after the assassination of  the benign and comparatively liberal monarch of Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who, by the way had not made a direct contribution to the city, but had funded a mosque in the capital, Islamabad, clearly an attempt to end the relationship with the original British colonize and begin a new one.

Even though British citizens were more interested in the new city in America than the one created India, the governing powers were too busy creating such Utopias like Lyallpur to consider competing with the Spanish in purchasing San Francisco.   Unlike San Francisco’s haphazard and somewhat tumultuous beginnings, in typical Raj fashion, Lyallpur was meticulously planned and each step minutely recorded.  The natives were categorized, their castes, languages and religions, of which there many, were catalogued to be studied by later generations on google books-inconceivable to the British magistrates sweating in their verandahed homes, trying to stay cool as their servants pulled mechanically on the ropes of the ceiling fans luxuriating in the glory of creating a city modeled around the Union Jack.  Khartoum being the only other city branded so blatantly. 

When those colonized ultimately free themselves, they can destroy all visible evidence of their suppression, but if the foundation is innately colonial, it is nearly impossible to change it. 

For a city with hardly any recorded history, a city where nomads, the Janglis, roamed with their livestock, a city just two hours from the intellectual center of the Punjab, Lahore, to evolve from an agricultural utopia to an industrialized monstrosity.  A city so well-planned, the evolution will remain an enigma to its inhabitants. Lyallpur, the center of agriculture and later a giant of industry was born of the Grand Plan of irrigating the then not- so -fertile plains of western Punjab to become part of the flourishing bread bin of India, the provider of food and war fodder for the British during the Second World War.  The natives migrated in droves.  Based on their castes and backgrounds, so well-documented, they were gifted parcels of land, large enough to cultivate, but taxed enough to control.  Thousands benefited, including my great grandfather, working with the British colonizing officers to ensure all natives were provided with this newly created haven of land that could now grow wheat to fill the bread bins, cotton to cover them from the burning heat of the plains and sugar cane to sweeten the impact of the labor intensive work. 

But the colonial and revolutionary history wasn’t a key aspect of the years I spent in Lyallpur.  I graduated from High School and majored in English Literature and Philosophy from the Government College for Women, near the famous clock tower at the center of the Union Jack, the original plan of the city.  And then I moved on, graduate school, marriage, and immigration to the US. I started teaching English as a first, second, or third language at a community college.  My students are primarily Spanish speakers from Mexico, who bring with them experiences and histories unimaginable to others who have not needed or not chosen to migrate.  Maybe they are distorted or created histories; the farther one moves, the more difficult it is to focus.  But is complete clarity possible?   

After leaving for San Francisco, I returned to Faisalabad regularly.  One summer, after my father's death, I had to sign some papers for my inheritance.   For the first time, I had to go to the city courts, the kathchery, in the center of town.  As I waited first in one room, then in another, till I was invited into the main office, covered in my chador, I felt very much at home.  I was offered a few cups of tea, in the usual cultural tradition of offices in Pakistan. The walls were thick and musty, decades old files sat in neat piles all around the office.  Later I realized I could have just requested the papers be sent home, but I’m glad I got to have sat in the building that had been the center of the Utopia that is still waiting to become the city that was built out of nothing.

Dissonant Harmonies

I never heard the mesmerizing echoes of the Azaan at dawn: As-Salato Khayru ’m-mina ’n-Naum– prayer is better than sleep. Without a loudspeaker, the maulvi’s deep rhythmic voice never ventured far from the one-room brick village mosque; so he lead himself in prayer, while I, like the villagers, slumbered in the rare cool hours.

Morning hit hard, followed by the usual hour long drive to school and back with some studying in between, only to return for lunch at two.  With the onset of the excruciating Pakistani summer, the grownups, my parents, grandmother, aunts and uncles, expected long naps after lunch. To ensure they weren’t disturbed by screaming children, my siblings, cousins and I, were forced to sleep in the afternoon. And as if that weren't enough punishment, we were awakened a few hours later for the daily Quran lessons with the aging maulvi. I never wanted to sleep in the afternoon. However, after a late lunch of tandoori roti and aaloo gosht, accompanied by a lethargy-inducing glass of salty lassi, I would succumb to the gust from the hypnotic fan and fall into a deep slumber. Just as I'd lose myself in the cold London fog of my dreams, I would be jolted awake by the shout “maulvi’s here!” As a nine-year-old, ‘a big girl’according to Abu, I had to do what was expected, even if it meant suffering the torture of dragging myself out of the sweat-drenched bed to recite the Quran: my path to Paradise was being paved.

Sometimes, while I was still half asleep, the evaporating perspiration created an illusion of a cool British evening.  If I kept my eyes shut tight, the illusion might become reality. I might be transported to the park behind granny’s house in Barnes.  I’d be standing near the pond feeding the ducks left over bread crusts.  The biting wind on my cheeks and nose.  Why did I ever complain about the cold in England? I wanted to return to England.

 But I was old enough to know better. I knew that after a rushed splash-on-the-face in the bathroom, I would have to sit in the steamed verandah mumbling through a half-hour recitation for an aging maulvi.

I hadn’t wanted to sleep, and I definitely didn’t want to wake up to the stench of fried onions and garlic, or to read the Quran.  I felt nauseous. I wished I would die. Would dying just before reading the Quran make me a martyr?  Or would I have had to read it before being admitted to Paradise?  Were my thoughts blasphemous, because if they were, I wouldn’t be allowed into the land of milk and honey?

I didn’t want milk and honey.  I wanted to be in a cooler place than Lyallpur, Pakistan, with temperatures soaring to a hundred and ten degrees. It was 1974, and like every afternoon, for the next half hour, I rocked on a bamboo chair, squinting through drops of sweat, reciting the ancient script in a drone. The maulvi’s right eye, a red snake-like capillary crawling inside it, followed my finger as it underlined each word, scrutinizing for blunders. His left eye was permanently shut with an axe mark.

Neither of us understood what I was reading. It was in Arabic. We never read the Urdu translation, which would have been just as mysterious:  On our return from England two years earlier, I had relearned how to read Urdu, and he knew only Punjabi

As he followed my finger in the page, I dared not look at his face.  Maybe if I had looked into his eye, I would have seen the despair of a younger son, with no other option but to teach reluctant children how to read a script that none of them would ever understand.  The son forced to marry his older cousin because she was getting too old to bear children.  She came with a dowry of furniture for two rooms, just enough to fill the home he would receive in the village where he chose to lead in prayer.  His wife would teach the village girls like Rippho, Sayyo, and Phayyo,  who went to school in the morning and spent the afternoon cooking and cleaning in exchange for the half hour lesson of reading the Yassaranul Quran, the Quran Primer.

I had completed the Yassaranul Quran before returning from England. My mother had looked for a mosque near Barnes, but could find only the one for the Ahmadiya sect, so my elder sister helped me prepare to read the Quran.

And now in Pakistan, I had been mesmerized by TV’s  Qari Waheed Zafar Qasmi, who every evening, just before the daily cartoon show and the news in Punjabi, recited verses from the Quran making each one a melodious chant. I wanted to read the Quran like him.  But, despite his scrutiny, my maulvi was clueless about how to guide me, so I inhaled till I felt dizzy, squeezed my larynx, and began with the best of intentions : Aoozobillahe minishaita nirajemm: I seek refuge from Allah from the outcast Satan!

Reading the Quran was peaceful.  The harmony was soothing.  Each verse rhymed with the next creating a familiar harmony that helped me forget the hawk eyed maulvi following my every note.  I forgot that his wife came regularly to see my mother and aunts after he beat her; in hushed voices they discussed him forcing himself on her to bear a child that her barren womb would never bear.  The voices became inaudible, as I or one of my cousins inched closer. 

But every so often, the peaceful countryside was shattered with ecstatic celebration.

“When you whisper my name, I die in ecstasy “noor Jehan, the famed kohl-eyed punjabi singer’s voice warbled on the loud speaker set up by Phayyo’s parents to celebrate the circumcision of their youngest son. 

The maulvi’s wife toppled off her perch on the peerhi. Her students gathered around her.

“Bring her some water!”

“No rub her feet”

“Is the speaker too loud again?”

“No.  It’s the songs.  She thinks she’ll go to hell.”

“How does she know?”

“Maulvi told her.”

Rippo and  Phayyo smiled at each other.  Sayyo, still rubbing her feet grunted.

“I hope you die and go to hell first.  Help me straighten her.  She’s too heavy.”

The three village girls tried to bring their teacher back to life.  They still had to finish the page they were memorizing and then had to clean the daal and cook it before the maulvi returned from teaching me and  my sisters.

They cleaned her house, washed her clothes, swept the floors, and cooked their meals as payment for her teaching them to read the Quran, which their parents and grandparents had not done.  They had memorized namaaz, and some of them were able to say their prayers regularly, if the village had a maulvi. 

The maulvi and his wife had moved to the plains of the Punjab on my aunt’s behest, but never really fit in appearance and speech, being lighter skinned and Potohari speaking, the Punjabi dialect of the hills adding an extra “Oh” sound to the end of each of phrase: “Glad to see you. Oh!” 

“We have sex every night.” She had complained to the Rippo’s mother “but I still can’t give him any children and so he beats me.” 

Now, recovering from her fear of hell seizure,  she pointed weakly.  “Cover the atta, and pass me that glass. He blessed that water just before he left.  It’ll give me the strength I need tonight.”

Teaching Islam was not lucrative for the maulvi and his wife.  Despite the rituals of birth, death and circumcision, and the Quran lessons, my family and the village folk were not desperate to  pay our way to salvation.  They left the village after two years, disgusted by the vulgar music played on happy occasions and the lack of commitment to praying and fasting.

But where the rituals of religion failed to harmonize the rhythms of randomness in the village, they succeeded in destroying the semblance of certainty of the city.

Every morning, we took the forty five minute drive to Sacred Heart School near the center of town.  If the car broke down, we stayed home.  Italian and local nuns ran the only English medium school for girls.  In public schools English was taught in the sixth grade.  Returning from  England with no Urdu lessons in school, put us at a disadvantage.  We had to start in a class where English was the medium of instruction.  We had to get tutoring in Urdu, and Arabic was even more difficult.

My parents decided to send us to Sacred Heart, a Catholic school, for Muslim girls.  Driving up to the school, opposite to Saint Raphael hospital on one side and close to the factory area.  Wonder what happened to Catholics getting the prime location.  There were no views, but it might have been the most populated area at the time. 

After recess, a line of young girls dressed in white cotton frocks and baggy shalwars to cover their legs with a strip of a starched cotton dupatta to cover their heads walked to the room at the end of the building adjacent to the St. Josephs for Christian children.  Our teacher, Mrs. Khan stood outside, head covered staring past her students entering the room in single file

“I don’t think I should enter” whispered one student as she passed by the teacher.  “It’s my first time having my period.” Mrs. Khan nodded to her to enter.

Mrs Khan followed the last student into the room and closed the door behind her

“Assalam o alaikum Teacher” the girls sang their greeting. 

“Walaikum assalam.  Stay standing”

“You.  Come here.  How dare you talk to your teacher about your period!”  Some girls looked at her questioningly, not knowing what she was talking about.  Others looked at the cracked floor, smiling.

“Now sit down, and Lubna begin reading from page 11”

“Qul a'uudhi bi rabbin naas” (I seek refuge in the God of Mankind) She read the Arabic verse that sounded like Urdu.  The forty five minute lesson seemed to take longer as we all took turns reading the same versus out loud in the same monotonous voice.  For homework we would write the verses in our notebooks with the Urdu translation below.  The line with the Arabic verse would be colored a slight shade of blue or green similar to what we saw in the Quran.  In our final exam, we would have to write the verse, the Urdu translation and an analysis of it based on the interpretation provided in the text.  The closer we stuck to the text, the better. 

Five minutes before the class ended we stood and chorused “Thank you teacher” and returned to our regular classroom in the same order we arrived.  And that was the last we saw of Mrs Khan.  .

School was cancelled the next day.  The evening before, on TV we had seen the unruly mobs surge through the narrow streets of Rail Bazaar, one of the main shopping areas close to our school.  Stores owned by Ahmadi’s were set alight.  Murad Jewleers and clthes store was burnt down.  Tenty six other stores were also , denouncing Ahmadi’s as non-muslims leaving charred shops behind. 

Mrs Khan and her family must have locked themselves in fearing their neighbors.    They must have prayed in the only way they knew, which was soon to be become illegal.  They might have left the city or the country if they had the money.

For weeks the insults, looting, burning, and killing continued.  In the name of the God of Mankind, one group of Mankind persecuted another, legalizing their opposition by adopting a law declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims. 

The sisters of our Catholic school decided to avoid parents confronting them, they replaced her immediately.

In the village we didn’t hear much about the riots in the city.  We got the newspaper sporadically and listened to the news on TV for when we would have return to school, which had been cancelled because of the riots.  For the next three years the pattern of turmoil intensified.  In the cities around the country students and workers demonstrate their political and religious perspectives and the police forced them home with lathi charges.    When they couldn’t control them, school was cancelled.  For me as a ten year old, I enjoyed the unannounced break from the school for months on end.

I began praying quite regularly in the predawn hours.  Sitting on the rooftop watching the last stars dissolve prepared me for the parching day.

After namaaz, I opened the quran

“And a sign for them is the dead earth. We have brought it to life and brought forth from it grain, and from it they eat.” Surah Yassen, which I later memorized the thirty six verses when as a sixteen year old I decided to learn Qirat from another maulvi in the city. Once I had completed the Quran with a maulvi, my lessons ended, but I wanted to recite the quran and be mesmerized by its harmony.   I asked a qari to teach me.  In my daily lessons, I learned how to pronounce the words whose exact meaning would always elude me. I learned the importance of posture and controlled breathing. And as he reminded me, to avoid distracting the maulvi, to cover my chest while I did all this.