A brief post: Leaves of one tree

‘If you don’t recount your family history, it will be lost. Honour your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important but they are what binds families and make each of us who we are’

Madeiline Le Ingle

We are all leaves on a tree and there are stories in every canopy.

I remember picking up ‘Footpaths in the Painted City’ by Sadia Shepard about five years ago and becoming instantly absorbed. It was one of those serendipitous library finds, a nugget of gold lodged between the other yellowing paperbacks; the covet of all bookworms.

Sadia Shepard grows up in a multicultural home with a Muslim Pakistani mother and Christian American father. She believes her Nana is Muslim like the rest of her mum’s family until the age of thirteen when she learns that Nana was in fact from a small community of Jews from India who believed they were the shiprecked descendants of the Bene Israel. Her Nana’s dying wish is for Sadia to travel to India and learn of her former life. This is the impetus for a long and fascinating journey through the past.

Moving on, my trip to Pakistan was a sort of venture through my own family’s history. I have always known my grandfather’s war story but to hear it from my grandmother was something special.

Every morning we sat down for breakfast, she would anticipate whether the sun would come out or not, peeking out of the shutters of the house. It was a good day if the sun did make an appearance. She could sit outside, take a walk around the house and go to the back yard to see how the lemons were growing. To be in her company was to perceive the simple things in life with a renewed exuberance.

That morning as we sat under the sun, I asked her about the war. She talked me through Japan’s attack on Hong Kong and her flighty departure home to Pakistan with her toddler son and young brother in law whilst pregnant. My grandfather remained in Hong Kong where he was employed by the British Intelligence.
Upon arriving home safely, she felt relieved knowing little of the gloom ahead.

‘I thought he was dead,’ she said of the time my grandfather was held in Stanley Prison by the Japanese, ‘we heard nothing.’

I could not imagine the crushing helplessness of such a situation, to think that anything could be happening to a loved one so far away from help or home. But when I look at her she seems an unbeaten stoic,  incapable of the sinking feeling I have right now in the pit of my stomach. There is something powerful about a grandparent sitting with you and recalling the trials life dealt them. It makes you feel part of something greater, appreciative and more capable of dealing with your own trials, current and imminent. It made me feel strong.

‘When did you find out he was alive?’

‘It was roujah (Ramadhan). There was a telegram and someone came to the door to tell me.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was such khushalee (happiness) that I forgot to break my fast.’

I smile at this because she could not have said anything else that would have given me a more vivid picture of what that day must have been like. A dead man had come back to life.

A typical morning in Pakistan…

 

Earlier this year, I visited Pakistan for the first time in over ten years. With annual family trips being predominantly organised during term time, I was always unable to go. This year however was different as I was on a hiatus from academia; in other words, free.

I encountered many beautiful and thought-provoking things which I hope will serve as material for future blog posts. For now I leave you with a description of a typical morning in Pakistan during my two weeks there.

‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar’

(Allah is the greatest)

The morning call to prayer echoes in the silence of a new dawn. Everything is perfectly serene as the muazzin from the local masjid continues.

‘Ashhadu alla ilaha illallah’

(I bear witness that there is no God but Allah)

The strings of feathered inhabitants are plucked as a delicate cacophony of birdsong brews. An unwelcome contribution soon follows through the piercing screech of a crow.

Slowly each household in the village begins to stir. Hands rub at groggy eyes as feet search for the warmth of slippers in impenetrable darkness. A series of stretches and yawns commence before the performance of ablution: the final step for returning travellers after their nightly sojourns into the realm of unconsciousness.

After praying, I leave my room and step onto the cold marble of the beranda (living room), a visual wonder but a torment for feet in the milder months. I step into the garden and take a small walk to a set of stairs that lead to the roof of the adjacent store house. Aunty Saffiyah’s annual gift to my father in the form of a goat usually sleeps in one the rooms, not a typical guest but a welcome one all the same.

The air is crisp and the sky is a blend of powdery blue and pink, overlapping and exchanging hues with the golden sun, a drop of honey in the cotton candy sky. Turning around, I can see Wadi Baba sat in the entrance of his small house across the field, dunking something that looks like a biscuit into his tea. Probably amraci, I think. Relatives sent about ten boxes of this deep-fried, rice cake delicacy upon our arrival and our consumption of them has barely put a dent in their seemingly infinite abundance. I smile, thinking of the local woman who turned up yesterday with a chicken as a gift to my mother and father and upon realising that my brother and I had joined my parents this year remarked that she would have brought a few more had she known.

I hear someone shouting my name from across the other house. Breakfast is calling.

I enter the house, go through a passage that leads down some steps to a room with a stone-flagged floor. To my right is a wall lined with pots and pans, to my left a well. I walk through a metal-hatched door and I am in the courtyard that leads to my grandmother’s house. I hear a young child’s voice and a knock on the gate. It is one of the orphans roofed by the local masjid and provided with food and drink by the community. I say salaam, ask how he is and take the flask to the kitchen where I fill it with the surplus tea my cousin makes every morning.

After handing the tea over with a bag of amraci and saying goodbye, I both smile and despair at a memory from over ten years ago.

It was lunch time and my grandmother’s house being open for those in need even then, the familiar call and knock came at lunchtime. It was the middle of August and I remember that just walking across the courtyard was akin to passing through a furnace. However, I was still enthused enough by my new scooter to brave the heat. After being handed a tub of daal (lentils) by my mother to give to the small boy, I attached the hook to a handle bar and made for the gate that the pot of food was never destined to reach intact. I stared at the mustard-coloured lentils splattered across the stone floor for a while and slowly raised my burning (with shame) face. I can’t remember the look on the boy’s face and it’s just as well. We filled the pot with more of course but I was still mortified.

I shut the kitchen door and enter the house to join the rest for breakfast.