An insight that I gained from a difficult situation or challenge Assignment | Custom Essay Services

I Found The House
My Grandparents
Abandoned in 1947
by Ahmed Ali Akbar
The afternoon train to Panipat was seven
hours late. I had spent just 300 rupees on
the ticket, so it wasn’t a big loss. But I had
only a few days of spring break in India,
and I needed to make it count for a lifetime.
I asked a man on a cycle rickshaw if there
was any other way to get there; after all, it
was only 100 kilometers away from New
Delhi. He motioned for me to get on his
bike, and we rode against highway traffic
to another station. A bus driver yelling,
“Panipat! Sonipat! Panipat!” ushered me
onto a bus without answering any of my
questions.
I’d always pictured Panipat to be a serene,
spiritual place. But the Grand Trunk Road
I saw wasn’t quite the ancient path of
migration I had envisioned. Tire shops
and chai shops stood along the road with
roofs curving like little fingers toward a
massive multilane overpass, choking the
windpipe of the city. The smiling faces of
Bollywood stars, eyes glinting at Pepsi
logos, adorned the awnings of most stores.
This was a modern, industrial city, not the
tight-knit community I’d imagined based
on my mother’s stories. But I still felt an
overwhelming sense of returning home. My
grandparents and countless generations of
my family had been born here, so in some
ways I was returning to them.
My aunt gave me very simple directions to
reach the house: Find the shrine of Bu Ali
Shah Qalandar, then ask for directions to
the poet Altaf Hussein Hali’s house; across
the street from that is home. But I took my
time. I breathed in the air and spent an hour
photographing the word “Panipat” anywhere
I found it — on torn posters, at the train
station. The word had a spiritual depth to it;
like the Sufi concept of dhikr, I repeated it in
my heart, as if remembering it would imprint
it on my soul. As if it would imprint the
departed on my soul.
The concierge at my hotel put me on the
back of a flower seller’s bicycle, and we
drove through Panipat’s curving arteries
toward the shrine at the old city’s center. I
had expected, as most Pakistanis assume,
that there were no Muslims left in East
Punjab, where Panipat is. But the shrine
was attended by Hindus and Muslims alike. I
gave my respect to the Saint and the Shrine.
Eventually, I knocked on the imam’s door
and sat with him for a while, hoping he’d be
able to guide me. I asked him if he knew of
my ancestor, Qari Mohiyyul Islam Usmani
(another tip from my aunt), but he just
laughed. The connection I was looking for
was gone, he told me. The Muslims who
lived in Panipat now were not the Muslims
who lived there before 1947.
I left the shrine and started asking strangers
in the canopy-covered bazaar outside how
to get to Hali’s house. Within 15 minutes I
was in front of a house covered with posters
in Hindi script, filled with what must have
been historical information. So I turned to the
other side of the street and took a good look
at what had to be my grandfather’s house.
It didn’t take my breath away. The paint
and walls were weathered, but the doors
were heavy things, adorned with gorgeous
carved work. There were twin Hindu
swastikas on each side. I had no way to
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I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947 by Ahmed Ali Akbar
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know if any of these things were there when
my grandparents left the house. As I stood
there, lost in thought, a young boy standing
in the street noticed me gawking.
“Can I help you, brother?” he asked me.
“This was my house,” I said.
“This is not your house. This is my friend’s
house,” he said.
It’s true. It was not my house. But if things
had been different, it could have been.
My grandparents were born in the British
Indian province of Punjab. But in 1947,
the British finally left the subcontinent
and the colony was partitioned into two
new countries along religious lines: The
states with a Hindu majority would become
part of India, while those with a Muslim
majority would become part of Pakistan.
Like countless others cursed by history,
my Muslim grandparents were on the
wrong side of the border. So, amidst rioting
and massacres, my families abandoned
everything and traveled nearly 400
kilometers to West Punjab, Pakistan.
Nana and Nani never returned to Panipat,
or India, but they also never forgot the home
they lost, the family members who died on
the way to their new home, or the history
they were so fiercely proud of. My mother,
born four years later in Rawal Pindi, was
the first good thing to follow this tragedy.
She was a symbol of hope for both this
new country of Pakistan and for my family.
When my parents married, they moved to
America with the intention of coming back
to Pakistan. But they never did. I was born
and raised in a small town called Saginaw, in
Michigan.
And so, for my entire life, and perhaps for
my mother’s as well, Panipat has existed
as a mythical location outside of time and
space. My grandparents died before I began
forming memories, never having returned
to the Indian side of the new border. But
my mother, ever the storyteller, preserved
the city and our family’s long history with it
for my sisters and me — descendants, she
said, of a long line of well-respected Sufi
scholars and leaders. She told these stories
as if I were an exiled scion with a legacy to
uphold, but it had been generations since
anyone in our family had spent their whole
life in Panipat. I wanted to go there anyway,
no matter how absurd it was to long for
something so distant.
I was born in Michigan, but my first language
was Urdu. After my grandparents died of
cancer within months of each other, my
mother returned to Pakistan with 2-year-old
me in tow — and it was there where I spoke
my first words. But once we went back to
America and I learned to speak English, a
valve in my head shut and clogged up all the
Urdu I knew. We would visit Pakistan often,
but I’d sit in silence, feeling like a foreigner.
Twenty years later, in a case of brutal
symmetry, my mother also contracted
cancer, and I realized that losing her
would also mean losing everything that
connected me to our family’s past. During
the next two long years of her illness, I
found mostly superficial ways to connect
to my desi identity: I took classes on Urdu
and South Asian history, became obsessed
with Bollywood movies, and recorded the
recipe for every family delicacy my mother
could remember before her mind slipped
away. In high school I had bristled at being
called “white on the inside,” but by the end
of college, I’d found myself in the surprising
position of being almost comically Pakistani.
My mother passed in Michigan and was put
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I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947 by Ahmed Ali Akbar
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to rest there, too, the second generation of
our family to be buried in adopted homes.
When people die, the quickest thing we lose
is the imprint of our names on their tongues
and in our ears. The way my mother said
“Ahmed,” high-pitched and singsongy, had
history in itself; she had named me after
her father, against his wishes. For those of
us who feel left between places in history,
between homeland and diaspora, the body
and mind are resilient sites of stored history.
After my mother died, I became determined
to find new ways to speak our legacy in my
life.
So, nine months later, I flew to India on
a scholarship trip to learn Urdu. There
seemed no better way to show that I could
grow without Ammi in my life than to cross
the border that two generations of my
family had never been able to. The Indian
government took eight months to approve
my visa application, riddled as it was with
references to my Pakistani heritage. As I
sat on the plane to Lucknow, I felt history
itself weighing on me. My life, from Panipat
to Saginaw, could all be boiled down to an
accident. In another life, where the British
hadn’t so thoroughly separated the people of
the subcontinent, I might have had family to
greet me among the throngs at the airport,
the way I do when I visit Pakistan. But there
were no relatives awaiting me. I came alone.
Even though people in India ostensibly
speak “Hindi,” my Pakistani Urdu never
revealed me as a foreigner. This was a great
fear of my family — that if Indians somehow
knew I was Pakistani, I would somehow be
placed in danger. But all that most Indians
did was scrunch up their face at my halting
sentences and pronunciation, then ask
where I was from. I’d say America, most of
the time.
“Ah,” they said, “But you look completely
local. Your forefathers and their forefathers
were Indian, right?” And so, I began to feel
a burgeoning sense of ownership in my
identity. When I walked into a store, the
attendants didn’t stare at me like they do in
America, skeptical that I’ll buy anything. I
found myself thinking, so many times, is this
what white men feel all the time? No one
questioned whether I fit in. I realized I had
never felt the privilege of people assuming I
belonged before talking to me.
I settled into Lucknow like a new home. The
guys at the kebab shop knew my order. I had
a favorite rickshaw driver. I started styling
myself like the locals, with a mustache and
shirt tucked into pants. And I realized, after
a few months, that I had an opportunity I
couldn’t ignore.
I went to see if our family’s name was still
inscribed in Panipat.
So there, in front of me in the street in
Panipat, was a doorway into my identity. I
could see it — maybe even touch it — but by
the stupid bad luck of history, I couldn’t open
it. And even if I were able to go in, would
anything be left?
I’d stood there for barely five minutes before
the boy who had talked to me retrieved his
friend, who lived in the house. Most of the
other times I had explained my family’s story
to Indians, they welcomed me warmly, like
a long-lost brother coming home. But here,
for the first time, I felt like an intruder. The
two boys, probably only a few years younger
than me, stood in the doorway, as if I might
make a mad dash inside. I asked if any of
the elders who might remember some of the
place’s history were at home, or if I could
come inside. They shook their heads at
both suggestions, but allowed me to take a
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picture when I asked.
So that was it. I had found the house and
been denied entry. I stood in silence for a
bit longer, but I knew I had no other options.
I left and spent the rest of my weekend in
Panipat sleeping deeply, attending qawwali
performances at the shrine, and attempting
to make my five daily prayers. I never went
back to the house. I never met anyone who
knew my family’s name.
The day before I was scheduled to leave,
a young boy stopped me as I was buying a
soda and some chips.
“You’re the American, aren’t you?”
He must have heard my accent. “My parents
are Pakistani, but yes. I’m American. And my
grandparents were born here.”
He invited me over for tea. He had heard
the story about how I wasn’t allowed into
Nana’s house, and said I should come visit
his home. We walked through the narrow
alleys, and I wondered how anyone could
find their way in this rushing river of a town
layout. The boy’s home had only two rooms,
but four or five children playing outside
were called in to join us. The father, broadshouldered
with mottled skin, like my own
father, asked me to sit on a charpoy next
to him. I was their guest, so they asked if I
wanted anything to eat or drink. I had little to
no appetite, but I said yes.
I explained that I was the child of an Urduspeaking
woman and a Punjabi man.
Immediately they asked me, “Are you
Hindu?” and I laughed. The idea of a Punjabi
Muslim seemed so foreign to them — 60
years foreign. But no, I said, I’m Muslim.
And I explained how I came here to find my
house. They were curious about America,
too, about what exactly had brought my
family there and where I was raised. I
marveled at the fact that even a year ago,
I wouldn’t have been able to have this
conversation with these strangers, entirely in
Urdu.
I asked about the shrine and if they knew
of my family, or anything about its history.
They didn’t, but the father told a story his
father had told him about the Muslim saint
who was buried there, and his relationship
with the Hindu gods Krishna and Hanuman.
I can’t say I understood everything, but I
listened and learned. Eventually, the father
started asking questions about Pakistan and
my parents. My mother, I said, was born
in Rawal Pindi. And my father was born in
Lyallpur, which is now known as Faisalabad.
The father’s eyes lit up. This Hindu man’s
father, in an inversion of fates, was also born
in my father’s birthplace of Lyallpur, but had
to abandon it during Partition, only to end up
in Panipat. He, like me, dreamed of visiting
the city his parents left. Of finding the history
that was lost.
We sat with the weight of that.
“So,” I said, “I guess we are brothers.”
“Yes. We are brothers,” he said. “And
Panipat is your home.”
“And Lyallpur, it’s your home too, if you can
ever come visit.”
He gave me his cell phone number, and
we promised to call each other if I were
ever able to return. But I knew that this cell
phone, like the house in Panipat, like the
American house my mother died in, wouldn’t
last.
The forever thing, the thing I would hold
onto, was the feeling of family in my heart.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ahmedaliakbar/not-quiteeat-
pray-love?utm_term=.ko0105B70w#.ybQxAj25AR