MIGRATION STORY ✉️A Letter to a Father.
Earlier last year my dad came upon a letter my grandfather, Dada Jaan, wrote to his father (my great-grandfather) in our family archives in Pakistan.
The letter describes in haunting detail of Dada Jaan experiences during the days around the Partition of Pakistan and India. He describes the familiar neighbourhoods of his Delhi life and how the Muslims of the area perished. He names relatives who made safely to Pakistan and others who had gone missing.
Listening to my own father read the letter is incredibly moving for me. I have made the effort to provide subtitles from Urdu to English the best I know how. And hearing each and every word to understand its meaning went beyond translation for me. I can feel the weight of the trauma of witnessing the chaos of the Partition. This is an important part of my history, one of many stories woven into the Pakistani narrative for independence and hopes for a better life.
If you'd like to learn more about this period of history, you can read my mum's semi-autobiographical memoir, The Migrants, Salma Siddiqui, 2018 - a must read!
Further literature: