John Siddique
>I needed to place myself in his landscape
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John Siddique recovers fragments of his father’s journey to Lahore after the Partition @ Granta
Faizal carries his wife in his pocket: she is a white handkerchief. Faizal carries his three daughters in his other pocket: three small stones gathered from the side of the road. Their names are lost to walking. His sons Mohammed and Rafiq flank him. They carry the memories of their sisters and mother in their silence. Faizal closed down his carpet shop three months ago; he misses his days bargaining at his counter. No one has told Faizal why India has changed – he is not one of those men who drinks tea and talks politics at night. Every time he meets a dead person he asks them what his wife’s name was. He asks and puts his hands in his pockets.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Zoom out and it looks like the whole of India is walking. Walking towards a blue line on a rough map drawn on to a napkin. Mohammed Siddique, my father, is a young man of seventeen years on the road from Jullundur to Lahore. He will never be a Pakistani, he will always be an immigrant – a series of questions which Faizal cannot answer.
The scent of the fields after the rain has stopped for a while. Humidity rising. The earth’s redness in the dusk. Walking towards a blue line on a piece of paper. ‘It will be better when we’re across the border,’ Faizal says.
They move in colour, carrying everything they can. Though the eye of the century sees them in black and white, as a series of stills in a photographer’s portfolio. Partition: sounds like a thin wall made of simple materials between rooms that can easily be taken down. Take the word in your left hand and feel its weight. It is nothing – a few sheets of paper.
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