When I was around eight or nine years old, Father would pack me in the back of his car – an ochre Range Rover, JKD 7575 – on Eid as he’d dr...
When I was around eight or nine years old, Father would pack me in the back of his car – an ochre Range Rover, JKD 7575 – on Eid as he’d drive along with Ramzan Kaak. Ramzan Kaak was Father’s assistant at his clothing shop in Boher Kadal. He was roughly Father’s age, physically stronger, and the most trusted man of our household.
I remember seeing the mass prayer congregation that year at Eid Gah where hundreds of men, clad in crisp Khan dress and skull caps, had gathered to pray with their children, who were dressed up in bright colours. Rows of vendors selling wooden horse carts, rattlers, red strips of crackers and colourful plastic toys surrounded the large field where the men prayed. I didn’t know then that the same prayer-ground would come to be known as the martyrs’ graveyard.
I was never attracted to toys, and that was perhaps because I wanted to do the things my beautiful sister, Hina, did. A decade elder to me, she was past her age of playing with dolls and so, I, too, didn’t develop a liking towards them. In fact, that year (1989), as I turned twelve, I was finally allowed to...
