For generations we had lived in the same village and ploughed the same land. We had good relations with the Sikhs who we viewed as brothers and sisters. Our relationship with their community was very good. We shared land and would go to the Sikh village to visit and they would come to ours for weddings.
This all changed during Partition. For a month we kept hearing about the atrocities carried out by Sikhs on Muslim villages. Then we heard that a lot of people had died in the next village, only two miles away.
My Uncle agreed with the Sikh leaders that we must leave immediately. Everything happened so quickly, we got blankets, food, pots and pans together. The small children were put in carts and started on our journey to the camps.
They were only four miles away, but it was the longest four miles of our lives. We believed at the time that we would only stay in the camps until the trouble went away and then return to our villages.
There were thousands of us in the camp. This made an easy target for the Sikh bandits and we were continually attacked. Water was a problem and in September it rained heavily and we were living in mud. We realised that we would have to move to Pakistan.
We walked to the borders and eventually arrived in Lahore. Here we saw the bodies of Sikhs who had been killed -- this came as a major shock as we did not realise that they were victims too. We hated our new village, the land wasn't as fertile and housing was poor. Our parents would tell us that one day we would return to our old village.
In 1964 I came to England to join my husband. Life became worthwhile again when we had our two children. Ironically, we became great friends with Sikh families. In fact when we went on pilgrimage to Mecca, our Sikh friends looked after our children, and when my husband died in 1989 it was our Sikh friends who were the first to come to our house and mourn the loss of 'their father'.
Such is our bond.
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