Global IssuesPAKISTAN: Nearly Osama’s Neighbour
It was far from home for an eight-year old, about 400 km from the eastern city of Lahore, to be exact. But Abbottabad was home. My father lived there; he was born there, in that house which my grandfather built.
Now that the dust and uncertainty about the raid seem to be settling, I think back on what was, and what might have been.
When Abbottabad hit the headlines the way it did, and lost its virginity, so to speak, I was disturbed. It was as if my home and privacy had been marauded, specially by Osama bin Laden. He had soiled and tainted the place and his blood on its soil has made its mark. And no one can will it to go away, ever. The house I grew up in was almost 100 years old when it was finally sold off in 2005. When I went to see the half-demolished structure back in 2005, a part of me died inside. My uncle and his two sons had decided to construct two smaller, more manageable houses, as the family expanded. Ironic that they chose a neighbourhood, where a year later, bin Laden would begin to spend his years as a fugitive before being killed on May 2 by a U.S covert raid.
I guess there is something else in common between us and the bin Ladens. It’s the size of the old house and bin Laden’s. My grandfather’s home was about the same size, if not bigger, with a lot of character, unlike bin Laden’s three-storey house. Ours was a home, his, a mere house.
The single storey house was in the middle of the 3,600 square yards plot of land with two gardens and a front yard before you entered the house. The boundary wall was higher than 12 feet. Incidentally, we, too, had a barbed wire over it. But it was the perfect house for a child to grow up in — rustic ambience with urban comforts.
For the next ten years, I’d visit Abbottabad every summer holidays. As a child the only way I knew I was nearing the town was when the air changed, the road wound, and the villages and fields which ran by the side, began to look smaller and much further below. I’d put my face out of the window of the moving car and as wind slapped my face, the smell would tell me I was nearing Abbottabad. It was pristine, somehow.
Entering Abbottabad also meant we’d be entering another province, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. People spoke a different language, which I later learnt was Hindko. The men on the street (women always covered their faces) always looked bent and older. But the weather-beaten faces with a thousand creases would easily break into warm smiles.
It holds my most cherished childhood memories. It was the place where I first learnt to ride a bicycle, where I developed a taste for comics. But what I loved most was going hiking to the hillocks (which looked towering then).
Sad that bin Laden’s eight kids never had the opportunity to explore Abbottabad the way any child growing up there should. Unfortunate, too, that bin Laden never allowed his kids to hike up the hill and bring back bags full of stones the way we did.
He probably never took them to a mosque where a stream runs through it or bought corn on the cob laced with lemon and red chillies from a street vendor. What a waste of living in the land of happiness, and never able to reach out for it. And now with him killed, chances are slimmer still that his kids will ever get to do any of this.
There were plenty of picnic spots around Abbottabad. We’d camp around a stream and swim to our hearts’ content. Small juicy mangoes would be placed securely in the running streams and at the end of a scrumptious lunch, the water-cooled fruit was passed around. No knives, no forks…we’d eat it the primitive way. That was the way it was to be eaten…you’d roll the fruit between your palms and make the pulp inside soft. Then put your mouth to the tip, prick it with your teeth and suck in the sweet sticky juice oozing out. Never did fruit taste so good.
As more memories flood me, I realise we played a lot. The days it rained were the best. And it rained a lot there. We would remain outside till we turned blue and the teeth would not stop chattering. But even inside, the rain followed us. The racket the raindrops would make on the tin roof was music to us. And that is another thing the Ladens never got to listen to; their house didn’t have sliding tin roof, from the footage shown on my television screen.
A few months from now when things become clearer, and the stories surrounding Osama Bin Laden die down, many will forget the name of the little sleepy town of Abbottabad.
And then I will probably have my little town back, even if soiled.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service