In PoK, a mother’s 40-yr wait ends

For more than four decades, Harbans Kaur had no idea of the fate of two of her children. This week, just two days before India and Pakistan ...

For more than four decades, Harbans Kaur had no idea of the fate of two of her children. This week, just two days before India and Pakistan began their historic ceasefire, her cross-border quest ended when she met them here for the first time since the 1950s.

The moving story of the 77-year-old Sikh woman who returned to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir on Monday to meet her long-lost Muslim son and daughter sums up the tragedy of Partition, where families suddenly found themselves split across the border.

Kaur travelled this week from Ahmedabad to Muzaffarabad to meet the children she was forced to leave behind in the 1950s.‘‘It’s the first time in my life I have found this happiness,’’ says Kaur’s long-lost son Manzoor Hussain Awan. ‘‘I can’t believe my eyes and ears that I am seeing her and talking to her. My dreams have come true.’’

Story continues below this ad

At the time of Partition, Kaur was separated from her husband who, being a Sikh, was forced to flee Muslim-dominated Kashmir. Assuming him lost, she married a local Muslim, converted to Islam, and bore two children.

But in the mid-1950s, she had to leave Kashmir and her new family after an agreement between India and Pakistan required women to return to their original husbands.

In India, she returned to her Sikh faith and her first husband, with whom she had two daughters and a son.

‘‘It was my wish to see my other children again once in my life and my wish has come true,’’ Kaur, who is here in Muzaffarabad with her Sikh son, told Reuters. ‘‘It’s lovely to see my children after all these years.’’ Kaur will stay a month and visit her ancestral village nearby, but she will not be able to see her Muslim husband—he died two years after she was forced to leave Kashmir.

Story continues below this ad

It was only seven years ago that the Muzaffarabad children, with the help of relatives, managed to trace their mother. ‘‘And it was just two years ago we were able to locate her telephone number. We spoke by phone, wrote letters and exchanged pictures,’’ Kaur’s daughter Zeenat Bibi says.

They wanted to meet immediately but this was prevented by the heightened tension between India and Pakistan. It was with the resumption of a bus service between Lahore and New Delhi this year that their dream finally began to take shape.

‘‘We know how we suffered all these years and how badly we missed our mother,’’ Zeenat says. ‘‘I wish she can stay with us, but she cannot because she has to go back. She has a family there also.’’

(Reuters)