Page 117 - Train to Pakistan

clothes now. We can put in the cooking utensils in the morning after you have
cooked something for the journey.’ Imam Baksh stretched himself on the bed

and fell asleep.
There was not much for Nooran to do. A Punjabi peasant’s baggage consists

of little besides a change of clothes, a quilt and a pillow, a couple of pitchers,
cooking utensils, and perhaps a brass plate and a copper tumbler or two. All that
can be put on the only piece of furniture they possess—a charpai. Nooran put her

own and her father’s clothes in a grey battered steel trunk which had been with
them ever since she could remember. She lit a fire in the hearth to bake a few
chapattis for the next day. Within half an hour she had done the cooking. She

rinsed the utensils and put them in a gunny bag. Flour, salt and the spices that
remained went in biscuit and cigarette tins, which in their turn went inside an
empty kerosene oil can with a wood top. The packing was over. All that

remained was to roll her quilt round the pillow, put the odds and ends on the
charpai and the charpai on the buffalo. She could carry the piece of broken
mirror in her hand.

It rained intermittently all night. Early in the morning it became a regular
downpour. Villagers who had stayed up most of the night fell asleep in the
monotonous patter of rain and the opiate of the fresh morning breeze.
The tooting of motor horns and the high note of truck engines in low gear

plowing their way through the slush and mud woke the entire village. The
convoy went around Mano Majra looking for a lane wide enough to let their

trucks in. In front was a jeep fitted with a loud-speaker. There were two officers
in it—a Sikh (the one who had come after the ghost train) and a Muslim. Behind
the jeep were a dozen trucks. One of the trucks was full of Pathan soldiers and
another one full of Sikhs. They were all armed with sten guns.

The convoy came to a halt outside the village. Only the jeep could make its
way through. It drove up to the centre and stopped beside the platform under the

peepul tree. The two officers stepped out. The Sikh asked one of the villagers to
fetch the lambardar. The Muslim was joined by the Pathan soldiers. He sent
them out in batches of three to knock at every door and ask the Muslims to come
out. For a few minutes Mano Majra echoed to cries of ‘All Muslims going to

Pakistan come out at once. Come! All Muslims. Out at once.’
Slowly the Muslims began to come out of their homes, driving their cattle and

their bullock carts loaded with charpais, rolls of bedding, tin trunks, kerosene oil