Susan Goldmarks mother, Helma Blhweis, a Holocaust survivor, routinely threw away old toys and stuff to cut down on material possessions. She also kept a packed suitcase in an empty closet in their New York apartment and regularly reminded her daughter how privileged she was to not have gone through the horrors that Blhweis had endured. While the Holocaust was never discussed in detail in their house, Helma unwittingly inculcated in her daughter the fear of a repeat of the horrors.
Susan Goldmark is the wife of Kai Bird, the author of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and the Israelis (1956-1978). Among many other things in the book, Bird details Helma and Susans experiences. But for their radically different backgrounds, my own mother displays many of the same characteristics as Helma eschewing material possessions, keeping packed suitcases around the house, reminding me how privileged I was to not have had the same horrific experiences that she had had as a young girl; eventually inculcating in me the fear that it was all going to be repeated, and an abhorrence for wanton violence and bloodshed. Birds book made me wonder if children of first-generation immigrants especially those of people who had been forced to flee war and violence all went through similar experiences.
I was born in Karachi, 12 years after my mothers family fled their home in Dhaka. My great-grandparents had chosen to remain on their ancestral lands in Bihar (to this day, I dont know where in Bihar), and had been buried there. My maternal grandfather had chosen to take up a government position in Dhaka then part of East Pakistan where my mother was born.
We speak Urdu at home, but my mother is fluent in Bangla. She never discussed 1971 with me in much detail, but during her conversations with the wife of our Bangladeshi neighbours in Abu-Dhabi, I heard snippets about these events. Neither my mother nor our neighbour realised that I could understand Bangla, and therefore let me hang around during their conversations. I heard about the neighbours wifes experiences as a young Bengali girl in a state terrorised by the Pakistan Army, and my mothers experiences as the daughter of Biharis during the Mukti Bahini reprisal. I was around eight years old at the time, and my worldview comprised simplistic binaries of good versus bad; but for the life of me, I couldnt differentiate the good guys from the bad in these narratives. When our neighbours wife spoke to my sympathetic mother about atrocities meted out to them by the Pakistan Army, it was easy to figure out who the oppressor was. But when my mother told her about the Mukti Bahini, the distinction wasnt so well-defined. I used to wonder why my mother never condemned the Mukti Bahini, and always spoke of them as a legitimate, albeit violent, reaction to wanton injustice. They had terrorised her family, I would think. They had left permanent scars in her mind; her once influential and well-off family had been forced to flee their homes and live like refugees in a new country; it was because of 1971 that my mother never got to finish even high school. Why does she not condemn them openly?
It was only later, when I tried to understand the nuances of politics in Southasia, that I understood my mothers views about Bangladeshs nationalist movement. With this understanding, however, also came a deepening of my own fears. For all practical purposes, my mother, while she was growing up, was Bengali albeit one born to Urdu-speaking parents. The Bengalis she knew did not think of Biharis as the other, and vice versa. Dhaka was her home. A point had come, however, when her home had turned against her and violently forced her family out. Sindh is my home, but despite my local birth, I am not considered Sindhi by default. I am the other the daughter of first-generation immigrants of Bihari and Bengali origin. My sympathies lie with the people of Sindh, but many grassroots nationalist cadres regard me as an outsider with suspicion. And due to my sympathies for the Sindhi nationalist movement and my abhorrence for the communal politics of the MQM, which claims to represent the Urdu-speaking community, I am regarded as a traitor by many MQM cadres I know. Who am I, then? If I am Southasian, why did the government of India deny me a student visa to my fathers country of birth? If I am Pakistani, why do bureaucrats at the passport office harass me and ply me with needless questions about my parents immigration when I try to get my passport renewed? If I am Sindhi, why am I treated with suspicion in my own land?
I wonder if this otherisation of Urdu-speaking people by Sindhi-speaking people (and vice versa there absolutely is a vice versa) will eventually lead to bloodshed of the sort we saw in 1971. I wonder if one day, my children will write about a mother who was sympathetic to the local nationalist movement despite being forced out of her home. My parents made Sindh their home. It is my home, and will hopefully be home to my children and theirs or will it? Will they be forced to be outsiders in a strange land too? Where? Will they be able to have an identity? Or will they, like me, to paraphrase from Helen Epsteins Children of the Holocaust, carry the burden of a history that they never lived? A terrifying history of otherisation, injustice and violence that was thrust upon my mother and me. How long will we continue to be forced to suffer for sins that were neither ours, nor those of our forefathers, but were committed by larger players with bigger agendas with absolute disregard for the micro? Why do their sins deny me an identity in my own country of birth?
