Voices: Abdul Jabbar

Moved from Meerut to Lahore

"I was really shocked when I saw the change in my friends. ... I always wonder if you can pick up that kind of dislike so quickly because it is very hard to imagine that. It was almost imposed on them... We were going to the house of so-and-so for a few days and then we would go to Pakistan in a train. I had this pet rooster. I would share my best food with that rooster. It would come to me whenever I came to the house. I just grabbed that rooster and said I would take it with me. I wouldn’t let it go. Somebody, who was going to speed up the transition because the attack was imminent, just yanked it from my grip and there was a bunch of feathers of the rooster that stayed in my hand, A feather stayed with me for a long time, for many years. I just wouldn’t let it go. I’d just use it as a bookmark. It was a part of me that was clinging on to that past which is beyond retrieval."