80-year-old Mohammad Sarwar Khan can barely hear me. His voice trembles as I say hello to him and his first words are,
“Salaam Maalekum Janaab! I have suffered a lot. I want to go back. Please help me go back to Pakistan.”
Khan was born in pre-partition India in Mansherra, now in Pakistan. As a young boy, he accompanied his teacher on a trip to Kashmir. At that time, there were no borders involved, no visas, no papers necessary. He was then 15 and was going on an exciting trip for a couple of weeks - that’s what he thought. He cries as he tells me his story.
“I hugged my parents and waved goodbye as I walked with my teacher. I never knew that it was the last time I would be seeing them. After partition we couldn’t go back. I lived with my teacher for a year. And when he died, a man named Akbar Khan adopted me since he had no son. And when he died, his family threw me out.”
He chokes and hands over the phone to Rashid Bhatt. Khan has lived with Rashid and his family for 30 years.
“He is like my father.” Says Rashid as he consoles Sarwar Khan.
“He has become very old. He needs my help to walk around. He doesn’t eat much these days. Most of the time he is confined to his room. I see him blabbering in his sleep. He dreams that he is with his people in Pakistan and talks to them. I feel very sad that we are not able to help him.”
Khan has three brothers in Pakistan. Rashid says he treasures the letters they wrote to him.
“He reads the letters again and again and gets very emotional. He feels their presence through the letters.”
Rashid and his family have tried all means to send Khan to Pakistan.
“We travelled nearly 70 kilometres from Anantnag to fulfil the legal formalities. We even appealed to the Jammu and Kashmir government a number of times. But nothing helped. He has no papers to prove that he is either Indian or Pakistani.”
But Rashid says he is not going to give up.
“We all love him a lot. We treat him as a member of our family. But we know that he is very unhappy that he has not been able to meet his family for so many years. So I will keep trying. I am his son and I want to fulfil his last wish which is to die in Pakistan.”
