By Sabahun Salam

Before I begin – this is not my story. But it is a part of who I am.

This is a story that begins in 1972. A story beginning after the Liberation War of 1971. My grandparents were posted in West Pakistan before the war, where my grandfather was a civil engineer working for the government.

When the Liberation War ended, all Bangladeshi nationals in Pakistan lost their homes and were put in concentration camps. If they didn’t renounce their Bangladeshi identities and identify as Pakistani nationals, they were stripped of their jobs, their homes, and their livelihoods – left to fend for themselves, living in concentration camps. My grandparents faced a similar reality.

Many families were living in the camp, my family being one of them. The camp was diverse – ranging from the elderly to newly born children. Situations were dire.

Our family was made up of five people – my grandparents, and their three daughters. My aunts were 7 and 10 years old. The last person in the family was my mom – a 3-month-old toddler. At that time, many were deciding to flee the camp, understanding that this was their one chance for escape. My grandparents decided the same.

Sixteen families had decided to leave the camp. The path they were taking was over the Afghanistan border, an extremely dangerous journey – especially because they were being smuggled out. All the families who had decided to take this chance at escape then took the last of their savings, leaving behind everything else that they had.  

The plan was simple – they would all be put in the back of a cargo fruit truck, hidden, with all other cargo put in the front and on the top of the truck. The truck would then pass through all the borders and checkposts, finally stopping in Afghanistan.

Their journey started in the middle of a pitch-black night in March. Everything was being done according to plan – everyone in the back of the truck. My grandmother recalls her and my mom having to enter the truck last because my mom was a small baby cradled up and they would need to figure out her space.

The journey started with no problems. But a few hours in, the truck was flagged down at a checkpost – with the suspicion that the truck wasn’t only carrying fruit. That marked the start of a dangerous, adrenaline-filled journey that no one would ever forget.

The truck was asked to stop, and the people who were driving the truck obliged. They had asked everyone to remain quiet so that the contents of the truck would not be checked thoroughly. When the back of the truck was opened, there was pin-drop silence. Everyone was holding their breaths, praying that they would not be caught. Things were still okay, they had not been discovered yet. But they thought that too fast. At that exact moment, my mom, who was 3 months old at the time, started crying. The guards immediately understood that this indeed, was not a fruit truck.

My grandmother said that the exact moment my mom started crying, she felt her heart sink. She immediately dipped a pacifier in honey and gave it to my mom to stop her from crying. But the damage was already done. The plan had already been foiled.

To escape, the driver of the truck decided to ram through the checkpost’s barriers, desperate to do anything to save the passengers. However, this meant a police chase. They were followed, and what made the situation worse was the fact that they were now being shot at. In a turn of events, the driver was shot in his shoulder, and he was not able to drive anymore. He drove the truck into a ditch at his first possible chance, managing to escape momentarily from the police chase.

The passengers were then told to get out of the truck, and they were all told to sit inside an abandoned rural temple made of mud until another plan could be figured out. The truck was not a viable option anymore, and no one could drive the truck properly. The space inside the temple was small, not enough space for sixteen families. But they made do, this was a matter of survival. Around the crack of dawn, one of the helpers from the truck came into the temple with dry ruti. They said that this was all they had and that everyone would have to make do – there was no other food available. They were told that they would have to ration the food and wait out the day – they could only leave again late at night.

When night came, the helpers came back. A plan had been hatched by this time. The group would now have to pass by six hills on foot, after which they would travel using donkey caravans over to the Afghanistan border.

The hills were steep, and it was extremely hard, especially when traveling with a group made up of the elderly as well as the young. After a certain point, the journey felt excruciating, and one of my grandmother’s friends said that she could not carry on. Her feet were bleeding from all the hiking, she had blisters all over her feet. She begged that her two young daughters carry on with my family, leaving her and her husband behind. My family decided that they would not leave them behind, no matter what happened, they would take their friends with them. Someone from the group helped, providing support to help them get over the rest of the hike.

The group finally reached the end of the hills, having all members with them. Now began the part of the journey that they would have to complete using the donkey caravans. They all mounted the donkeys, again, in the middle of a pitch-black night. My grandmother recalls this final part of the journey as terrifying, she had to be separated from her family – leaving each daughter with a different person, my boro-khalamoni (eldest aunt) with a stranger, my choto-khalamoni (youngest aunt) with my grandfather, and my mom, wrapped in a blanket, with her. She had tied one end of the blanket around herself, making a make-shift cradle for my mom, and the other end of the blanket she held between her teeth. She knew it was dangerous, and she knew that her teeth would hurt at the end of the journey, but there was no other way she could have managed to keep both her hands free to hold onto the donkey. She kept praying to God to keep her family safe, not knowing if they would all make it through the night. She just held onto hope.

The journey was a truly interesting one. The terrain was rough, and there were horseshoe bends around every corner. The pathways were extremely narrow, on one side a mountain, and the other side a ditch. One wrong move, one false step, and they would be lost from the world, forever. All everyone could see was darkness, they could only hear the sounds of the donkeys braying, and calling out to each other. The donkeys at the front of the pack would call out when passing by a horseshoe bend to warn the ones at the back about upcoming danger.

At one point during the journey, my grandmother noticed that the blanket that my mom was in had tilted. My mother was not where she was supposed to be. At that point, her heart sank. She thought that she had lost her baby girl, forever. She slowly started feeling around the blanket, praying, holding onto hope. My mother was there, she had shifted towards the side of the donkey, almost falling – but my grandmother had caught her just in time.

The journey ended at the crack of dawn, they were almost at the border. The group finally got off the donkeys, and now it was time to check if all members of the group were present. All members of my family had made it, but one of the families had one of their daughters missing. The parents had started sobbing, crying out her name. They were helpless, and everyone in the group started going back as far as they could walk, calling out the lost girl’s name. Their calls went in vain for a while. But after a little bit, someone started calling back. It was a girl’s voice, the missing girl. In the distance, they could make out a tall figure, almost looking like a giant. The scene looked haunting, a tall figure approaching, darkness all around, and just a slight crack of light in the sky.

The tall figure turned out to be one of the caravan helpers with the missing girl. The last person in the caravan was moving the slowest, he was checking for any fallen people along the way as he came. He had found the missing girl almost in a ditch, she had fallen during one of the turns. She was lucky to have been discovered.

Now, finally reunited, with all members of the group present, the final stretch of the journey came. They were still in Pakistan, and the Afghanistan border was near, but it wasn’t night anymore. It would be dangerous to move or to be seen. Now came the part that seemed almost unbelievable. The entire group, sixteen families, were now stuffed into a wild goat cave. The goats were shunned out, and the people were herded in – again, left to wait for the entire day until it would be the crack of dawn again. It was suffocating, it was smelly, and everyone could feel bugs crawling around – but again, this was a matter of survival. They would have to persevere.

When dawn came, the group was told to come out again, and this time, they walked a little bit until they reached a bus stop. They boarded a bus that took them over the border, now finally in Afghanistan. They were finally not in immediate danger anymore. But the consequences of being stashed inside a goat cave were true – everyone had rashes all over their bodies, and looked like they were chicken pox patients.

After reaching Afghanistan, the group went to the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan for help. At the time, the Indian Embassy was helping refugee Bangladeshi families from Pakistan return back to their rightful homes. Because the entire group looked like they were sick with chickenpox, no one was paying attention to them for a long time. Finally, they managed to convey their situation, assuring that they were not sick, and an official heard their story.

After that, the journey was easy. They were given room and board, and plane tickets back to Kolkata were booked for them. From Kolkata, each family would have to make do for themselves and get themselves back home. When my grandparents finally called my great-grandmother back in Dhaka, the only question they heard back from her was, “How many plane tickets should I send?”

My great-grandmother was too scared to ask if everyone had made it back safe, and she was awaiting the worst.

The stressful journey was finally over. Everyone was safe, they had passed through the worst of it. All members of my family had made it, my mom included, regardless of all the close calls she had. They were finally going back home. 

The journey had finally come to an end, even so, the story lived on in my hearts of those travellers who would then tell the tale of their escape. Again, this is not my story. But without it, I would not be here, writing about it – 50 years later.