3. Better By Far
By bus?
Better by far a magic carpet
finely knotted, richer
than blood, broad enough
to keep the family together,
islanded, apart
from every danger,
journeying swiftly
across the unsegmented sky –
not in the cauldron of summer,
but in the fresher feel
of the last of winter,
the lucid mornings,
the greeny tinge
of the evening air,
Nehru to wave them on
and Jinnah to welcome them –
my grandmother, her pots and pans,
her lamp close by,
her parcels of layered clothes,
like mattresses,
Ahmed and Athar jostling for space,
Rahila, Jamila, Shehana,
the ‘little’ sisters,
a conspiracy of three,
with names, like mine
all ending in ‘a’, young girls,
cross-legged, daydreaming,
disentangling hello from goodbye.
Author’s Note: This is an extract from a poem-in-progress ‘At the Time of Partition’ inspired by the story of Athar, my father’s younger brother. He suffered brain damage as a result of a childhood accident. Some years later he was one of the hundreds of thousands who disappeared at the time of the partition of India, never to be found again. My grandmother and her family made the crossing from India to the new country ‘Pakistan’ by bus…
* Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. Her poetry collections include The Country at My Shoulder (OUP, 1993) and Europa (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. Moniza now lives in Norfolk.