When I was a little girl growing up in Pakistan, we lived in the military town of Rawalpindi. Every morning, Daddy would drop me off at school on his way to the office, and Daddy’s Army appointed Orderly would pick me up and take me home on the bicycle. I would ride on the carrier at the back. That morning, Daddy dropped me off, but when I got to the school gate, it was locked. Two girls, my age, in school uniform, were standing by the gate.
“Why is the gate locked?” I asked.
“School is closed. Yesterday they had announced that school will be closed today, but we were both absent from school,” one of them said.
“Me too,” I said.
We huddled not knowing what to do. There was no guard, just a sky high, locked gate. We hung out and chatted, and after a while, the two girls started walking away.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“We are going to walk home.”
I suppose I can walk home too.
I was 7.
This was the 1950s. No cell phones. No phones at home, period.
So, I started walking—a pretty little girl in ringlets, wearing a handsome tailored frock, carrying a satchel, walking on the street, alone. There were no sidewalks, just a dirt path alongside the road—a main artery. I knew the route on the bicycle, so I knew where I was going. Men in bicycles rode by, tinkling the bike bells; tonga horse carriages going clickety-clock with the horses dropping clumps of smelly poo, and lots of pedestrians. After I passed the bazaar of Lalkurti on my right, a man riding a bike got off and walked up to me. He asked me where I was going and why I was walking alone. I told him. “I will walk with you,” he said. He started alongside me, bicycle in hand. I don’t remember his face, just that he was wearing a shalwar kameez. In my childhood, I was called ‘chatter-box’. So, I must have chatted my heart out with my travelling companion, telling him everything about me and my family. As we reached a crossing, he parted, saying in Urdu, ‘Okay Bia, I have to go the other way now,’ and he rode off. Wishing he could have stayed a little longer, I kept walking, passed the open fields, the residential area, the military barracks on my left, the polo grounds on my right, and turned right into Lalazar Colony. How long did I walk before I got home? I just Google-mapped it—1.6 miles—a 33-minute walk. With my little feet, I am sure it took longer. I walked up the gravel driveway up to the verandah where Mummy was sitting at her sewing machine chatting with Daadi Amma., my grandmother.
“Hello,” I called out, as in ‘Surprise!’
She cried out. I don’t recall exactly what she said, but it was something like ‘what are you doing home?’ Or maybe, ‘what happened?’.”
“It’s a school holiday.” I gleefully announced. Now I could play.
“How did you get home?” That, I recall her saying.
“I walked.” I was feeling proud of myself.
“Alone?”
“There was this man on a bicycle….” I proceeded to give the whole story.
Mummy got up and ran inside. Oblivious, I stayed in the verandah, chatting with Daadi Amma. When I went in, I found Mummy crying.
“Why is Mummy crying?” I asked Daadi Amma.
“Because you walked home alone. She is afraid of what could have happened to you.”
I remember feeling badly that she was crying, but my 7-year old little head couldn’t appreciate what was going through Mummy’s mind. I can now.
What if that nice man had lured me?
What if I had tripped and gotten hurt?
What if I had lost my way? Did I even know my home address?
I wonder if it gave my 7-year old mind a pause: bad things can happen to little girls. Perhaps.
I have no idea what transpired when Daddy got home. Did Mummy have a talk with him? Did he toss and turn in bed all night wondering about the what-ifs? Did he talk to Mother Superior, the school Principal? From then on, did he wait until I was safely behind the gate before releasing the clutch of his stick shift Ford Consul? I will never know. No one ever talked about it. And now it’s too late to ask.
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