my mother – a true story …
My mother used tell me this with tears in her eyes.
My mother left South Africa in the 1960’s to join my father who was in political exile at the time in Zambia and Tanzania.
My father was a close comrade and friend of Nelson Mandela and shared the cell next to Mandela during one of their periods of being jailed by the Apartheid security services.
My father later escaped from Marshall Square jail along with his comrades, Abdulhay Jassat, Harold Wolpe, and Arthur Goldreich.
The four escapees were then were spirited out of South Africa as there was a then £2000 reward for them to be captured – dead or alive.
In 1970 my father was deployed by the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) to India to be its Chief-Representative there.
I was born in New Delhi a couple of years later in 1972.
My mother and father spent two years in Mumbai (then Bombay).
One afternoon my father fell and broke his leg.
My mother knocked on their neighbour’s door of the apartment complex where they lived.
The neighbour was an elderly Punjabi lady.
My mother asked the elderly lady for assistance in calling a doctor to see to my injured father.
A Zoroastrian (Parsi) ‘bone-setter’ was promptly summoned.
My mother and the elderly neighbour got to talking and the lady asked my mother where they were from, as their accents were clearly not local.
My mother told the elderly Punjabi lady that my father worked for the African National Congress of South Africa and had been forced into exile to continue to struggle to raise awareness internationally about the appalling situation in Apartheid South Africa.
My mother also mentioned that they had to leave their two young children (my siblings, whom I met only later in life) behind in South Africa, in the care of grandparents, and that they were now essentially political refugees.
The elderly lady broke down and wept uncontrollably.
She told my mother that she too had to leave their home in Lahore in 1947 and flee to India with only the clothes on their back when the partition of the subcontinent took place and when Pakistan was torn from India and formed, due to narrow religious and sectarian reasons, whose repercussions are felt to this day.
This was also a time when religious violence wreaked havoc, and untold suffering and death for millions of human beings.
The elderly lady then asked my mother what her name was.
‘Zubeida’, but you can call me ‘Zubie’.
The Punjabi woman hugged Zubeida some more, and the two women, seperated by age and geography, by religion and all the things that seek to divide humanity, wept, for they could understand the pain and trauma of a shared experience.
The elderly Punjabi lady told my mother that she was her ‘sister’ from that day on, and that she too felt the pain of exile after being forced to become refugees, and what being a refugee felt like.
Zubie and her husband Mosie (my father) and the family next door became the closest of friends.
Then came the time for Mosie and Zubie to leave for Delhi where the African National Congress (ANC) office was to be officially opened.
The elderly Punjabi lady and Mosie and Zubie said their goodbyes.
A year or two later, the elderly lady’s daughter Lata married Ravi Sethi and the couple moved to Delhi.
The elderly lady telephoned Zubie and told her that her daughter was coming to Delhi to live there, and that she had told Lata, her daughter that she had a ‘sister’ in Delhi, and that she should not feel alone.
Lata and Ravi Sethi then moved to Delhi in the mid-1970’s.
Lata and Zubie became the closest of friends and that bond stayed true, till the both my mother passed away in 2008.
My father and I still feel a close bond with Lata and Ravi Sethi, and vice versa.
A bond that was forged between Hindu and Muslim and between two countries of South Africa and of India, shattering the barriers of creed and of time.
A bond strong and resilient, forged by the pain and trauma of a shared experience.
That is why I shall never stop believing that hope shines still, for with so much religious bigotry almost consuming our world today, there will always be a woman, somewhere, anywhere, who would take the ‘other’ in as a sister, and as a fellow human being.
And that is why, I believe, that there will always be hope.
Hope in the midst of unbearable pain and hope in the midst of loss and of unspeakable suffering.
Hope.
For we can never give up hope for a better world.
Never!
(For aunty Lata’s late-mother, my mother’s ‘sister’ and who took us all into her heart, and for Lata and Ravi Sethi of Defence Colony, New Delhi, India)
Wonderful story
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Thank you very much.
Peace ✌
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You are most welcome😊
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thank you once again, dear friend.
Peace always ✌
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That’s really a heartwarming story. Thanks for sharing😊
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Thank you for your words of warmth and kindness. I am humbled and wish you and all dear to you the best regards.
Peace ✌
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Wow Afzal, this is one of the most moving stories I’ve read in a long time; it’s hard to believe that all this actually happened. There is still hope indeed.
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Thank you my brother Josh – I am moved that it touched you. yes indeed my dear friend. There is hope indeed.
Peace ✌
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How kind and wonderful, Afzal.
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thank you dear Jennie.
warmest wishes as always.
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You are most welcome. Best to you, Afzal. 🙂
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Peace ✌ always
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✌️
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uKuthula! 🙏🙏🙏
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Shalom! Hamesha!
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Touched my heart Afzal Bhai. What a story ! Very stirring memories. They are your most precious moments and I feel honored to be in your August company 🙏🙏🙏Jay
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arre nahin Jay-bhai – it’s not me at all – I merely scribbled what my mother used to tell me. we are together bhai – the struggle against extremism and the quest for tolerance is within us my brother. Thank YOU and hum honge kaamyaab mere bhai – maybe not in our lifetime but the best of nature must conquer the intolerant and hate-filled side.
Peace Shanti Salaam uKuthula (peace in isiZulu)
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A voice as yours is a hope that the progress of egalitarianism is the best world we need today and in the future to live.
Bravo!
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thank you very much for your very generous words – I am hardly worthy.
BUT yes yes yes your words are so true that the progress of egalitarianism is what we need today and evermore ✌
thank you dear friend.
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This is a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing Afzal!
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Thank you Henry – very kind and warm of you.
best regards.
Peace ✌
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deeply appreciated my friend ✌ Henry
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It’s my pleasure Sir
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I’m definitely not “sir” – just Afzal – the “sirs” and “ma’ams” were our class teachers 😆
so it’s just afzal
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Next time I will remember
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😊✌👍☮
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Heart touching story
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Thank you very much for your warm sentiments. They mean a lot.
Peace ✌
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Wow! that is a heart touching life experience. I have never experienced the agony of this sort but the thought of it has given me goosebumps. It is beautiful how people belong to different worlds but stand together in weird difficulties of life.
May your mother rest in peace and may god bless you and your loved ones always!
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Thank you so very much indeed for your words of warmth and comfort. Yes indeed in this world of extremes we need the sobering influences of people who bridged the racial or religious or sectarian or caste divisions that serve only those in positions of power. We SHALL overcome.
Thank you again for your very profound and generous words. They mean a lot.
Peace ✌
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I am pleased to get in touch once again Afzal. You are right and I agree on the matter of various divisions we have created for ourselves. Only if we realize that this serves us to grow inequality and disunited then we could work on it as a whole.
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so very true, Habiba – the walls and borders and boundaries that men have built – always MEN – are for their convenience to keep human beings from uniting as one human race – yes with differences of religion and race and culture and language but we all really at the nub of it all want the same thing – peace and dignity and the opportunities to earn a dignified living and equality for all and justice for all
Peace my friend ✌
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Recently, I have experienced inequality and injustice faced by transgender community in our country. It has made me realize that how far have we humans left humanity behind ourselves. I wish we as a society open our eyes and recognize that all are no less than equal when we are born or when we die. I have also written a poem based on this experience recently, It would be a great pleasure if you visit to read.
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I shall indeed read your poem and I cannot imagine how hurt and pain felt by the injustice and inequality meted out to the transgender community you witnessed. It is beyond words how narrow minded people can be instead of just accepting that we are all gods children. whatever our differences
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I wish there were more with this realization and tolerance among us that no one had to suffer to the level of harassment, violence and deaths.
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I feel your words and your convictions – and I truly believe that at heart people are kind and just – it is the corrosive elements of power and influence that shapes peoples prejudices.
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True.
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and the truth must – however long it takes – must prevail
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