But I Smile Anyway…

Sue’s #Writephoto prompt this week:

Sitting cramped in the corner of the train carriage, Meena glimpsed a flash of the blue sky, wisps of cloud dancing across without any cares in the world.
Why?
Why, when the sky was the same, here, and there?
Why, when the clouds moved with such freedom?
People were squashed in the carriage, fear etched on their faces. some were crying. The only laughter came from small children who were unaware of what was happening.
Meena and her family had fled their ancestral home, in the city of Lahore.
It was February, 1947.
Partition.
One of millions of families, displaced when the border was announced, they had hurriedly collected basic belongings, and disappeared in the middle of the night, to catch a train, hoping to reach the other side of the border in one piece.
The stories that had reached them had told of endless bloodshed.
Fights, murder, rape.
The Muslims in the area, once friends, were gathering Hindu and Sikh families and slaughtering them brutally.
And across that shiny new border, the same was happening, but in the opposite way.
There, Muslim families, not unlike hers, were battling a journey in the opposite direction, leaving their homes and lives, trying to reach the apparent safety of Pakistan.
She thought of  Amira, her best friend.
They had clung together, in tears at the thought of being separated, having grown up together.
But there was no choice. If she stayed, she would be killed, just like all the other non-Muslims.
The train was moving. They were safe. Stories of gangs boarding trains, and killing whole trainloads of passengers haunted the minds of everyone.
As long as it kept moving, they would be fine.
After a short while, the train slowed, coming to a halt.
Fear spread among the passengers, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
Cries of battle were called, and the train was soon a blood bath. Passengers pulled out by their hair, throats cut. Woman mauled and raped before being left for dead. Small children witnessing atrocities being committed on their families, before being cruelly killed.
Meena’s eyes glazed over for the last time, staring up at the sky.

***

Above her, the clouds still danced, untouched by the events below, so it seemed, but if you looked closely, the pink tinges seemed to reflect the rivers of red flowing beneath…

Sorry for the slightly sombre entry this week.

I am sitting here, watching a series of programmes that aired on BBC1 last night, My Family, Partition and Me: India 1047.

August 15th and 16th, saw Pakistan and India respectively, celebrating 70 years of Independence from British Rule.

But the horrors that the partition which preceded this independence will never be forgotten by those who experienced it.

I have been lucky to have been brought up in an atmosphere of equality, where regardless of race or religion, friendships look at the people first, rather than their background.

My best friend, and soul sister is a Muslim. I am Sikh.

I cannot imagine a life without her, or her family.

I thank God that we are living now, rather than 70 years ago.

Though, with the happenings around the world in recent years, it scares me.

Like the Holocaust and Jewish ethnic cleansing, the Partition tore families and friends apart.

Please, let’s not let this happen again.