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By
Akhtar Balouch
The Jewish Cemetery
Our next stop was the Jewish cemetery. I asked for help in this regard from my journalist friend Ishaq Baloch. He lives in the Golimar area. He told me the graveyard is looked after by a Baloch family. He further told me he had visited the place once, but the guarding Baloch family allowed him to enter the graveyard only after so much of cajoling; and that, too, without a camera. This was frustrating for me. Ishaq suggested that I speak to the young journalist, Abu Bakar Baloch. Ishaq sahib said that Abu Bakar’s family was on good terms with the Baloch family guarding the cemetery.
I went straight to Abu Bakar and told him how desperate I was to get into the graveyard. He said, “We will go there on Sunday and see what we can do.”
On the decided day, I went to Abu Bakar’s place in Lyari’s Nawa Lane area, whence we went to the Mewa Shah graveyard. There, Abu Bakar pointed out a woman who was selling flower petals at the gate of the Cutchi-Memon graveyard. As soon I went forward and greeted her, she gave me a disgruntled look, sensing immediately that I was not there to buy petals. She said in Urdu, “You cannot go inside.” I looked at Abu Bakar’s face. He spoke in Balochi and told her with whose reference we had come.
Cleaning the branches of a
Niazbo (Holy basil), the woman looked at us in disbelief. She then repeated her previous answer in Urdu. However, now her tone was not as hard as it was before. I felt it was the right moment for me to utilise my lifeline of the Balochi language. So, I started talking to her in both our mother tongue, requesting her to let us visit the cemetery.
Her replies, now in Balochi, were directed at me. Almost completely ridding her tone of the sourness she earlier welcomed us with, she said,
People came before you as well. They only took pictures. They had told us they will fix the graveyard; that its boundary wall will be raised. Nothing happened.
“We have raised the walls ourselves, otherwise people would have stolen the marble [from the tombstones],” she said discontentedly.
The elderly woman told us that the cemetery had more than 500 graves. She also told us that her family had guarded the cemetery for over a century now.
During the conversation, she kept on giving us reason to be disheartened, not once flinching from her stance that we were not to enter the graveyard. I, on the other hand, kept on trying. Finally, teased to her toes, she told us to come by on Monday and meet her son. We were about to take leave, when a man riding a motorcycle entered the scene. It was the woman’s son, Arif. He gave us a quizzical look. His mother told him who we were and the purpose of our visit.
Arif was his mother all over again in the beginning, stating firmly, and repeating, that we were not to enter the cemetery. The only difference was that he was way less sour than his mother. I started talking to him in Balochi, trying to convince him. As soon as I noticed traces of wonder and acceptance in his eyes, I reiterated how important it was for me to visit the graveyard. After some reasoning, he finally agreed. He did lay down a condition, however, that only one man could go with him. I accepted without a second thought.
At last, I was standing in the premises of the graveyard. The next round was that of clicking some photos. The graveyard was buried under untamed, thorny vegetation. I slowly took the camera out of my pocket and started taking pictures. Arif saw this and, to my relief, allowed me to take as many pictures as I wanted, since I was his Baloch brother. Meanwhile, he was repeating what his mother had earlier informed us about, adding that he used to clean the graveyard himself. However, last year he had a motorbike accident in which he broke his leg, so the task had become too arduous for him now.
Arif told me that about a year ago, a man called on him, informing him that some people wanted to meet him at the Sheraton Hotel. Arif went there and met four persons who inquired about the graveyard’s state in detail. They did not visit the place, Arif added. He says some people come by sometime, mostly for photography, while making big, hollow promises. In the end, Arif concludes, nothing happens as usual.
I wondered if the people of Bani Israel should be thankful that the graves of their beloveds in Pakistan were being watched over by a group of Baloch people. Otherwise, it too, would probably meet the same fate as the 'Yahoodi Masjid'.
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Akhtar Balouch is a senior journalist, writer and researcher. He is currently a council member of the HRCP. Sociology is his primary domain of expertise, on which he has published several books.
There have been some fortunate failures in erasing the archeological and developmental traces of the Raj from the city.
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