The Indo-Pak war of 1971 was in full swing. The life had become too dull, due to night curfews and blackouts. India had hit the Karachi port, and the burning oil depos at the Kemari port were keeping the whole city lit throughout the night. Repeatedly i had witnessed the air chase between the indian and Pakistani airforce jets. Life was passing through a different phase.
I was 16 years old.
We used to live in our Nazimabad house. It was half built. Rather left unfinished. However , we lived in the same house from 1971 till 1985.
At that time there were no window glasses in our house, so my late father had tied up some wooden pieces with the idea of that it might serve as a barrier for the incoming stray bullet from some Indian jet (a remote possibility). But that was his thinking, just like so many other off the beat sort of ideas that he always came up with all through his life.
Well, one such evening, we were all sitting on one single bed, and the Indian and Pakistani jets were chasing each others on the sky. All of a sudden, my father asked us a question. "What will happen if a stray bullet hits us here?", he asked. He himself replied that one or more of us would be killed. We were listening to him quietly, awaiting for the ultimate subject matter to come forth. He continued by explaining that the considered the world (earth) as a wonderful gift from Allah to the human beings. "So i think it is not proper that we spend our whole lives at one single city or country", the ultimate new idea was just taking the initial shape.
He explained that being a human being it is his right to go and live anywhere in the world. "Because the whole world is ours", he said. We listened to him quietly. ( I wonder if he had been impressed by the song IMAGINE of John Lennon?)
So, according to my father, we should not remain stuck to the place of our birth. We must go out and see the world, and settle down wherever we want to.
WOW, it was a wonderful idea, according to me. However, not for all others in the family. In fact nobody had taken it seriously. My mother in fact was too used to different way of thinking of my father. She had witnessed too many in her life. My elder brother, was always having an anti stand against my father's views. My younger brother and sister were too young, to understand anything. Bur for me, it was something very thrilling. My father was too serious, and i was too anxious.
My father did not waste time, to open the Atlas. We both started looking at the pages of the Atlas. In a short period of time, the pages of Atlas ended. We had finished strolling the world, on paper. What next?
Touring the whole world, sounds nice, but in reality it requires huge financial resources, which we never had. It also needed Visas and other formalities to be taken care of. Honestly my father too knew that he was not in a position to go head on with such problems. But he had made up his mind to think seriously on his theory.
Where to go? and How to go? That was the question. Finance was never a problem, because we never had sufficient funds. No money, in fact had made us NOT TO THINK about money. That was one good way out. (I told you my father was a different sort of person.......very different.....unique)
So he dropped thinking about solving the problem of finance.
In those days there were RCD (REGIONAL COOPERATION FOR DEVELOPMENT) , a treaty between Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. The treaty had allowed the citizens of these countries to visit each other's country without visa. That had given moral boost to my father. The initial problem of visa formalities thus stood solved a bit in that way.
My father had made up his mind to go. He had found out the way on the map. He was sure that he could go without any problem upto Turkey. After that? He never thought of.
Then , extending his mental jimnastic of this topic, he started out thinking about the next phase. WHERE TO SETTLE? That was the next step of this theory. It was not an important question to be answered.
Oh yes, let i mention here, that as i had mentioned earlier, it was I who was also interested in these plans, so frequently he used to discuss these with me. But not just me, all through his life, he always discussed everything aloud at home, so everyone used to know what he was thinking. One interested in his plans used to discuss, the non-interested ones used to ignore. However, everyone in the house did know what my father was working on.
According to his plan, once out of Pakistan, he was free to go through Iran and Turkey, without much trouble. The trouble viz, visa formalities etc etc would be faced once past turkey. But he had had to solve the question of getting settled at some place in the world, once out of Pakistan.
Oh, let i further clarify here, that my father never wanted to go alone, he wanted to go alongwith the whole family.....6 persons in total. So indeed it was not something so easy to be dealt with.
Well, where to settle ultimately? That was the next question.
As i have mentioned earlier, my father was never after money. So he had never thought of going and settling in wealthy countries like USA or UK or to the middle eastern countries, where the expats used to earn a lot. He was a very simple person, who never went out for big money. All through his life he led a very simple life. So his plan was never destined for neither a better living nor for big money.
Perhaps he was after some adventure. Some very big adventure. And i was all too eager to be part of this extremely thrilling adventure.
It took almost 6 months to work on preparations for this big big adventure.
As i have mentioned earlier the ultimate question to be answered was "WHERE TO SETTLE IN THE END". My father did have a couple of basic principles in his mind.
1. We must live with muslims (muslim country)
2. But not in middle eastern countries. (he was never interested in living in these countries)
Based on the above ultimately he came up with three alternate places
1. Turkey
2. Spain
3. Morroco
In fact his choice of these places were the direct result of his deep study of islamic history. His interest had also given me a chance to have a look in the islamic history.
However, he did not take much time in giving his final decision in favour of Turkey . The place in mind was Istanbul. His logic was that Istanbul is located at such a strategic point, from where one can go to any other place and return back too. I agreed with him.
It did not take much time that all our efforts were fixed on Istanbul and Turkey. My father brought some detailed maps of Istanbul from the Turkish Consulate. He also bought a small handy book which showed sentences of routine usage and their translation in Turkish and Persian.
One day he went to a painting exhibition, at Arts Council, Karachi, where he met a Turkish musician, whose name was ERDAL SOYULU (or may be SOYLU), who used to work in a night club in karachi. My father discused his plans with him, so he gave the address of his house in Istanbul, to my father.
Days passed swiftly, and my father continued aheading with his plans.
I was a student of B.Com Part 1 then, i shifted my attention to my studies.
My father was too busy in arranging for finances for this big adventure. He had started selling furniture of the house. He had (perhaps) taken loan from his Provident Fund also.
First our passports were got prepared. As far as i can remember now, we were scheduled to leave Pakistan in August 1972. As a first step, my father sent some money to one of his friends (Dr. ANIS UR RUB) in Italy. Secondly, he found out that we were supposed to take visa from Iranian embassy. He applied for that.
The passed through the first shock before even starting the adventure physically. The Iranian embassy refused to give Visa to my father, since according to their belief a person with the same name had gone to Iran earlier too. In fact my father had never gone to Iran. But there was no way out for us. The Iranian embassy decided to send his passport for further enquiry , to Tehran. We had had to wait.
Now when i try to understand my personal feelings pf that time, i become too confused. During that period, i continued with my studies, even knowing that i might not be in a position to continue my studies. At the same time i was too eager to play my part in the adventure of leaving Pakistan with the family, with no guaranteed or foreplanned future in sight. I become too confused now, when i try to find out that how come under all these conditions , i ultimately appeared in the B.Com Part 1 examination and got First class Third position in the Karachi university)
While we were all waiting for the Iranian Visa, one day i fell while playing hockey, and broke my left arm.
The arm was plastered. It was the second shock.
One day my father came to know that the Iranian embassy wanted to have visa of the next country where we would be going after Iran. Turkey , our next country in the line , was not having visa restrictions for Pakistanis. But the Iranian embassy persisted to see the visa of a country beyond Turkey. So the only way out for us was to take visa for some other country also before applying for Iranian visa. Well, in the meantime the passport of my father was returned from Tehran, and was cleared of the earlier suspicions. There was some mistake in the record.
So my father took Italian visas.
The Iranian embassy gave us visas without any further problems.
By that time (if i remember correctly) september had arrived. My arm was still in plaster. My exams were not too far. I took the exams with my plastered arm. My exams ended in October 1972.
By that time everything of our house was sold. There were only two things that were left unsold. One was our old refrigerator and the other one was our half built home itself. In fact, i never ever discussed my father how did he finance all that adventure. Yet all that i saw was that everything of the house was sold out.
CONTINUED AT .... 1972 - FROM KARACHI TO ISTANBUL (2)
I was 16 years old.
We used to live in our Nazimabad house. It was half built. Rather left unfinished. However , we lived in the same house from 1971 till 1985.
At that time there were no window glasses in our house, so my late father had tied up some wooden pieces with the idea of that it might serve as a barrier for the incoming stray bullet from some Indian jet (a remote possibility). But that was his thinking, just like so many other off the beat sort of ideas that he always came up with all through his life.
Well, one such evening, we were all sitting on one single bed, and the Indian and Pakistani jets were chasing each others on the sky. All of a sudden, my father asked us a question. "What will happen if a stray bullet hits us here?", he asked. He himself replied that one or more of us would be killed. We were listening to him quietly, awaiting for the ultimate subject matter to come forth. He continued by explaining that the considered the world (earth) as a wonderful gift from Allah to the human beings. "So i think it is not proper that we spend our whole lives at one single city or country", the ultimate new idea was just taking the initial shape.
He explained that being a human being it is his right to go and live anywhere in the world. "Because the whole world is ours", he said. We listened to him quietly. ( I wonder if he had been impressed by the song IMAGINE of John Lennon?)
So, according to my father, we should not remain stuck to the place of our birth. We must go out and see the world, and settle down wherever we want to.
WOW, it was a wonderful idea, according to me. However, not for all others in the family. In fact nobody had taken it seriously. My mother in fact was too used to different way of thinking of my father. She had witnessed too many in her life. My elder brother, was always having an anti stand against my father's views. My younger brother and sister were too young, to understand anything. Bur for me, it was something very thrilling. My father was too serious, and i was too anxious.
My father did not waste time, to open the Atlas. We both started looking at the pages of the Atlas. In a short period of time, the pages of Atlas ended. We had finished strolling the world, on paper. What next?
Touring the whole world, sounds nice, but in reality it requires huge financial resources, which we never had. It also needed Visas and other formalities to be taken care of. Honestly my father too knew that he was not in a position to go head on with such problems. But he had made up his mind to think seriously on his theory.
Where to go? and How to go? That was the question. Finance was never a problem, because we never had sufficient funds. No money, in fact had made us NOT TO THINK about money. That was one good way out. (I told you my father was a different sort of person.......very different.....unique)
So he dropped thinking about solving the problem of finance.
In those days there were RCD (REGIONAL COOPERATION FOR DEVELOPMENT) , a treaty between Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. The treaty had allowed the citizens of these countries to visit each other's country without visa. That had given moral boost to my father. The initial problem of visa formalities thus stood solved a bit in that way.
My father had made up his mind to go. He had found out the way on the map. He was sure that he could go without any problem upto Turkey. After that? He never thought of.
Then , extending his mental jimnastic of this topic, he started out thinking about the next phase. WHERE TO SETTLE? That was the next step of this theory. It was not an important question to be answered.
Oh yes, let i mention here, that as i had mentioned earlier, it was I who was also interested in these plans, so frequently he used to discuss these with me. But not just me, all through his life, he always discussed everything aloud at home, so everyone used to know what he was thinking. One interested in his plans used to discuss, the non-interested ones used to ignore. However, everyone in the house did know what my father was working on.
According to his plan, once out of Pakistan, he was free to go through Iran and Turkey, without much trouble. The trouble viz, visa formalities etc etc would be faced once past turkey. But he had had to solve the question of getting settled at some place in the world, once out of Pakistan.
Oh, let i further clarify here, that my father never wanted to go alone, he wanted to go alongwith the whole family.....6 persons in total. So indeed it was not something so easy to be dealt with.
Well, where to settle ultimately? That was the next question.
As i have mentioned earlier, my father was never after money. So he had never thought of going and settling in wealthy countries like USA or UK or to the middle eastern countries, where the expats used to earn a lot. He was a very simple person, who never went out for big money. All through his life he led a very simple life. So his plan was never destined for neither a better living nor for big money.
Perhaps he was after some adventure. Some very big adventure. And i was all too eager to be part of this extremely thrilling adventure.
It took almost 6 months to work on preparations for this big big adventure.
As i have mentioned earlier the ultimate question to be answered was "WHERE TO SETTLE IN THE END". My father did have a couple of basic principles in his mind.
1. We must live with muslims (muslim country)
2. But not in middle eastern countries. (he was never interested in living in these countries)
Based on the above ultimately he came up with three alternate places
1. Turkey
2. Spain
3. Morroco
In fact his choice of these places were the direct result of his deep study of islamic history. His interest had also given me a chance to have a look in the islamic history.
However, he did not take much time in giving his final decision in favour of Turkey . The place in mind was Istanbul. His logic was that Istanbul is located at such a strategic point, from where one can go to any other place and return back too. I agreed with him.
It did not take much time that all our efforts were fixed on Istanbul and Turkey. My father brought some detailed maps of Istanbul from the Turkish Consulate. He also bought a small handy book which showed sentences of routine usage and their translation in Turkish and Persian.
One day he went to a painting exhibition, at Arts Council, Karachi, where he met a Turkish musician, whose name was ERDAL SOYULU (or may be SOYLU), who used to work in a night club in karachi. My father discused his plans with him, so he gave the address of his house in Istanbul, to my father.
Days passed swiftly, and my father continued aheading with his plans.
I was a student of B.Com Part 1 then, i shifted my attention to my studies.
My father was too busy in arranging for finances for this big adventure. He had started selling furniture of the house. He had (perhaps) taken loan from his Provident Fund also.
First our passports were got prepared. As far as i can remember now, we were scheduled to leave Pakistan in August 1972. As a first step, my father sent some money to one of his friends (Dr. ANIS UR RUB) in Italy. Secondly, he found out that we were supposed to take visa from Iranian embassy. He applied for that.
The passed through the first shock before even starting the adventure physically. The Iranian embassy refused to give Visa to my father, since according to their belief a person with the same name had gone to Iran earlier too. In fact my father had never gone to Iran. But there was no way out for us. The Iranian embassy decided to send his passport for further enquiry , to Tehran. We had had to wait.
Now when i try to understand my personal feelings pf that time, i become too confused. During that period, i continued with my studies, even knowing that i might not be in a position to continue my studies. At the same time i was too eager to play my part in the adventure of leaving Pakistan with the family, with no guaranteed or foreplanned future in sight. I become too confused now, when i try to find out that how come under all these conditions , i ultimately appeared in the B.Com Part 1 examination and got First class Third position in the Karachi university)
While we were all waiting for the Iranian Visa, one day i fell while playing hockey, and broke my left arm.
The arm was plastered. It was the second shock.
One day my father came to know that the Iranian embassy wanted to have visa of the next country where we would be going after Iran. Turkey , our next country in the line , was not having visa restrictions for Pakistanis. But the Iranian embassy persisted to see the visa of a country beyond Turkey. So the only way out for us was to take visa for some other country also before applying for Iranian visa. Well, in the meantime the passport of my father was returned from Tehran, and was cleared of the earlier suspicions. There was some mistake in the record.
So my father took Italian visas.
The Iranian embassy gave us visas without any further problems.
By that time (if i remember correctly) september had arrived. My arm was still in plaster. My exams were not too far. I took the exams with my plastered arm. My exams ended in October 1972.
By that time everything of our house was sold. There were only two things that were left unsold. One was our old refrigerator and the other one was our half built home itself. In fact, i never ever discussed my father how did he finance all that adventure. Yet all that i saw was that everything of the house was sold out.
CONTINUED AT .... 1972 - FROM KARACHI TO ISTANBUL (2)
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