1972 - FROM KARACHI TO ISTANBUL (2)

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2nd November 1972 was the D day. We started off on that date. The life was never going to be the same anymore.


                                                KARACHI RAILWAY STATION

We boarded the Quetta bound train from Karachi city railway station. I was more than thrilled. The biggest adventure had started becoming reality. We were six persons. The whole family. My elder father was as usual the non-participant , displeased, somewhat annoyed  part of the group. My mother was more than usual busy in taking care of the children, and of everything else. My younger brother and sister were not too mature to understand properly as to what was going on. I was flying too high in excitement. I was too busy in  dreaming about Istanbul. My father perhaps had mobilised all his energies towards his ultimate goal. His ultimate goal was to reach Istanbul.

When i look back and try to understand my feelings of that time, i find out that i am still the same as i was on that particular day.

I am still aloof of my surroundings. I still have got my own dreams, which are too different from what other people feel and think. Whole my life i worked for my somewhat quer but thrilling goals. Still i am the same.
I am very different from others, like my father. We never ran after money, but thrill and adventure remained our goals . As i said earlier, my father was a different sort of person, i too.

I remember the friend of my father, SYED SHAFIQUE UDDIN, came to meet us , with his children, at the Kotri railway station. He had brought eatables.

We reached Quetta, the next day.  The brother of one of friends of my father, who used to work in Railways, received us at the Quetta Railway station. He arranged for our night stay in the nearby railway guest house. It was a beautiful small house. I liked that. I remember practising my hits on the wall. Yes i was carrying 4 hockey sticks and some hockey balls with me.



                                                        QUETTA RAILWAY STATION

We boarded the Zahedan bound train, the next morning. It was cold. I always liked travelling by train. Aloof of the problems that my parents were thinking about, i was enjoying the adventure fully. There were just a few, perhaps 6 bogies in the train. However the compartments were in quite bad shapes. It seemed that maintance of the compartments were not given due attention by the railways. However my father later on told us that it was not due to inefficiency of the railways, the smugglers used to hide banned substances in the openings of the walls, seats , roof and floors of the compartments.

Equipped as always, with the Railway Time table, my father was following the track. We were passing through small stations one by one.

Just before the Iranian border, the train was inching with very slow speed.  At that moment i witnessed something which i never saw another time in my life. The smugglers in the train were swiftly slipping down huge packets, bags and other things packed in blankets. People down the side of the train were quickly getting hold of these items. My father told me that they would be carrying these packets into Iran, on foot. That was how the banned goods used to smuggle into Iran. I was stunned.

It did not take much time that the train entered Iran. It was just getting dark, as the train stopped immediately after crossing fenced area of the border. There was pin drop silence in the compartment. Everybody was waiting in silence. Suddenly Iranian border guards and railway people appeared on the scene. First they asked all grown up males to get out of the compartment. They were lined up. Interestingly my father was the first in the line. My father repeatedly narrated this incident, whole his life. This is why i am mentioning it here.

According to my father, he was the first standing in the line, perhaps because no one else of the passengers was willing to head the line. Then two iranian officials came to him and said something in persian, which he could not understand at all.Then one of them gave a capsule to my father to swallow. My father was perhaps so much under pressure, that he dropped the capsule. The iranian officials at that time, were distributing the capsule to the other persons in the line. According to my father, none of the iranian officials were looking at him, so he took the capsule from the ground, but one of the iranian official noticed him, and shouted. They took my father out of the line. According to my father he became somewhat confused and afraid, about what was going to happen next. Luckily, they just gave him another capsule to swallow. He returned back to the compartment, like other passengers.

We were not allowed to get out of the compartment. The iranian officials were checking the passports of the passengers. One of them was checking and was reading aloud the contents of the passports, and the other one was writing all these in his register. I really enjoyed the way they were reading aloud. I could catch just a few words in persian, as i had studied persian also in the school. But the pronunciation of the iranians was too different, so it was almost impossible to understand what they were speaking.

They told us to bring out all our baggeages out of the compartments. We took them out, from where we were asked to carry them to an another goods compartment. All baggages were sealed in that compartment. We were told that these baggages would go directly to the custom department in Zahidan, from where we would like take them the other day.

The train continued its journey.

There was just four or five more persons in the compartment. The train was going to reach the Zahidan station late at night. So, with the consultation of fellow passengers my father decided to stay in the train at night at Zahidan, and then would go out to the city the next morning. I climbed up on the bench and slept. The train continued moving ahead towards Zahidan. Outside it was totally dark.

My mother jolted me all of a sudden. I opened my eyes, everyone was getting out of the train. The train had stopped. My father told me that the railway offiicials had not allowed us to stay in the train anymore. It was Zahedan railway station, and we were supposed to leave the train immediately.

With my mind still sleeping. I joined others to get out of the train. We went out of the railway station. There was a taxi there, which according to me was alraedy full. But there was no other taxi, so we had had to fit ourselves in that cab. We all were literally packed by the taxi driver in the cab, and it moved. I did not know where we were heading for.

The taxi stopped in front of a simple building. There was a small board hanging by side of the main door. It was PAKISTANI MUSAFIR KHANA (Guest /Rest house for Pakistanis). A person on that door was collecting the passports, and taking all of us in.

There was no building in the building. There were small rooms, with no furniture, except thick carpets. It was quite hot inside. We were given a candle to light the room. Although somewhat hungry, but we preferred to sleep. We were too tired.

For the first time in my life i had left the country, where i was born and grown up. It was a new experience in my life. A thrill that i do still feel inside me. It was the first step, after that MY LIFE WAS NOT GOING TO BE THE SAME ANYMORE . First step was taken,  the rest was to follow. For me a new chapter of my life had opened. Pakistan was left behind. Turkey was going to be the ultimately goal. A goal not to earn a better living, but just to be different from the rest.  Mentally, i had freed myself from being a Pakistani. I was going to live in Turkey, going to be a Turk. A direct result of a  very very different and unique mentality, which i shared with my father.

The next morning, after eating something that we could find in the shop nearby, we went to the custom house, by taxi. In fact we were not alone to go there. Most of the persons in the Pakistani guest house were going there, so it was not difficult for us.

At the custom house they opened all our bags and baggages, that we had put in a separate compartment of the train. We did not face any difficulty in getting our bags cleared off from the customs. We returned back to our guest house .

Now the next step was to decide. Where to go next. My father decided to go northward to Mashad by bus.

The next morning we all 6 persons, boarded a bus heading north for Mashad. It was too cold, particularly for us. We travelled the whole day and the whole night. An unforgetable event happened in the very early hours of the morning when the bus about to enter Mashad. We were all asleep. when we came to know that the bus was not moving ahead. Enquiry revealed that the traffic police had challaned the bus, and had imposed the fine. The bus driver had left the bus in protest, and the passengers were all stranded there. The driver returned back after sometime, but asked all the passengers to contribute money among ourselves to pay the fine. The passengers did not see any other way out but to contribute and pay the fine. Later on the bus entered the Mashad city. It was just dawn.

We found a cheap hotel, and settled in. It was terribly cold. The open water in the small fountain and pond in middle of the hotel, was all ice. My father decided not to stay anymore there. He went to the railway station and booked seats for Tehran. from where we were supposed to pick a train that would be going directly to Istanbul.
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We boarded the Tehran bound train in the evening, which was supposed to reach Tehran the next morning.
It was a nice train, with separate compartments. There were six luxury seats in every compartment, three on one side and the other three facing them. We put our bags and baggages under the seats and in between the seats. We managed to lie down, somewhat uncomfortably , by adjusting our baggages in between the facing seats. We spent the whole night lying down in that uncomfortable way. After all it was a part of adventure.
But we were shocked the next morning, when we came out of our compartment and looked into other ones. The seats were infact meant to be hooked down to make a bed. My father laughed and saddened thinking about how and why he could not understand that. But it was past, nothing could be done about that.

We reached Tehran at about 8 or may be 9 am. We came out of the train. My father went to the booking office, to book our seats for the Istanbul bound train. We did know before hand that it was once a week train. We were shocked when the booking officer at the Tehran Railway Station told us that the Istanbul bound train had just left Tehran a couple of minutes back.

There was no other way out for us, but to stay in Tehran for one week, to get the next train, next sunday.

We stayed in a cheap hotel in Tehran for a week. The weather was cold. However, we got sufficient time to see Tehran. I remember watching a film, THAT MAN FROM RIO, in Tehran.

Well, the next sunday morning, we boarded the train bound for Istanbul. It was going to be a more than three days long journey.
PRESENT DAY SOME PHOTOS TAHRAN ISTANBUL TRAIN

CONTINUED TO ..........1972 FROM KARACHI TO ISTANBUL (3)