Uprooted
Humnah Ibrahim
Line se Pehle
Before the line,
my ancestors shared chai and parathey
with their Hindu and Sikh neighbors;
cardamom and buttery aromas
filling the warm air,
their laughter weaving through courtyards,
their prayers rising together,
through dusk and dawn,
different tongues,
but the same yearning for peace.
The lush green fields of Punjab
chock-full with wheat and mustard
held no divisions then,
only the rhythm of abundant harvests,
the cycle of seasons,
the shared toil of hands,
that knowingly held one another,
and didn’t yet know betrayal.
But the British came,
and with them, the wilting seed of discord,
planted in fields that once bloomed with unity.
They turned neighbor against neighbor
and sowed mistrust where there was none,
like a poison creeping through veins.
The chai ran cold in hands
that once passed cups with warmth,
its spices dulled by the bitterness of the colonizer.
Their bland Earl Grey seeped
into our soil, leaving roots brittle,
branches straining toward a fractured sky.
My great-grandfather raised his voice
alongside his bhanein aur bhaiyen
against the empire that stole our land.
For his defiance
they caged him in walls too narrow
to hold his spirit.
But iron bars cannot silence
the roar of a man unbroken,
a heart that beat for freedom
even in the darkest corners.
And even now,
his story is a quiet fire in my veins,
embers that refuse to dim,
a reminder that resistance
was not futile but vital—
a spark passed down through generations,
igniting every time we remember,
every time we refuse
to bow to our oppressors.
I wonder about him,
and the neighbors he fought for,
if they foresaw the fracture,
if they dreamed of futures
beyond chains and borders.
Would they weep
to see the world we’ve inherited,
splintered and scarred,
still bearing the marks of their colonizers?
But time is my greatest enemy.
I’ll never know their thoughts,
their fears,
their dreams for a future
they couldn’t see.
Their voices are lost
to the pages of history,
silenced by the same force
that silenced their unity.
Yet I cling to the memory,
like a thread unraveling from an ancient tapestry,
a time before the line,
before the theft tore the seams of belonging,
before the rupture turned neighbors into strangers
and laughter into sorrow.
Perhaps in remembering,
we can gather the scattered fragments,
stitch them together with the needle of hope,
weaving a fabric stronger than before.
Memory can be the bridge,
arched over the chasm of loss,
a path lit by the glow of stories,
guiding us back to what was shattered,
to rebuild
what was lost.
Partition
A line drawn on a map,
splitting earth and sky in two—
a line that bled rivers,
severing roots once intertwined.
My grandfather’s footsteps echo,
dust swirling around his heels,
as he leaves behind
the river he would picnic by every weekend,
the streets echoing with childhood laughter,
now haunted by the wails of the displaced,
Ludhiana—
his home for twelve years,
all he’s ever known.
In the sounds of trains,
in the cries of his newborn brother,
in the scramble of bodies,
in the fleeting face of his father,
the echoing silence of those left behind,
haunting like the crescent moon,
whispers in the wind of the border
that was never there before.
Homes crumbled,
walls stained with the screams of departure.
Names covered in blood,
erased like forgotten ink,
torn from the ledger of history,
their weight carried only in whispers.
Yet in the stories we tell,
the land still breathes—
an untamed garden
sprouting from the ashes,
roots breaking walls,
pushing through borders
that were meant to divide.
Each tree a monument,
each blade of grass a testament
to lives uprooted yet unforgotten.
Searching for Home
Home is not a single place,
but a path winding through time.
It is carved into soil
by my grandfather’s footsteps—
each step an unspoken farewell—
leaving behind his city, country,
and the fields that raised him.
The story begins before me,
in a land split by borders,
where the sun rose on a line
that burned through millions of lives,
dividing families like rivers severed
from their source,
dreams shattered like glass,
shards embedded in the earth.
And yet, through every departure
every step into the unknown,
home lingers—
in the spicy earthiness of chai,
in the sweet scent of raat ki rani,
in the melody of Urdu,
the rhythm of Punjabi,
a language
spoken in whispers,
in the stories that rise like dust
from the pages of our past.
I’ve never left like they did,
never walked away with my entire world
stuffed into a suitcase,
but I’ve still felt the weight of loss—
of watching worlds shift
like tectonic plates,
of standing between lands
that call me theirs.
Pieces of a shattered mirror,
none whole, all mine.
I search for home in them,
feeling the pull of distant roots,
the ache of belonging
to a place I cannot fully claim.
I chase it through stories,
through the echo of footsteps
that came before me,
through the fragments of memory
that refuse to fade.
Home is the faint taste of spice
on the wind,
the outline of a border drawn in soil,
washed away by the monsoon,
over and over.
Always within reach,
yet slipping through my grasp—
a mirage shimmering on the horizon,
never fully mine.