KARACHI: Pir Mubarak sat at one end of platform number eight of the Cantonment Railway Station on Thursday morning, his eager eyes following the endless set of tracks running in the other direction. “Is the Business Train from Lahore coming from that side?” Mubarak asked the same question he had been asking for the umpteenth time.
Mubarak was in Karachi from Thatta to receive his son, Abbas Ali, one of the nine fishermen freed by India on Tuesday after they had spent some 17 months at Jamnagar jail in the Indian state of Gujarat. He said he had not spoken to his son after Indian authorities arrested him with the others in the Kajhar creek area in Oct 2014 when they captured their boats Gul Samad and Rahimo. “I only got to hear his voice yesterday after he crossed over to Pakistan through the Wagah border and was handed over to Edhi Foundation,” he said. Asked what he had to say to him after all this while, tears welled up in the father’s eyes and the lump in his throat prevented him from carrying on any further.
“Come, now. Thank Allah, my friend. Don’t cry now that He has sent your boy back to you,” said an elderly man sitting next to Mubarak to which he nodded before wiping away his tears.
‘He’s Pakistani, he’s faking it’
“I can understand Mubarak’s feelings right now. I’ve been there,” said Mohammad Sumar, whose own six sons were also arrested and taken away the same night. “My sons returned last year after spending eight months in jail there. Today nine more from their group are coming back home,” he said.
Mubarak said he was not a fisherman. He owns a tiny rose flower shop outside the Shah Aqeeq shrine in Thatta. “I want my son to work with me now.”
Asked how come he didn’t bring garlands and petals to shower on the returning fishermen, he smiled and said: “The flowers would have died on the way in this heat. I’ll take the boys to the flowers instead.”
The train arrived then. Mubarak with his friends and social workers from the Pakistan Fisher-Folk Forum (PFF) briskly searched for familiar faces and then there were more tears amid hugs and laughter as Abbas Ali, Abu Saeed, Mohammad Karimullah, Aziz-ur-Rahman, Nazir Ahmed, Yousuf, Pappu Jan, Wasaya Bahar and Amin Masood originally from Sujawal, Korangi and Machhar Colony in Karachi got off the train.
Of the nine, Pappu Jan, Wasaya Bahar and Amin Masood are brothers. “The prison staff was not as horrible to us as the doctors in India were,” said Amin, the youngest of the three brothers. “My eldest brother, Pappu, fell so sick there, we were afraid he was going to die but the doctors didn’t seem to care,” he said.
“Pappu was suffering from jaundice. He was under treatment here for it, too, when he got picked up at sea by Indian authorities,” said Mohammad Azam of the PFF.
“Jail is jail. We weren’t expecting being treated or welcomed as guests there, of course,” said Nazir Ahmed, another one of the returning nine.
Another fisherman, Mohammad Karimullah, also said that they could live on the burnt bread kept aside specially for Pakistani prisoners but they felt helpless when Pappu among them took a turn for the worse in jail. “Yes, we knew he was suffering from some liver ailment but further complications developed when he started complaining of terrible pain.
“The prison staff had only one kind of tablet to offer for all ailments, be it headache, stomach ache or fever. But when Pappu wasn’t improving they sent him for an X-ray. The X-ray showed a gallbladder stone. He needed surgery, we were told. But when taken to a hospital, the surgeon there refused to operate on him. The surgeon’s exact words were, ‘He’s Pakistani, he’s faking it’,” Karimullah said. “I did not expect such attitude from a doctor, never mind his nationality.”
About himself, Karimullah said that during the 17 months he had lost his aunt here. Also, he left behind an uncle in India. “I was speaking to my mother over the phone once I reached Lahore and she broke the news to me that my khala passed away three months ago. I also have my chacha, Mohammad Rafiq, still in jail back in India. He is the only one left there from our group that was arrested 17 months ago though there are over a hundred more Pakistani fishermen stuck in Indian jails for years now,” he said.
The release of the nine fisherman came after Pakistan released 87 Indian fisherman as a goodwill gesture earlier this month. According to the PFF, there are about 150 Pakistani fishermen languishing in Indian jails, some of whom happen to be the only breadwinners of their families.
