A few paces behind them, Inaya quietly sidled up to Humaira and held her hand. She looked around her and saw people in deep meditation, some on a prayer mat facing Mecca, others chanting Vedic scriptures, turbaned Sikhs in silent contemplation.

‘Do you think Allah is here Daadi, along with all the other gods that these people are praying to?’ she asked.

Humaira looked at her granddaughter’s earnest face searching for answers.

‘I don’t know, my kishmish. I have never seen Allah. I don’t know if anyone has seen their gods. But Gharib Nawaz reaches the divine without any of these imaginary boundaries. He will make sure that Habib is in good hands,’ she replied, with moist eyes. ‘And Toshi Aapa too.’

Inaya tightened her clutch around the little pebble in her pocket and swallowed the lump in her throat.

2012

‘I’ve tried to become someone
else for a while, only to discover
that he, too, was me.’

—Stephen Dunn,, Here and Now: Poems

Pitching It Right

In a leafy gully in Rawalpindi, where a young girl once played pithoo with her brother, another young girl played tape-ball cricket, sixty-odd years later.

The month she turned nineteen, Inaya Haider made her debut in Pakistan’s women’s cricket team, opening their batting. Watching his daughter walk out on to the pitch, Irfan fought back his tears of joy. Standing beside him, Humaira wept copiously.

In that very match, Inaya scored her maiden fifty. As the stadium erupted into thunderous applause, Inaya reached into her pocket, took out an olive green oval pebble, held it in her outstretched arm and gave the sky a huge smile. From behind the clouds, she could almost see her mother and grandfather smile back at her.

Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Jai Puri started an online cooking channel, which he named ‘Toshi’s Kitchen’. It gained quite a fan following and was even endorsed by Nabeel Said, thanks to a little help from Inaya.

Despite his apathy for cricket, Jai now knows a thing or two about the game, never misses a single match that Inaya plays in—and wildly cheers her on.

However, if it is an India-Pakistan match, things are different. Then Jai roots for India. And after the match, Inaya and he have heated debates about which team deserved to win.

It is full-blown war. However, it always abides by the spirit of the sport.

After all, the sports pitch is perhaps the only place where this war should happen. Between the two nations, across the line.

Epilogue

‘We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place. We stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back.’

—Pascal Mercier,, Night Train to Lisbon

What Did I Miss?

1966
London, United Kingdom

Boasting original ownership by Napolean III’s favourite chef, the Gaslight was the place to be seen at, in London’s 1960s. Which, of course, was why Antonia Radcliffe had chosen the restaurant for the luncheon with Claire and Pauline. To which, she would, of course, arrive fashionably late.