Afroze Jehan

Afroze Jehan Begum was born in Delhi in 1939. She has one sister and three brothers. Growing up, she lived in a large house in Delhi with her immediate family and distant relatives. Most of her early childhood was spent at home helping her mother with the daily chores. An important event she recalls during her years in Delhi was learning to read. Leading up to Partition, her house was raided by a group of unidentified men. The family hid their identities and told the group that there were no men in the house. Her father hid himself in a room. Afroze Begum also remembers seeing the dead being carried out on carts during this time.

One night, Afroze Begum fled her house with her mother, brothers, sister and brother-in-law and took refuge in Baradari, Chandni Chowk. Her father stayed behind. They did not bring any belongings with them. They stayed there for one night and then moved on to the tomb of Humayun where tents had been set up for migrants. They waited to board the next train to Lahore from the Nizamuddin Railway Station, about a mile away. She recalls meeting a woman there who said she had barely escaped death by sword. Afroze Begum says, “She showed us the sword wound on her head and told us she was buried under the dead and had survived.”

Afroze Begum states that most of the trains arriving in Delhi were full of the dead and her family did not know if they were going to make it to the other side of the border. When a train would arrive, men carrying swords would come out of hiding. When a train for Lahore arrived, they crowded inside in it and managed to reach Lahore unharmed. Boys on the train had slingshots loaded with stones ready to protect themselves. She heard a rumor that the train driver was being watched at gunpoint by one of the migrants, who instructed him not to stop the train until it had reached Lahore.

Afroze Begum's family lived in Lahore for three years and then moved to Karachi after her father joined them in 1950. For the first few years in Karachi, they kept moving from one place to another. After her marriage, she settled into her own house with her husband.