Kausar Jabeen

In August 1947, Kausar Jabeen's entire family decided to migrate from Karnal in Punjab, India to Lahore in Pakistan. Each family member carried one suitcase as they believed they would be flying to Pakistan. From Delhi, however, it would take Mrs. Jabeen’s family another two to three months to migrate. They stayed with an extended family member for almost a month, but the house was too small to accomodate so many people. They then transferred to a refugee camp at Humayun's Tomb, where they waited fearfully to be able to take the special trains to Pakistan.
In late August of 1947, the family was finally able to take the train, in which children were hidden and told to keep quiet. If Mrs. Jabeen's mother heard the children crying, she gave them a small piece of biscuit to suck on and keep quiet—that was the only food Mrs. Jabeen recalls anyone eating throughout the entire two-day train ride. She remembers her uncles standing with rifles on either side of her younger, unmarried aunts, who sat in a line on a bench. It was understood that if their convoy was attacked, the first thing that her uncles would do would be kill their sisters before anything else could happen to them. When Mrs. Jabeen's family reached Lahore station safely, people were singing and celebrating in the streets. They took oil and ghee canisters, boiled rice in them, and handed out small amounts of it to each of the passengers. Mrs. Jabeen’s family finally had something to eat. They stacked their suitcases around them at the train station platform and slept there for two days before moving onwards to Jhang, Punjab. The government allotted them furniture and some land. They didn’t speak Punjabi, so it took them a while to adjust and understand the language. With time, however, they began to feel at home. Mrs. Jabeen went on to earn her bachelor’s degrees in political science and Urdu.