He was a dashing Pakistani Army Captain and she was an alluring Bengali Dhaka Medical College graduate training at CMH. (Combined Military Hospital).
It was February of 1970 when tensions were building in every corner of East Pakistan. The Captain and the Doctor fell in love when they met at CMH. But both their families disowned them. Marrying the enemy was not acceptable, emotions were raw and anger was overflowing.
Nevertheless, the young couple married and made themselves a cozy home in a rented house. Many were leaving for Pakistan and moved out of Dhaka.
Her family refused to meet her husband and his family sent letters of disdain from Pakistan but the young couple were in a state of euphoria.
Soon she was pregnant and he was ecstatic. It was the first week of December, the Captain was in trenches with his commanding officer who was a Major. The Captain told his commanding officer that his wife was in labour at the CMH, if he dies during the heavy bombing, please give her this message that the last ten months have been the happiest time of his life.
Later that day the Major went for a field meeting only to come back and found the trenches been bombarded and the Captain has died.
The Major remembered that the Captain’s wife had been in labour, he rushed to the CMH. At the hospital, a grim faced lady Doctor informed the Major that the Captain’s wife has died in childbirth five hours ago and they were waiting for the Captain to come and take his baby girl home.
The Major had to make a split second decision... if he told them the father is also dead, the baby might be given in care of strangers. Instead he calmly told the Doctor that the baby’s father was slightly injured and would not be able to travel for a few days but please take good care of the baby girl and someone would come and take her home in couple of days.
When the Major got home that night his wife was in a frenzy...packing a few things. She and their two sons were to leave in two days by a ship for Karachi. The Major told his wife what happened and there was no choice but to go to CMH and pretend to be an aunt of the new born baby girl and take her to Karachi. When the war will be over they will search for her family and hand her over to them.
The Major’s wife was bewildered but she did as her husband asked and left with the baby girl for Karachi. The rest is history!!
In the next few days, the Pakistani army surrendered and the Major became a prisoner of war. In the meantime, the Major’s wife now in Karachi, anxious and frightened for her husband was lovingly taking care of the baby girl and told her relatives that this was her daughter.
Eighteen months later after the release of prisoners of war, the Major returned home to find a happy and healthy baby girl along with his two young sons playing in the front lawn.
Over the next few years, there was no communications between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Finally after six years of trying to find any relatives of their adopted daughter they gave up.
By now his wife was so attached to the little girl that any mention of trying to find relatives made her panic and cry.
Eighteen years went by, the baby girl had graduated from Karachi Grammar and was in college. The Major now a Brigadier General wanted to tell his adoptive daughter about her father but his wife refrained him from doing so.
Countless arguments and emotional exchanges could not make him change his mind. He retrieved the only worn out black and white picture he had of the Captain. The picture was taken at the Dhaka Cantonment Officer’s Club. He took it to the photo studio got it enlarged and framed.
The next week he asked both his sons, who were at university in other city, to come home for a few days. All three children were worried thinking their father might be ill. He asked his adopted daughter to sit next to him as he held her hand. He wrapped his other arm tightly around his wife. Calmly he spoke of that day when a young Captain under his command told him about his Bengali wife, a Doctor, who was in labour at the CMH and if he died to tell his wife how much he loved her. The Captain died that afternoon and so did his wife while giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. Tears rolled down his face as he turned to look at his adopted daughter and handed her the only picture of her father.
The baby girl is now fifty plus years old, married and has a daughter...who is about to be married in a few weeks. A large picture of her biological father hangs on the drawing room wall. Every time she looks at the picture she wonders who was her mother. A young Doctor who defied her family and married her Pakistani father.
The Major now eighty two years old looks out from the window of his seventh floor apartment in Karachi and wonders if he did the right thing that fateful afternoon when he took the orphan baby girl and brought her up as his own.
P.S.
Real names are withheld for privacy reasons.
The Brigadier General and his wife have now passed away.
From the wall of Farzana Ursani
Kids of Parsi Colonies (Karachi & Global)
