The Promised Land

A Short Story by Rafi Aamer



The day: August 17, 1947.

Musa had done what his historic namesake could not. He had arrived at the Promised Land. Though the land in question was not the same and neither was the promise. Nevertheless, when Musa’s feet touched the soil of the Promised Land, he felt as if he had completed the journey that had started thousands of years ago in Egypt with another exodus. Musa was a part of a similar exodus; millions of people walking hundreds of miles to reach the Promised Land. But our Musa had not led the exodus like the prophet. In fact, our Musa had never led anyone or anything but life. He was a follower. He had always followed orders; orders by the orphanage staff where he grew up, by the customers of roadside dhaba where he started working when he was seven, by his temporary captors when he was 12.

Musa’s family had lived in a remote village of Rajasthan for many generations. Musa’s was the only Muslim family in the village. Musa’s father, Ibrahim, owned one of the two grocery stores of the village. The grocery store was started by Musa’s grandfather, Ayub, who was the only follower of Gandhi in the village practicing his own flavor of Satyagraha. Gandhi’s Satyagaraha’s aim was to make British leave and Ayub’s Satyagraha aimed at making his family stay in their ancestral village despite the growing tension between Hindus and Muslims all over India. When the clientele of grocery store started falling and Ibrahim started observing people staring at him with contempt, he proposed to his father to move to some Muslim neighborhood. Ayub refused. 

“This is temporary,” Ayub told his family “the people in our village are not bad people. Their minds are being poisoned by the political propaganda coming from outside. We just have to wait till these clouds pass. They are not bad people. It’s the air they are breathing that is bad.”

Ayub’s take on his people, his vow to weather the storm, didn’t help clear that air. It kept getting thicker and thicker with the news of communal violence. Then came the tipping point, the news of bloody violence in some far flung place in India whose name was not heard before in this part of Rajasthan before, and hearing upon the news and motivated by a visiting politician of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh party, the sar-punch of the village ordered everyone to stop shopping at Ibrahim’s store.

“Ram Raaj,” shouted the visiting politician addressing the panchayat while punching the air with his fist making it even thicker “that is our goal and it cannot be achieved without achieving pavitarta, the purity, and we will attain that purity one village at a time.”

“Wait,” told Ayub to his family “wait till these external influences end. These are good people. With our resolve to stay among them and loving them will change them back to their own old ways. Just wait.”
But how can one wait and sustain oneself in such conditions; mouths to be fed but no income stream. The store was filled with rotten food items and the stomachs in the Musa’s family were empty. Little Musa, just five-year old, was suffering of malnutrition. Ever so obedient Ibrahim told his father that Musa would die if they didn’t move. 

“In a village some miles away is a mosque that operates a small orphanage. Go give Musa to the orphanage, “Ayub told Ibrahim “Its only temporary. We will get him back when conditions change.”

Conditions did change. They got worse. About a week after Ibrahim left Musa at the orphanage, their house was attacked by, seemingly, people from somewhere else and all of the people in Musa’s family were killed.

Musa was freed from the orphanage by a dhaba owner from Delhi who adopted Musa when he was seven. He also adopted two other boys. It was cheap labor to him. With rising prices, the owner of the dhaba could not afford to pay the workers. This was the only way to keep the business going. Since he sold tea in a Muslim area, he had to hire Muslim help since his customers didn’t like to consume items touched by Hindu hands. And to keep him out of trouble, the dhaba owner had to go to remote areas to “recruit” so there wasn't any follow-up from the orphanages.

Come August 1947, Musa and a bunch of other Muslim kids were rounded up by a militant Hindu gang. They were tortured, molested and told to leave Delhi and go to Pakistan. Pakistan, meaning the land of pure. One kind of purity had Musa’s family killed. Towards the other he was told to go. He went. Not quite unwillingly. The Promised Land beckoned.\

Musa grew up in the slums of Lahore, adopted by one family after another. He day-labored when he was young and by the time he was 30, he had saved enough money to buy a small grocery story. He married, had a son named Isa and spent his life quietly and contentedly.

Isa inherited the grocery store from his father the day Musa died at the age of 55 of a massive heart attack. When Isa fathered his own son, he named him Musa in the memory of his father.

While this little family was taking new roots, the Promised Land was losing its promise fast for majority of its populace. The waters in the Land of the Pure were getting muddied. Things were in a downward spiral for common folks. International events, wars, terrorism, economic crises were making lives a bit more difficult to live every day. Isa’s grocery store was now reduced to a vegetable pushcart because he could not pay the utility bills for the store. Things were not good. The money that he got from selling the store off was long gone and the new municipal laws prohibited him from selling from a permanent place. He had to resort to selling his produce only at the Sunday discount bazaar which were booming because of lowered buying powers of general population. The only thing bad about these weekly bazaars was that they affected the local sellers. For instance, the local sellers’ business in Rehman Pura was getting hurt by the Sunday bazaar of Rehman Pura which was the particular bazaar Isa sold his stuff at. The local sellers solicited the help of local authorities and they discontinued the bazaar in the name of “public safety.”

Isa and his fellow vendors ran out of places to sell their items from. All other Sunday bazaars were already over-loaded with vendors. It had been tree weeks since anyone of them had sold anything. Isa and his friends decided to come up with their own Sunday bazaar. They decided to hold it in the Model Town cricket ground. It was in an area where mostly rich people lived but curiously, it was surrounded by small pockets of lower-middle class population. Isa and his friends hoped that the people from nearby areas would find Sunday bazaar at Model Town Cricket ground quite convenient. They only had to bribe the person who gave them permission to hold the Sunday bazaar and advertise the bazaar through posters and handbills.

The news of the new Sunday bazaar hit the people of Model Town like a bombshell. 
“Can you believe that?” asked Mrs. Karim to Mr. Karim. “Now our town will be full of riff-raff for an entire day. And who’s going to clean-up after they have pushed their pushcarts away?”
“I really feel bad,” said Mr. Nizam to his neighbor Mr. Hafeez “I have a feeling this will increase the crime rate in our area with all these people being here every week.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Mr. Karim “they have the permission to do this but I know someone who can still stop it.”

On the Sunday that had the promise of having a full meal after three weeks, Isa and his fellow vendors arrived at the Model Town Cricket ground very early in the morning only to find out that it was filled with water by the orders of the manager of the cricket club to prepare for a match the following week.

That night, Isa’s wife wrapped little Musa in warm clothes, walked out of the house and left him on the steps of an orphanage.

"Its only temporary my son, " she said to the infant while tears streaming down her cheeks, "I will get you back when things change."