Transcript of an Audio Interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH
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Transcript of an audio interview with Professor Salima Hashmi (SH) conducted by AAA project researcher Samina Iqbal (SI) on 22 May 2017 at Hashmi’s residence in Lahore, Pakistan. 22 May 2017, Part 1 SI: Mrs Hashmi, we wanted to start the interview with you and we wanted to ask if you can go—just really go back to your memory lane and start from as far back as you can remember. SH: Okay. Some of it will be hearsay, for example, where I was born, which is Delhi, 1942, in the last month, December. My father was in the British India Army and he was a Lieutenant Colonel. And since I was born in Delhi, which was at that time the capital, my parents were very much involved with the cultural life of the city. So it was not just a regular army existence—it was something else. My earliest memories are interestingly not to do with Delhi, but they are with Rawalpindi which I believe my father was transferred there and I was about two, two and a half years old. My earliest memory is of falling down and hurting myself and bashing my eyebrow open, and then being in a hospital and being very frightened because it was apparently a hospital where the family was not allowed and my phuphi—my aunt—was smuggled in pretending to be an ayah (governess) to look after my needs. So that's my earliest memory really, which is—of course—of a trauma. 22 May 2017, Part 2 SH: Another very early memory is of Shimla. And it must have been when my mother was expecting my younger sister, so I must have been four or around that age, and it was of getting lost in the bazaar. I was terribly frightened because somehow I had lost track of my mother. I was hanging on to her coat belt and it was lost—at some point slipped from my hand. So that was a second trauma that I remember—wandering around and then finally with a rush of relief to suddenly spot her. And she hadn't even noticed that I was no longer hanging on to her coat straps. Also then, while she was in the hospital, my father babysitting me and being very bad at it because I was wailing and I wanted a biscuit, and to pacify me he went and got the worst kind of biscuit that you could offer a child, which had no cream—nothing nice and sweet. It was a dry biscuit. I suspect it was the kind of biscuit that you had with your cocktails in the evening or something like that. So that's another early memory of the inadequacy of my father trying to be a mother. Much later, my sister in a pram back in Delhi, and wandering around in Lodhi Gardens. We were on a bridge which had a decline and my sister was in a pram and I remember I had pushed her. I suppose this was my first feeling of sibling jealousy. And the pram went down that slope so fast and overturned. And then the terror in my heart that I had done something terrible. My sister, of course doesn't remember any such thing and nor did she come to any harm, but it always remained with me—my first feeling of really major guilt. I remember a birthday party, also in the same wonderful house in Delhi, in Lodhi Gardens or next to Lodhi Gardens. It must have been possibly my fourth birthday, because after that we left for Lahore, and subsequently, Lahore became part of Pakistan. But I remember that birthday party. I remember the games. I remember great fun—a sense of gaiety. Lahore was very different. I first was sent to a school where I wept constantly. And that pattern was to repeat itself however many schools my mother changed. Every school was a terrorising experience. SI: When did you move to Lahore? SH: We moved to Lahore in February 1947 when my father took over the editorship of Pakistan Times. SI: So before partition? SH: Yes. He resigned from the army at the end of 1945. So early 1946—they already knew that Pakistan was coming—so starting a newspaper called The Pakistan Times was really in preparation for what they felt was going to happen. SI: This is 1946? SH: 1947. SI: 1947—when they were preparing for The Pakistan Times to be launched? SH: Yes. It was The Pakistan Times and Imroze. He was editing both papers—the Urdu and the English. We were living in a changing series of places, but what I remember is being in this flat—a top floor flat—in a hotel which was called ‘Metro Hotel Restaurant’. It was opposite the Punjab Assembly. And there is a vivid recollection of waking up one afternoon and hearing a lot of noise outside and looking out on to the Punjab Assembly. I climbed up on the windowsill. My mother was fast asleep. It was a hot afternoon—must have been, I suppose, April or May. But this date can be verified because it was the day that Master Tara Singh stormed out of the Assembly with all his followers. They were all waving their kirpans. And I remember shaking my mother awake and saying ‘see what’s going on.’ and she just told me to go back to sleep. Later, when I described this event to Abdullah Malik, the historian of the Punjab, he said ‘My God, you would miss that momentous event when the Sikhs politically decided to part from the Muslims.’ There were similar memories of those very early days. But then it was Kashmir, because we moved to Srinagar for the summer; that was my mother and her eldest sister—Dr Taseer’s wife—her children, because my English grandmother and grandfather had come from England. They’d been on a long tour where they visited their sons who were in South Africa, and then they came to visit their daughters, both married to Indians. SI: Do you remember the year? SH: 1947. SI: Before Pakistan, before August? SH: Yes, before August, because we took the house in Srinagar for the summer. Dr Taseer knew Srinagar very well. He had been the principal of the college there. So therefore everybody knew him. And I remember that it was just before Eid because 14 August was Jummat-ul-Wida. So for an Eid present, we were taken in a shikara on the Dal Lake to the bazaar. So we must have been living on the other side. There we went to a friend of the family who had a jewellery shop and a craft shop. And all the girls were told—my sister was still a baby in arms—we were told to choose something for ourselves. And I remember I chose a pendant on a chain with a beautiful yellow stone. I still remember the way the yellow stone shone—so I said ‘I want that one.’ The gentleman whose shop it was, who was my uncle and father's friend, he sort of paled. Obviously I had chosen probably one of the most expensive stones in the shop and my mother tried to detract me and say choose something else. But the yellow stone was something that I was marvelling at and I only wanted that—so I was given that. I suspected it was taken away from me later without my knowing but I still remember the shining of that yellow sparkling stone. Srinagar was great fun. We were constantly sick because we had the whooping cough—all cousins together. The result of which my sister got pneumonia, she was taken to the hospital. My mother was with her so I was left with my aunt and my cousins. There were all kinds of fruit trees in the garden. So we were constantly having upset stomachs because we were stuffing ourselves with peaches and plums and all the rest of it. We got up to all kinds of mischief. But my grandmother—my English grandmother—was the most entertaining woman and she had puppets, which she would give puppet shows for us. She would dress up. She had brought a whole trunk full of things to entertain children with because she was a great mimic. She had wigs, false noses, glasses; and she would make up these stories and become different characters while we would all sit, fascinated with her. I didn't know any English at that time, because I had been brought up to speak only Urdu. So I slowly learnt English with my two grandparents. And then suddenly something must have happened. I learnt later that my father sent my mother a telegram and told her to get back to Lahore because we were expecting trouble. It was obvious that Kashmir was going to be in dispute. But Dr Taseer and his wife and children, and my grandparents stayed on in Kashmir—in Srinagar. While my mother, myself and my sister, we got on to the bus and came from Srinagar to Murree. By the time we got to Murree, the rioting had started. There had been terrible riots. The Sikh community had been massacred in Murree where there was a large Sikh community. The factories which were producing Murree Beer were put on fire. So we stopped in Murree. There was a curfew in Rawalpindi everywhere so one learned. My mother found some friends—there was; I remember a Greek lady—they got together and decided to take out a peace procession to stop the fighting and I was put in the front of the peace procession on a donkey and carried a white flag.