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confused with Gujarat in India, which gives its name to the more prominent Gujarati community in the UK. There is another Gujrat, in Pakistan. It’s a district and a city in the province of the Punjab, in the northwest of the country, toward the border with Kashmir. It is near Islamabad, though given the bad roads, it is still a good two-and-a-half-hour drive away from the capital, and equally far from Lahore. Gujrat lies on the banks of the River Chenab, and my family is said to have settled in the area from the eighth century, coming to the subcontinent with the Arab armies of Muhammad bin Qasim.
    Gujrat is a city with a disproportionate influence over Pakistani politics. The Chaudhrys are a local dynasty that has long held sway within the army, and the city has produced prime ministers and powerful political factions. Gujrat is also fabled for its clan, or biraadari -based gangsters, and beautiful women. In folklore, the tragic ancient love story of Sohni Mahiwal takes place in Gujrat. Sohni, a Punjabi word for “beautiful,” is said to have drowned in the River Chenab as she desperately tried to reach her forbidden lover Mahiwal. Infatuated by her beauty, Mahiwal jumped in to save her, and he too drowned alongside his lost love. This story has in turn inspired numerous poems, paintings, songs, and even two Bollywood movies. Family legend has it that my Nana Abu, my maternal grandfather, spent his childhood during the British Raj in close association with an English doctor, who resided on the hospital grounds with his family. Having grown extremely close to Nana Abu ’s father, the doctor often invited his family over to share meals, festivals, and holidays. As a boy, Nana Abu, named Ghulam-Nabi, or servant of the Prophet, developed a deep fascination with this English doctor. Keenly impressed by his culture, education, and generosity, Nana Abu decided that when he was married and had children of his own, he would raise them all to be doctors, and run a hospital just like this one. This was to become his guiding dream.
    A medical education wasn’t immediately available to Nana Abu. With a heavy heart he joined the army of the British Raj in the hope that this would give him the opportunity to follow his ambition. He pursued a demanding slate of extracurricular courses alongside his day-to-day routine in the army. He quickly succeeded in qualifying as an accountant and was appointed to manage the military accounts for food stocks. With his dream still seemingly attainable, Nana Abu got married. My Nani Ammi was a beautiful woman from Gujrat named Suraya, which means a constellation of stars. Newly wed and full of hope, Nana Abu took Nani Ammi across India to Lucknow for their honeymoon. That same week in India, history was about to take place.
    In 1947 the British decided to create two countries: India, which would have a majority of Hindus; and Pakistan—at that time West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—in which the majority would be Muslim. This meant that vast numbers of people had to leave their homes and move across the new border to live: Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan. There was chaos and pandemonium. The great human exodus unfolded right before my grandparents’ eyes—on their honeymoon no less. In a panic they rushed to catch a train back to Gujrat, which was suddenly on the Pakistani side of partitioned Punjab. But it was too late. Mob violence and mass murder ruled on the trains. Bloodthirsty hordes, hell-bent on revenge, were boarding the carriages and indiscriminately killing all Pakistan-bound commuters. Train after train would pull into the station in Pakistan, everyone on board dead. These were the ghost trains.
    Nana Abu was on one such ghost train. The mob had cut his train in two. The front carriage, where Nani Ammi and all the women sat, had been separated and taken off into the distance. The back portion, containing Nana Abu and all the men,