Attari-Wagah border crossing, India — It was time to say goodbye. Standing below the searing solar, Saira, sporting a black internet burqa, tightly held her husband Farhan’s hand, making an attempt to remain collectively for a couple of extra moments on the primary border checkpoint between India and Pakistan.
Named after Attari village on the Indian facet and Wagah throughout the border, this crossing has for years served as one of many few gateways for individuals to journey between the neighbours. However the Attari-Wagah border is now the most recent place the place India and Pakistan divide their residents, together with 1000’s of households with some members who’re Indian, and others Pakistani.
Saira and Farhan had travelled in a single day from New Delhi, with their nine-month-old boy Azlan tucked in his mom’s lap after India ordered nearly all Pakistani residents to go away the nation by Tuesday, following a lethal assault in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities has blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad has denied the allegation.
Like 1000’s of different {couples}, Saira, from Karachi, fell in love with New Delhi’s Farhan on Fb three years in the past. They had been married, and Saira moved to New Delhi.
However as Saira and Farhan checked out one another on Tuesday, their eyes moist, a border guard rushed them to get on with it. On the checkpoint guarded by barbed wire and barricades, their solely id is the one outlined by the colors of their passports: Saira’s inexperienced and Farhan’s blue.
“We will meet quickly,” Farhan advised Saira, as he kissed his toddler son’s cheeks, making ready for Saira and Azlan to step throughout the border. “Insha Allah, very quickly. I’ll pray for you each.”
However then a guard stepped ahead, pointing to Azlan’s passport. It was blue. “Not the newborn, madam,” he advised Saira, as she held her son in her left arm.
Earlier than they might totally comprehend what was taking place, the couple had been separated: Saira, on her manner again to Karachi; Farhan and their breastfeeding youngster, Azlan, to New Delhi.
The Attari-Wagah border crossing, seen from the Indian facet, on April 29, 2025 (Yashraj Sharma/Al Jazeera)
‘An exile state of life’
On April 22, armed males shot 26 civilians useless, largely vacationers, within the resort city of Pahalgam. Since then, the nations have been on edge. India has blamed Pakistan for the assault; Islamabad has rejected the cost and has referred to as for a “impartial investigation”.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have exchanged gunfire for six days in a row alongside their disputed borders. India has suspended its participation within the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), a key water-sharing pact. Pakistan has threatened to stroll out of different bilateral agreements. Each nations have trimmed diplomatic missions and, in impact, expelled most of one another’s residents. The Attari-Wagah border now stands closed for motion or commerce.
To this point, an estimated 750 Pakistani passport holders have crossed again throughout the border since April 22, whereas about 1,000 Indians have returned from the opposite facet. These affected embrace a Pakistani girl who was visiting her mom’s house after twenty years, two sisters who got here for a marriage in India subsequent week however have had to return with out attending the occasion, and aged Pakistani sufferers with lethal illnesses that they had hoped to have handled in India.
There was additionally 48-year-old Haleema Begum, who travelled for 2 days from Odisha on the jap coast, overlaying greater than 2,000km (about 1,250 miles), to succeed in the border crossing.
Haleema left her house in Karachi 25 years in the past, when she married a small businessman in Odisha. Life, she mentioned, had largely been positive earlier than a policeman delivered the Indian authorities’s “Go away India” discover.
“I used to be so scared. I advised them that I didn’t simply come right here, I used to be married off in India,” she mentioned, sitting in a taxi close to the border, her cab loaded with dozens of baggage. “Is it truthful of the (Indian) authorities to uproot my life and push me out?” Haleema lamented. After spending 1 / 4 of a century in India, she mentioned, the nation is her house as properly.
Haleema was accompanied by her two sons, 22-year-old Musaib Ahmed and 16-year-old Zubair Ahmed. Her husband handed away eight years in the past. The youngsters determined that Zubair would cross over with their mom to handle her.
However each the youngsters have blue passports, not like their mom’s inexperienced one. They pleaded, then argued, with the border guards. Nothing labored. “She has by no means travelled alone, I have no idea how she’s going to do that,” Musaib mentioned, referring to Haleema’s upcoming 1,200km journey to Karachi.
As soon as she will get to Karachi, Haleema doesn’t have a house to go to.
“My mother and father died way back,” she mentioned, including that her solely brother lives along with his household of six in two rooms. “There are 1,000 questions in my thoughts,” she added, wiping her tears. “And no solutions. I simply pray to God for the security of kids. We’ll reunite quickly.”
Suchitra Vijayan, the creator of Midnight’s Borders, a 2022 guide that follows individuals divided by in a single day borders, mentioned the Indian subcontinent “is marked by many, many, of those very heartbreaking tales”.
Because the partition of British India, Vijayan famous, Muslim ladies from India or Pakistan who married males from the opposite nation and moved there have been among the many most affected. The dilemma is perpetual, she mentioned, particularly when they’re compelled to return. “You’re caught in a spot that’s not your property — or it’s a house that you simply don’t recognise. And exile turns into your state of life.”
Over the a long time, most of the households divided by India-Pakistan tensions have held on to hopes — very like Saira and Farhan — that they’ll be capable to reunite quickly, she mentioned. Typically, that isn’t the way it truly performs out for them.
“Probably the most painful issues you’ll take heed to repeatedly is that lots of people thought that they had been simply leaving briefly,” she mentioned.
A Kashmiri girl displaying the deportation discover she acquired, earlier than her taxi was escorted by guards, on April 29, 2025 (Yashraj Sharma/Al Jazeera)
‘Solely a mom is aware of the ache’
Again on the Attari-Wagah border, Farhan pretended his son’s feeding bottle was a airplane, hoping to distract his son from the household’s tragedy. “He doesn’t just like the bottle; he is aware of his mom’s contact,” mentioned Farhan’s sister Nooreen, because the boy grew pissed off. Nooreen and different family members had joined the couple and Azlan on the border.
“Two massive nations and powers are preventing, and our harmless youngsters are trapped. Rattling them,” she mentioned. “Solely a mom is aware of the ache of abandoning a nine-month-old.”
Then, all of a sudden, Farhan’s eyes lit up when he heard a guard shouting out his identify. Sporting a navy blue cotton T-shirt, Farhan sprinted with Azlan’s blue passport in his palms. “Lastly, that they had mercy on our household,” mentioned Farhan, operating swiftly, with a timid smile on his face — guards, he thought, had agreed to let Azlan cross along with his mom.
However he returned an hour later, his eyes tearful, and his son, irritated by the warmth, nonetheless in his arms.
“She fell unconscious when she was about to cross the border. Officers advised me she wouldn’t cease crying (when she regained consciousness),” Farhan mentioned, his phrases fumbling as he spoke of Saira.
To calm her down, the Indian guards facilitated one final assembly between Saira, her husband and son.
An inconsolable Farhan remarked how totally different life was earlier than the order that compelled Saira to go away the nation. Farhan is an electrician within the centuries-old a part of the Indian capital, generally known as Outdated Delhi. Saira, who holds an undergraduate diploma in arts from Karachi, and Farhan “had been a pair that might not be separated “, mentioned Nooreen.
Since Saira got here to New Delhi after their wedding ceremony, Farhan mentioned, “My life, my world, every thing modified.”
Now it has modified once more, in methods he had by no means imagined doable. As he performed with Azlan in his arms, Farhan’s mom, Ayesha Begum, additionally on the border with the household regardless of a fractured leg, stared at her son.
“Ye sab pyaar ke maare hai (these are all victims of affection),” She mentioned.
Her Huge Takeaway from How India-Pakistan Tensions Had Sundered Her Household: “Pataal Mai Pyaar Kar Lena, Par Pakstan Mai Kabhi Mat Karna (Fall in love in Hell, However By no means in Pakistan.)”
