The Empire drew our borders. We are still bleeding along them.
I grew up hearing stories about a man I met only as a baby. My grandfather lived in India. He never came to Pakistan. My father never got a visa to see him. They wrote letters that took weeks to cross the border, each one folded around more longing than words could hold.
When I was born, my grandfather came for a short visit. For ten months he played with me, held me, called me by a name I don’t remember. My mother says he cried when the train began to move, his hand still waving through the smoke as we left. I was a baby in my mother’s arms, too young to understand what separation meant. He was an old man who had already lived through Partition. Maybe he knew the border had taken something from him he would never get back.
The Loot That Built Empires
History books turn theft into trade. For two centuries, colonial powers drained our land, our labor, our strength. They took gold, cotton, and wheat. They called it progress. Even the railways they boast about were built to move our resources to their ships faster.
The British said they were modernizing India. The French said they were civilizing Africa. But it was always the same story — control dressed up as charity. And when they finally left, they made sure we would never stand united again.
The Art of Division
Partition was not a border. It was a wound. They cut through villages, families, and prayers. They drew lines on maps that sliced through hearts.
My grandfather stayed behind. My father crossed over. They never met again. Millions shared the same fate. The trains that once carried goods now carried fear and corpses.
And this wasn’t only our tragedy. In the Middle East, after the Sykes–Picot Agreement, Britain and France did the same. They created Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine — borders that suited their convenience, not the people’s reality. The result is still burning today.
Living in the Aftermath
Sometimes I think we never left the empire. It just changed its shape. You can see it in the wars that never end, in the economies still built for others’ benefit, in the way old divisions are stirred whenever new powers need control.
Even here in Karachi, the port cranes rise like steel monuments to a past that won’t let go. The direction of trade has changed, but the imbalance feels the same. We export sweat and import dreams.
Colonialism was not just about ruling land. It was about rewriting minds. Teaching us who to fear and who to obey. And that lesson, passed down quietly, still whispers inside us.
A Line That Never Healed
My grandfather died in India. My father died in Pakistan. Two graves, two countries, one story interrupted by history. Every August, when the flags go up, I feel both pride and something else — a sadness I can’t quite name.
Freedom gave us passports, not peace. We still live along the line they drew, still arguing over the inheritance of pain.
Maybe someday we’ll stop guarding the border like a wound and start healing it like a scar. Maybe that’s when freedom will mean more than survival.
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