Cartography of Grief

Cartography of Grief | Madeeha Owais

Photo by Jerifa Ahmed

The river knew no borders. It had carried fishermen’s boats for centuries, its waters washing the feet of children who played on both its banks, long before men drew lines on maps. It had watched generations fall in love, argue, forgive and die without ever asking their names. But in the summer of 1947, the river was not blue—it was red. It had become a silent witness to the horror that unfolded in its wake, carrying bodies instead of boats, memories instead of dreams.

The river did not choose a side. It did not understand the language of flags or the grammar of hatred. It carried what was given to it–water in peaceful years, blood in violent ones, with the same indifference. Perhaps  it was nature's greatest truth that we humans just made up the sin of guilt while nature stayed innocent. The river continued to flow, not even for a moment pausing for mourning, not even for a moment refusing to forget what men were desperate to forget.

On one side of the river was a village that once belonged to no country, just as people had once belonged to no religion. On the other side, a town that had lost its tranquility to politics. The British  had left, but they had left a wound in the land, a gash that now bled rage and revenge. Borders were established, neighbors turned into foes, and those who had their meals together now aimed their knives at one another. Convinced that survival demanded cruelty.

Amidst this madness, there was Azeem and Veera.

Azeem, a poet, always thought that the power of the words was the same as the power of the swords. His grandfather used to recite verses of Rumi, teaching him that love knew no distinctions, no flags, no faiths. Language, he was taught, was humanity’s last defence against barbarism. His small house, with its bookshelves overflowing with Urdu and Persian poetry, was now a ruin—his parents had been slaughtered three nights ago.

For the first time, Azeem wondered if poetry was a lie he told himself to survive. What use were metaphors against machetes? What protection could verses offer when rage had been granted permission to rule? Yet even in doubt,  he held on to language because abandoning words felt like surrendering to the very barbarism that had murdered his parents. To stop believing in poetry would be to accept that violence was the only truth left. 

Veera, the child of a Hindu trader, had been Azeem’s companion throughout their lives. They had shared their stories in whispers beneath the banyan tree, and with their fingers, they had created invisible poetry in the air. One day, she had asked him a question, through playful innocence, as to why he was a Muslim and she a Hindu, and he had responded with laughter saying, “We are all dust, the river does not need to call our names before it quenches our thirst.”

But now, the river was the barrier. Veera’s family was moving towards the west, the new India, while Azeem, who was now the enemy, was going to be pushed towards the east, the new Pakistan. Still, the air was not one of returning home but rather of being exiled. Leaving meant not finding protection but rather submitting to the notion that blood was fate and identity was a verdict handed down at birth.

On the night of the exodus, when the fires had begun to consume the village, and the sky glowed with a cruel orange light. Veera found Azeem hiding in the deserted temple where they had played. “Come, she pleaded, grasping his hands tightly. “Let’s leave together and get to the river before they come for you.”

He waved her off. “There is no place to go, Veera. They have made it so that I am a stranger in both lands. If I head east, they will label me a refugee. If I stay, they will call me a traitor.”

“Then what will you do?” Her voice was breaking.

He smiled, but it was a smile full of grief. “I will write. And if they kill me, let my words become a mirror that forces them to see what they have done.”

Veera understood then that leaving meant living, and staying meant dying. She hated herself for understanding this arithmetic. Love, she realized, had become a luxury only the dead could afford. She kissed his forehead, the way his mother used to, and whispered, “You once told me love knows no borders. But men do.”

“And that is why they will never know love,” he replied.

By morning, Veera’s family had left, and Azeem had stayed. And by nightfall, he was dead— killed by the very people who had once shared his childhood, men drunk on hatred, wielding swords not to protect but to erase.

Years later, Veera would return to that river, now an old woman, her children grown, her life lived in the shadow of memories. She would dip her hands into the water and feel its endless motion, its refusal to be caged by lines on a map. She understood then that survival was not innocence. It was simply another form of witness. And witnesses, if they remain silent, become accomplices. She would remember Azeem’s words and understand, finally, what he meant.

The river had no borders, but men did. And that was why the river flowed, and men did not.