Some time ago I received a message, via Facebook, from somebody I had been at school with in Rawalpindi, in the early 1970s. Rubina was one of two Bengali girls I remembered from class and she was the brainy one: the one with beautiful handwriting in both Urdu and English and the one who always stood first in class and topped in every subject.

We caught up with each other first via Facebook messenger and then on an almost two-hour long Zoom call. We spoke about our memories of Station School (a missionary school established in the late nineteenth century), of Miss Powntney who played the piano for the hymn-singing every morning at assembly, of Mrs Imam ud Din, our portly principal with the booming voice, and of various other teachers and classmates.

But what made the greatest impression on me during the initial exchange of messages was what Rubina told me about what had happened to her family after the 1971 war. Her father was an army officer and, in August 1972, their family, along with the families of other Bengalis serving in the Pakistan army, was taken to prison camps in the north. They stayed in these camps for over a year, first in Bannu and then later in Mandi Bahauddin, Punjab.

At first I berated myself for not knowing what had become of my Bengali classmates, of not knowing they had been in detention, but then I realised that I had left school before all this happened. My father was posted overseas in 1972 and Rubina had still been there when I left school. But still, it bothered me that I hadn’t known that she and her family, and so many other Bengali army families, had been confined to camps for well over a year.

We met up face-to-face on Zoom a few days after we re-connected. We both insisted that the other “looked just the same”, and we began to chat with surprising ease even though it was almost 50 years ago that we had last met. Rubina had been in Station School from Nursery to Class Seven so she had many good memories of her time there. I was only in that school for three years and my memories were certainly not as positive as hers; indeed I had found the environment very challenging and many of the teachers very fierce.

Two school friends reconnect on social media after 50 years and some hidden stories from the 1971 civil war come to light

Rubina mentioned a lot of classmates, most of whom I couldn’t recall and we laughed and reminisced about some of the teachers. It was a missionary school and many of our teachers were from the local Christian community — I remember now that most of them wore saris (and very elegantly too).

One classmate we both remembered was the naughtiest boy in school, Saad Zia. He was a diabolically naughty boy but, with his green eyes, good looks and sharp wit, he was able to charm himself out of all sorts of trouble. The teachers generally couldn’t stay angry at him, and it also helped that he was a mini-celebrity in school, as he was good at sports and a particularly fast runner.

Rubina reminded me of Saad’s best friend, another of our classmates, a boy called Christopher Harrison. I discovered I did have a memory of him, pink-cheeked and slightly chubby, and then I remembered that his mother, Mrs Harrison, had been my class teacher when I’d joined Station School.

As we spoke, the images and faces of all these people came back to me. I remembered that Mrs Harrison, an Englishwoman, was always dressed stylishly in shalwar kameez and spoke very good Urdu. “But did you know,” Rubina asked me, “that she was married to a Pakistani army officer?” I did not know that and I found the detail fascinating, especially since Rubina said she had once seen Mrs Harrison’s husband — “I think he was a brigadier” — collect her from school.

It had made an impression on her because the husband was driving a glamorous sports-style car and Mrs Harrison had gotten into the car, and put her arms around him and given him a kiss. What a different world that was, the childhood world of our 1970s schooldays in Rawalpindi.

But I wanted to know about the camps. So, we talked about that. I hadn’t even known that Rubina’s father was in the army. She told me her father was a physicist and that, after the 1971 civil war and the creation of Bangladesh, he and other Bengalis serving in the forces were regarded with suspicion.

She recalled that, in early 1972, such officers were told not to go to work. They were still expected to check in every morning and register their presence, but otherwise they were to stay home. Possibly, this measure was not just because of concerns about national security but also for the safety of Bengalis in the Pakistan army but, whatever it was, she says it was certainly demoralising for her father.

In August, the same year, a train took the armed forces’ Bengali families from Rawalpindi, to what was then NWFP and presently Khyber Pakhtunkwa. She recalls the train stopping at a “big junction called Mari Indus”, where they were able to get out and walk around. 

What were their living conditions? Were they allowed to take their belongings with them? Rubina recalled that they were able to sell a lot of their household items before leaving and they took some items with them in a small crate her father built. Their camp was in the Fort at Bannu. The families were allotted accommodation within the fort compound and Rubina says that, as they were a family of six, they were given a house. They settled into their camp life but there was no school there, so her father asked for permission to organise lessons for the community. They received no official help but the parents organised a sort of school for the Bengali children living in the camp.

There is no visual record of the family’s year in the detention camp because, before they boarded the train from Rawalpindi, any cameras they had were confiscated. Even though it must have been a stressful period for the families, Rubina had many positive memories of her time in the Bannu detention camp. Of the brief period they spent in a camp in Mandi Bahauddin, she didn’t have very much to say. The families were transported, or repatriated, to Bangladesh in November 1973.

Reconnecting to my friend and classmate after five decades has proved to be an immensely positive and thought-provoking experience. It has reaffirmed not just how important the bonds one forms in one’s schooldays are and how important the shared experiences of those early years are, it has also thrown a light on how much our world has changed: the Rawalpindi Rubina and I remember is a far cry from the Rawalpindi of today.

It has also made me reflect on all the things that we remain so oblivious to in our youth — the social and political context of the lives that intersect with ours, the wealth of information and understanding that can be gained simply from associating with people and knowing their stories. It has also made me uncomfortably aware of how many things one is blind to (or chooses to be blind to) in life — learning of the detention camps where the families of Bengali military personnel spent more than one year after the 1971 war has made realise how many hidden histories there are within the labyrinth of our own lives, forgotten stories that we have yet to grapple with.

The other thing it has brought home to me is how, no matter the new geographical divisions and politics — Partition or secession — some basic bonds endure: your shared memories of people and places serve to create enduring human ties no matter what one’s ethnicity or nationality.

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 31st, 2021