There was suddenly a pin drop silence on the street below our first floor flat. One moment there was all kind of city noises filling the air, the next moment it became all eerily quiet. We were living in a flat on the main GT Road in Lahore facing the back of the sprawling Lahore Railway station. On the left side of the road going towards Mughalpura, there was a long line of raw leather godowns, or warehouses, while the other side of the road was lined by a tall wall marking the boundary of the railway station. It was a very busy road from morning till evening with all kinds of traffic moving both ways, mainly tongas, rehras (horse carts) and gaddas (carts driven by oxen), but also some cars and trucks, full of noise and hustle and bustle.

The time was exactly five in the evening. The day was 6^th March 1953. I was barely six years old. My father had just come back from his godown office below and told my mother that “Martial Law had been declared and a curfew was going to be imposed at 05.00 in the evening”. The words Martial Law and Curfew were very new to me and I had no idea what they meant. But I felt, as all children instinctively feel from the body language of their parents, that there was something wrong and that this was something to be afraid of.

As was usual in those days, the window of our drawing/ living room facing the road was a big open thing without glass or even mosquito netting but it had a two feet tall wooden jafri (a partition of intricate designs) at the bottom. I could peer through the small holes in the jafri at the road below and in fact this was my favorite pastime when home from school. So when in a moment or two, the deadly silence penetrated my conscience, I rushed to my usual abode and looked at the street below. To my horror, it was totally bare, with not a sole or even a dog or cat moving around. I had never seen this kind of thing happening before and to this day I can never forget the feeling of terror that came over me at this moment. Within a minute or two my mother came rushing into the room, removed me from the window and took me to another room. She told me to sit with my younger sister Tazeen, then about a year old, who was as usual fast asleep. But more excitement was to come.

After about fifteen minutes or so, this total silence all around us was suddenly shattered by the very loud sound of a gun firing multiple shots somewhere not very far away. My sister woke up and started crying. After a couple of minutes, I could hear the sound of two jeeps rushing past on the road below at very high speed. I clung to my mother even more closely.

After remaining with us for an hour father went back to his office below. When he came back up later in the evening, he told my mother that the shots we had heard were fired by the military jeeps at some people who were still on the street in violation of the curfew. According to rumors fast going the round the area, two people were dead.

The next day, father brought more news. The martial law was very strict. Some people had tried to bring out a procession in defiance of martial law on Nicholson Road (which was not far from our home, on the other side of the railway station). The army had threatened to block them by tanks, the people continued to march shouting slogans, the army ran tanks over them and scores of them were killed. There was of course some exaggeration but not all of this was untrue as I found out later when I grew up. But on that fateful day I had watched history being made first hand and at very close quarters. It was the climax of an intricate and cynical political drama played in Punjab full of intrigue and conspiracy, but more of it later.

History has always been a fascinating subject for me. And  the history of my country, Pakistan, is very closely and intimately linked to my own as the following pages will show.