The Night Diary

This time though, the boys started throwing rocks at us. A small one hit the back of my head. Amil pilled my arm and we broke into a run. Amil led us into an alley. We ran through the alley and some gardens, then back onto another dirt road. We found a cluster of mango trees and hid behind them.

“Why did they do that? What did you do?” I whispered at him.

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything,” he whispered back to me.

I touched the small bump where the rock hit me. We went a different way to school, down another dirt road and through the sugarcane, but it took a long time and we were late. After school we ran all the way home without stopping. When we got home, we stood catering our breath outside the door, so Dadi wouldn’t ask why we were out of breath.

“It’s because we’re Hindus,” Amil said. He looked around and started to whisper again. “There are lots of places all over India where the Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims fight one another all the time now. Just not here, yet. Kazi tells what he reads in the papers. That’s why those men came to the house yesterday. They said the Hindus should leave, and they don’t want Kazi to live with us”.

“Because he’s Muslim?” I asked, but Amil didn’t answer as he ran into the house and to our room where he worked on his drawing until dinner. I thought about those boys. They were Muslims. Everyone knows who is Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh by the clothes they wear or the names they have. But we all have lived together in this town for so long. I just never thought much about people’s religions before. Does it have to do with India becoming independent from British? I don’t see how those two things go together.