Two mice fall into a bucket of cream. The first one gives up early and dies. The second one keeps thrashing about till one day , the cream turns into butter and it crawls out. Few years ago, Hamid Ansari narrated this short story to an auditorium full of school dropouts in Mumbai. Today , his mother is the second mouse.
For over two years now, Fauzia Ansari has been desperately burrowing through a series of tough hearts on both sides of the border to find her son, Hamid. In November 2012, Hamid had set off to meet a girl in Kohat near Peshawar that he had fallen in love with online.
On the pretext of a job interview at Kabul airport, the then 27-year-old management graduate flew to Afghanistan and later illegally entered Kohat. Here, after checking into a hotel on November 14, 2012, he disappeared.It was only recently that the Pakistani police admitted that Hamid had been arrested by the local police on the information of Inspector Naeem Ullah of Intelligence Bureau, Kohat.
Naeem Ullah then whisked him away after which his whereabouts are unknown. “I still don't know whether my son is dead or alive,“ says Ansari, a 54-year-old Hindi professor. “At least, in death, there is certainty.“
When she last spoke to Hamid on November 10, he was in Kabul. “He told me he was returning on November 15 and I asked him to bring saffron,“ says the mother, who did not hear from him for two days. Her elder son, Khalid, suggested going through his Facebook profile. “Till then, I didn't even know what Facebook meant,“ says the professor, who found his chats here with three Pakistanis including Atta-ur Rehman, Abdullah Khatak and Dr Shazia Khan, about life, the girl and the trip.None of them answered Ansari's calls.
“Now I am on Facebook only for my son. I've heard that it has reunited many families.“
In a nightie and red dupatta, she sits on a sofa in her Versova home, resting her fractured left foot on a plastic stool. Two months ago, her calf and ankle bones were fractured after a fall on a Delhi road, where she had gone for a
Supreme Court hearing. “From head to toe, I have changed,“ says Ansari, of her life since 2012. “Top is white,“ she says, pointing to her hair. “Bottom is black,“ indicating her leg brace.
In these two years, the frantic mother has approached everyone “from the local police station to the UN“. She has written to everyone from Krishna Hegde (who had helped bring back Mumbai engineer Bhavesh Parmar from Pakistan) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her first stop was lawyer Majeed Memon. “He charges in lakhs,“ says a disappointed Ansari. While earlier, Ansari and her banker husband would fly down to Delhi for their visits to the Supreme Court, Ministry of External affairs and the Pakistan High Commission, today they travel by Garib Rath.
“We have become bankrupt,“ says Ansari, whose husband had to opt for voluntary retirement to join the search. “He gets angry at me,“ says Ansari, who has not only sold off gold jewellery to fund travel expenses and lawyers' fees but also fallen prey to opportunists who promised to introduce her to ministers in Delhi, only to travel and stay there on her dime.
`Desperate' is the word she uses to describe herself in her myriad letters to MPs and MLAs such as Priya Dutt and Gurudas Kamat. Desperation was what made her interrupt the launch of lawyer Aweis Sheikh's book on Sarabjit Singh, when she heard guests wax eloquent on friendly relations, Ansari stood up and screamed, “This is all fake. If this is true, why don't you help me find my son?“ Several visiting cards flew her way that day . “When I called them, nothing,“ says Ansari. Recently , she dragged her husband to a Pakistani cultural fair in Mumbai.
On display were salwar suits with intricate embroidery that, in a different time, would have easily distracted her. “But I was only there for my son,“ says Ansari, choking back tears at the memory of going from stall to stall with just one question -“Where are you from?“ She doesn't have too many photos of her handsome younger son but he appears in her dreams often. To seek her nod for the fake interview in Kabul, Hamid had used big words.
“Aap meri tarakki ki raah mein rukawat daal rahe ho,“ he told Ansari and she had melted eventually . Unlike her quiet, studious elder son, Khalid, Hamid was a riot. He wouldn't mind shouting from three storeys below, “Keep the toilet door open. I am coming,“ and Ansari, would stand embarrassed by the window, the same window she recently considered jumping out of.
September 16 was one of her darkest days. She missed the birthday boy .
Eating aloo parathas, opening Hamid's cupboard, looking at his Honda bike -everything stung. Ansari wonders how Hamid, a fussy eater and a vegetarian by choice, must be managing in prison. “He could not even use just any toilet,“ recalls Ansari.
Incidentally , Ansari's elder son's marriage had been fixed for December 2012, but then he insisted that he would marry only when his brother arrived.
He is 31 and still single. “I have stopped believing in plans,“ says Ansari, but she still has faith in god. It was while praying for an angel during a holy pilgrimage in 2013 that she got a call from Zeenat Shehzadi, a young journalist from Lahore who asked Ansari to give her a power of attorney.
Human Rights activist Jas Uppal of the UK had briefed Shehzadi on Hamid's case. The journalist has since made several trips to local police stations and even been to the girl's house in Kohat, over eight hours away from Lahore.
“Her father told Zeenat that the girl had been married off,“ says Ansari. Once, Ansari sent Shehzadi an email meant for Atta-ur Rehman. “You are like my son,“ Ansari pleaded in the letter hoping he would tell her where Hamid was. “You have lost your one son. At least protect the other one,“ was the reply .
So far, Ansari must have entered the chamber of the Supreme Court over 20 times now, each time drawing strength from the slogan on display , `Satyameva Jayate'. “I believe in our government and our judiciary ,“ says Ansari, though her patience is running out. On several occasions in the last two years, she has faulted her own parenting.
On others, she has wondered why her son, who would share everything, did not confide in her. “He committed a mistake, not a crime,“ says Ansari. “His life should not to be spent in prison.“ The American government, she has read, comes to the rescue of its citizens abroad. “Why can't both our governments even talk on the phone?“ asks Ansari, who is usually sent back from government office saying, `We will write a letter'.
Today , her file cabinet is full of letters, which she now uses a walker to get to.
“God is asking you to sit down and rest,“ her colleagues say , referring to Ansari`s fractured leg. “I still have a computer,“ Ansari tells them. In the course of this interview, Ansari dismisses two calls from her 85-year-old mother. Ansari knows she will probably ask about her leg, her physiotherapy session and whether she had eaten. “Mothers,“ she says.
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