Last Updated: Monday, 13 August 2007, 14:11 GMT 15:11 UK
Partition memories
The 60th anniversary of the partition of India in 1947 and the birth of Pakistan was a momentous event in the region.
Millions of people found themselves on the wrong side of the border and hundreds of thousands lost their lives during the mass migration and communal bloodshed.
Generations of families, whose lives have been shaped by the partition, look back at the traumatic events of 1947 and the impact they had on the following 60 years.
SULTANA, 67, KARACHI, PAKISTAN
"Sixty years have passed but the faces of my old friends are still fresh in my memory"
Quote:
"I was seven years old in 1947. We lived in Amritsar in Indian Punjab. My dad was a police inspector and our family was well off.
With each day the tensions were growing and the place began to look like a alien world.
One night our Hindu neighbour banged on our door and alerted us that angry Hindu mobs were coming towards this area, wanting to kill Muslims.
He said that we should go with him and he hid us in his house. When somebody came to question him, he denied knowledge of our whereabouts.
A few hours later my Dad decided that we should leave for Pakistan. The journey was by bus. It was one of the most terrifying and heart-aching moments of my entire life.
We left everything behind in a blink of an eye: all our friends, our house, our belongings.
Sixty years have passed but the faces of my old friends are still fresh in my memory.
I am a proud Pakistani now, but one day I wish to go back and walk on the streets of Amritsar, the place I called home for the first years of my life."
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