Lessons in Life (Beddingfield #2)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

JANUARY 1964, MIRPUR, PAKISTAN

Junayd

‘I’m not going there, Ammi . I’m really not.’ Fifteen-year-old Junayd Sattar turned to face his mother. He pointed the old-fashioned Kodak 35 in her direction, knowing his memory of her was likely to fade if he was to do as she was now pleading, while knowing a photo would not.

‘But your father insists, Junayd. Allah only knows, I don’t want to lose you and your brothers as well as your father, but you can’t stay here. I can’t stay here much longer either with your sisters, but there is the opportunity for you to go to England. The British government is inviting you – begging you to go to work there. It is a rich country – you will go to school there for a few years and then work hard and make money. And what an opportunity, Junayd, what a great thing it will be to join your abba and your uncles and make us all so proud. Once you are given a great education, you can maybe go to Oxford or Cambridge and become a doctor? Or, if not, you could make your fortune working in the grand textile mills they have over there, and then have money to bring back here and we will all go and live in Lahore…’

Junayd turned away from his mother and walked to the open door of the family’s simple three rooms, welcoming the arrival of the warm winter rain now falling gently onto the acres and acres of farmland and allotments of his village of Tangdew and the chessboard of surrounding villages, laid out like a painting in front of him. Beautiful land, his native land, his land, which would soon be covered over by the black fathomless depths of the Mangla Dam. Here, where the Jhelum River met the heavily forested foothills of the Pir Panjal mountains, billions of gallons of water would be driven in to devour the haze of colour in front of him – shades of mauve, ochre and green – while he and his family were driven out.

Junayd raised his beloved camera once again, clicking for posterity his homeland that would soon be no more.