Raisa Begam and Sardar Ali migrated from Delhi to Karachi in 1947.
Their families grew to know each other during the long trip westward and they were married in Pakistan shortly afterwards, when Raisa was sixteen years old and Sardar Ali was twenty-one. Sardar Ali remembers a childhood of ordinary joys – he played gulli danda in narrow streets and smoked his first beedi with his best friend, a hindu. When Raisa begum left India, it was to be the last time she would see her home. She reminisces about a life of simple comforts – traders coming to their door, cloth merchants visiting their home. For both these people, and for thousands like them, home is located in a distant past, to be thought of fondly but never to be known again.