Poonam Kaur (8) with her doll, gifted to her by her paternal aunt, when she was leaving from Kabul for Delhi.
Poonam Kaur (8) is one of the youngest victims of the
Islamic State (IS) sponsored terror attack at Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib Kabul this
year. She was injured in gurdwara attack this year. Poonam had suffered
shrapnel injury in an eye and on head and neck.
The memories of the
attack has scarred Poonam forever.It has been four months
since the attack on March 25 but she still trembles in fear, screams in the night,
gets nightmares and asks 'why did they attack us?" Malmeet Kaur (26),
Poonam's mother, was born in Kabul.
We were just sitting
there and having prasad. Who were they? Unhone mere dada ko kyu maara? Unhone
sabko kyu maara? (why did they kill my grandfather, why did they kill
everyone). After we came here, she is a little better,”says Poonam.
Malmeet along with her
husband Gurjeet Singh (33), two other children — Mandeep Singh (9) and Parwin
Singh (3) — have been evacuated to India in the first batch of 11 Afghan Sikhs.
Gurjeet’s grandmother
Balwant Kaur too has come with them. She lost her both sons — Sardar Singh
(Gurjeet’s father) and Surjan Singh, in the Kabul attack. Surjan’s wife, minor
daughter and a son have come along too. Gurjeet’s mother and a brother are
still back in Kabul.
This pain of leaving theri own country, theri own people, will never go but now they want to forget
everything, about Kabul, about Afghanistan. Through the years of war and
bombings, atrocities and disrespect, and even after 2018 Jalalabad attack that
wiped out their community elders, they continued to stay there. But the gurdwara
attack, left them all heartbroken.
"Apna desh hai par ab bhoolna chahte hain,”; “I start feeling unwell when
I think of the day when innocent people from our community were butchered.
Luckily, my daughter escaped death,”says Malmeet
It was on Saturday, a
day before that they took a flight for Delhi, they got to know that their visas
and tickets have been done and it was time to leave Kabul. It wasn’t easy to
decide on what to take along, amid hurried goodbyes and a hope that rest of
their community members will also soon land in Delhi.
“I was born in Kabul,
grew up and got married there. But I was told that we will be leaving in 24
hours. I just packed some clothes…nothing else. Children couldn’t even pick
their toys. We said hurried goodbyes at the gurdwara. But more than the
materialistic things, I think we are carrying along memories of Kabul – good,
bad, worse. What we want to leave behind is that fear in which we lived there
24×7. We couldn’t move out, our children couldn’t enjoy life, our men and
children were abused for being Sikh, threatened and forced to cut their hair.
We chose to move now because future of our children is the most important,”
says Malmeet.
“Earlier children used
to attend school at gurdwara but after the attack, that too was closed. It was
impossible for our kids to attend other schools. They were never treated
respectfully,” alleges Malmeet, who had been living in two rooms at Gurdwara
Mansa Singh ji for last eight years.
Dr.Gurdeep Kaur
Associate Professor
Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College
University of Delhi
