I am Pakistan. I was born on a humid August night in 1947, after a long and painful struggle in which millions sacrificed their homes, possessions, honour and, above all, their lives. I did not come into this world as an ordinary state. I was carved out of a dream, watered with tears and blood, and entrusted to a people who had promised to make me a homeland where they could live with dignity, faith and freedom.

I still remember those first days. I was young, fragile and surrounded by uncertainty. Millions crossed borders carrying little more than memories, prayers and the hope of a better tomorrow. Trains arrived filled with refugees, and some arrived carrying only the dead. I watched mothers searching for children, children searching for fathers, and families burying their loved ones before they had even found a roof over their heads. Yet I survived. I stood upon my own feet because my people refused to let me fall.

Beneath my wrinkles still lives the spirit of those who crossed the rivers and borders of 1947 with hope in their hearts.

Beneath my wrinkles still lives the spirit of those who crossed the rivers and borders of 1947 with hope in their hearts.

Look at me today and then look back at the map of my birth. The territory entrusted to me in 1947 was far greater than what remains within my embrace today. I lost a part of myself in 1971, and that wound has never completely healed. East Pakistan was not........

© Daily Times