Independence was truly understood by those who paid the cost of freedom and lost their closest family members. They knew that liberty demands sacrifice, and the value of being free is best known to those who shed their blood for their homeland. The story of how Pakistan came into being in 1947 is remembered most vividly by those who lived through those difficult times.

The trauma of the partition lives on in the childhood memories of Dr Khawaja Ahmed Abbas, a living legend, an eyewitness and a migrant of 1947. In his book titled Living in Clouds, he recounts the anguish of those times and the hardships witnessed during the post-partition period.

The partition displaced 12 to 20 million people, forcing them to leave ancestral lands where they had lived for generations. This migration left deep scars and painful memories tied forever to the soil of their origins.

"A beam of morning sunlight coming through a small hole in a broken........

© The Express Tribune