Free Four Miles to Freedom by Faith Johnston Page A

exchange has started could our turn possibly be far behind?
    If one must look for advantage of this miserable period of our lives, it is in all the money lying accumulated in India. Here amongst us is a pilot who took furlough and hitchhiked around Europe last year. Both of us are crazy about physical fitness and games. As a result we have decided to make it to the Munich Olympics together. That would be the most befitting way to wash this bad taste out of our mouths.
    All the V Best to both
    affly
Dilip
    As usual, Dilip was inclined to focus on the positive and make light of the negative. Usman Hamid had given them a tape recorder and one tape on New Year’s Eve. They had played the tape over and over again until the recorder gave out a few weeks later. Having some music had boosted their spirits for a while. And now they had received their first letters with promises of parcels to come. As for their IAF pay cheques accumulating in their accounts at home, only the bachelors (Dilip, Grewal, Chati, Sinjhi and Pethia) could expect a windfall. The other POWs were married men. Barring any bureaucratic glitches, their monthly pay cheques were being sent to their wives.
    There was other good news but there was no way Dilip could tell Inder about it in a letter. One day in mid-February, when Usman Hamid dropped in to check on his charges, he tossed Dilip an Oxford School Altas. ‘To plan your trip,’ he said. ‘I’ll collect it in a week or so.’
    But he never did collect the atlas. Soon after his visit Usman Hamid was posted out. A little later they heard that he had become an ADC to the Chief of Air Staff.
    Many years later, when he read Sami Khan’s Three Presidents and an Aid , Dilip learned just how close to the centre Hamid was during the early, uncertain days of Bhutto’s presidency. On 3 March, after only a few weeks as ADC to Air Marshal Rahim Khan, Hamid and his boss were summoned to a meeting at Bhutto’s residence, along with the chiefs of staff of the army and the navy. Bhutto had decided to clean house. While all the ADCs were kept closeted together in one office, Bhutto dismissed his army and air force chiefs and had them removed from the premises to secret locations. Then he swiftly made new appointments. The new air chief, Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry, had been serving as the managing director of Pakistan International Airlines. Now he was suddenly at the top of the military hierarchy. Perhaps that’s why he decided to keep Usman Hamid on as ADC.
    After studying the Oxford Atlas’s map of Pakistan and consulting the scale to measure distances, Dilip figured he should head northeast to Poonch. Poonch, the closest town in Indian-controlled Kashmir, was approximately 100 kilometres from Pindi, as the crow flies. He would have to cross the Jhelum River but it would be during the dry season (before June) so he didn’t see that as a problem. What he really needed was a more detailed map of railways, roads and bridges, though he might have to avoid those in any case. He kept the atlas under the blankets on his charpoy for future reference.
    Shortly after the departure of Mulla-Feroze and the arrival of the first mail, Jafa, Kamat and Tejwant Singh returned from their long sojourn at the Chaklala MI Room. It was good to have them back. Kuruvilla, who missed his meat and had ordered tinned meat several times through one of the lascars, now requested a bottle of whiskey. What arrived was not whiskey but Murree gin, which they used for their furtive celebration. The compliant lascar’s name was Aurangzeb. He was an elderly man, unshaven and generally careless about his appearance, but always obliging. The POWs liked to joke about their Aurangzeb, so different from the puritanical Mughul emperor Aurangzeb, who had once ruled India. Luckily their Aurangzeb was more flexible. A courageous chap, too, they thought, knowing the strict Islamic stance against liquor.
    The POWs had been