non-existent? How I have yearned for it for years. By coming here my insignificant self has assumed such importance! I had forgotten myself, or perhaps had inflated it so much that the whole world had come to dwell within it. When after all these years I see myself in the mirror of these loves, it looks so strange and, feeling helpless, I begin to cry. Specially when I feel that the moments are flying away and I have no control over them. In the warm embrace of Aunt I was crying silently; and she was crying more than I. At such a moment my daughter had whispered to me: "Ammi, why do people cry when you go to see them, and you too cry? It's a strange custom here. In our Pakistan everyone rejoices at meeting." And she was watching Aunt and me critically now too. Aunt kissed her, passed her hands over her face and head in a gesture of love and blessing, and made her sit on her lap. Aasia and her two younger sisters also came in. They had already been to see me a number of times. But every tS-me I had seen Aasia I had felt as if we had not yet had any talk. As for Saadia, I had seen her when she was small; and now she was a beautiful girl of twenty-three. Fauzia is older than her and teaches in a school. Aasia's hair has begun to grey. She is the headmistress of a school. Until fourteen years ago, there was nothing we did without the other's knowledge. But now we knew nothing of what had happened to the other in these fourteen years. She was a model of determination, courage and hard work. She had now grown lean, and hollows had formed around her big, black eyes, which betrayed the sorrows and bitterness she had passed through. Yet, on her lips played a sad smile of triumph. Having enquired about my husband and children. Aunt asked about her son Saghir in whose absence she had been pining away for twenty-three years. "In the beginning," she said, "we received letters and photographs; but since the '71 war he has given up writing altogether, even though the post is coming and going regularly. Perhaps he does not receive our letters. I am sending news and greetings through friends and relatives visiting Pakistan. I hear he is a high official there. May God preserve my son and give him greater honor." I did not know where to begin and where to end. I managed to give her the bare information about her son and daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. Then I looked around to survey her dwelling. Once her house was among the distinguished mansions of the area; but now the high walls and arches were tainted with mildew and innumerable cracks. The parapet wall looked black with baked dry moss. Years had passed since it was white-washed. I learnt that she had started living in the small outer portion, and had rented out the large inner house to a refugee family from Sindh. The tenants, however, approached the Government with evidence that Saghir had migrated to Pakistan, and claimed the house against their claim for property left behind in Sindh. The outer small house which was, in fact, the guest house of Saghir's grandfather, where once he used to entertain his friends, was allotted to Aunt and her daughters. The Sindhi family were well-to-do businessmen. In no time they turned the large house into a grand mansion-like modern 48