Like many others, Kader and Majeed were swept away by the Gulf boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s

In the darkness, Kader could not make out the place.

“I got off the ship from Mumbai in the night,” he says. In 1976, he paid an agent in Kerala to get him to Dubai. He got as far Karachi. A naturalised Pakistani citizen now, he hasn't been to Kerala for the last three years. “I can't get a visa to meet my wife, Fatima, who is ill. We have sent all the documents, but even this year it was rejected twice.”

After being dumped in Karachi, Kader, now 54, got a passport and went home in 1981 to get married. He has four children. The eldest son now works in Dubai. There is no way he can bring his family to Karachi, but he used to visit them earlier and stay for a month or two.

“I confessed to the authorities that I was not born in Karachi and pleaded with them to consider my case on a humanitarian basis,” he says.

Despite letters from his wife, which stated that she was suffering from hypertension, and an undertaking that Kader will not violate the rules, visa was refused. She submitted her ration card and some 13 documents.

A disgusted Kader says the Indians need a certificate of “my character from Pakistan.” Now he runs a small grocery shop in a crowded area of the city. “Both governments have so many problems, but they are united in torturing the people.”

Situation unpredictable

Abdul Majeed (51) from Alleppey in Kerala arrived in Karachi in 1979. Along with 11 others, he paid money to go to Dubai. They were dumped in Balochistan. Of that lot, he is the only one remaining. He got married in 1983 to a Malayali woman and has three children. He last visited his home in Karumady in 1998. He runs a stationery shop in Sadar Bazar here.

“In 1998, I waited for 22 days for a visa in Islamabad when my mother was ill. But by the time I got the visa, it was too late. My mother died,” he says regretfully.

Majeed feels the situation in Karachi is unpredictable and he wants to go back home. His visa has been rejected this year as well. “I have land, we can do something back home,” he says.

‘Firing and murder'

Like many others, Kader and Majeed were swept away by the Gulf boom of the 60s and 70s. “We had to go to Dubai. But we ended up here. There is so much firing and murder, things are getting very unsafe,” says Majeed. He has his own house where he lives with his family.

Majeed's eldest son has moved to Dubai while the younger son works for a courier company. Most of the Malayalis are shopkeepers here and they are spread out in the old Mohajir housing colonies.

While some have been tricked into coming to Karachi, there are those who have come here by design. When B.M. Kutty arrived here on August 14, 1949, there was already a sizeable Muslim community from Kerala. “I came here for no rhyme or reason. I am an educated shuttlecock,” he jokes.

Best of both worlds

Kutty, a leading peace activist and secretary of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research and secretary general of the Pakistan Peace Coalition, visits his “beautiful” home in Vylattur in Malappuram district of Kerala often. He is now a familiar figure in India as well.

Moplah rebellion

Eighty-year-old Kutty has written a book, Sixty years in Self-Exile: No regrets, where he details his life story. In 1986, a survey by the Malabar Muslim Jamaat identified 64,000 Keralites there, mostly those who had fled after the Moplah rebellion in 1921. That number may have dwindled to less than half by now.

C.H. Mahmood of the Malabar Muslim Jamaat, formed in 1921, says now there are 10,000 Keralite Muslims in Karachi.

Kutty recalls his early days in Karachi and his marriage to Birjis, a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh.

“I didn't know her language then, but it didn't matter,” he grins. He sits in his modest flat in the backdrop of several black and white photographs of his beautiful wife and children and lots of books. He spent two years and 11 months in jail during Ayub Khan's leadership.

Kutty mentions in his book that the Jamaat has a small portion of Karachi's old Merva Shah graveyard set apart exclusively for burying Kerala Muslims. He was active in political life in the Awami National Party and later with the National Democratic Party.

Peace activism

Unlike Kader and Majeed, Kutty has the best of both worlds. His peace activism brings him to India often and he visits the families of Kader and Majeed. “They all cry when they meet me,” he says.

Kader puts on a brave face as he stands in his shop directing his employees, but you sense the yearning for his homeland.

It is something he has learnt to live with like Majeed and the others.