The afternoon train to Panipat was seven hours late. I had spent just 300 rupees on the ticket, so it wasn’t a big loss. But I had only a few days of spring break in India, and I needed to make it count for a lifetime. I asked a man on a cycle rickshaw if there was any other way to get there; after all, it was only 100 kilometers away from New Delhi. He motioned for me to get on his bike, and we rode against highway traffic to another station. A bus driver yelling, “Panipat! Sonipat! Panipat!” ushered me onto a bus without answering any of my questions.

I’d always pictured Panipat to be a serene, spiritual place. But the Grand Trunk Road I saw wasn’t quite the ancient path of migration I had envisioned. Tire shops and chai shops stood along the road with roofs curving like little fingers toward a massive multilane overpass, choking the windpipe of the city. The smiling faces of Bollywood stars, eyes glinting at Pepsi logos, adorned the awnings of most stores. This was a modern, industrial city, not the tight-knit community I’d imagined based on my mother’s stories. But I still felt an overwhelming sense of returning home. My grandparents and countless generations of my family had been born here, so in some ways I was returning to them.

My aunt gave me very simple directions to reach the house: Find the shrine of Bu Ali Shah Qalandar, then ask for directions to the poet Altaf Hussein Hali’s house; across the street from that is home. But I took my time. I breathed in the air and spent an hour photographing the word "Panipat" anywhere I found it — on torn posters, at the train station. The word had a spiritual depth to it; like the Sufi concept of dhikr, I repeated it in my heart, as if remembering it would imprint it on my soul. As if it would imprint the departed on my soul.

The concierge at my hotel put me on the back of a flower seller’s bicycle, and we drove through Panipat’s curving arteries toward the shrine at the old city’s center. I had expected, as most Pakistanis assume, that there were no Muslims left in East Punjab, where Panipat is. But the shrine was attended by Hindus and Muslims alike. I gave my respect to the Saint and the Shrine.