The Keeper of the Lighthouse: A Migrant’s Story

When Mohammad Yasin was 16, the Indian subcontinent was split in two, and he unexpectedly found himself on the wrong side of the border. He was among the millions of British Indian citizens swept up in the Independence Movement in 1947. As the communal violence began, he was tasked with taking his family across the border from India to Pakistan on foot. Along the way, he narrowly escaped a massacre and malnutrition. Reaching the other side, he had almost no material possessions to his name, but he used his wits and his own two hands to not only make a life for himself but, with what little influence he had, tried to make his country the promised land it was envisioned to be. His story is of an ordinary migrant in far-from-ordinary circumstances who, with sincerity and fearlessness, pushed as hard as he could to fulfil his dream of Pakistan.