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UNITED NEWS OF INDIA
NEW DELHI, OCT 17: The man who has set out to change the course of history in Pakistan was born in a sprawling `haveli' at Kucha Saadullah Khan, now a congested and dirty locality behind Golcha cinema in the walled city.
General Pervez Musharraf, who deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a sensational bloodless coup after being dismissed as Chief of Army Staff, spent his early childhood in the `Nehar Wali Haveli', parts of which have long since given way to a commercial and residential complex.
However, a small dilapidated portion of the original structure still stands but is not safe to be lived in. Two small rooms on the first floor were occupied by a driver who packed up and left a couple of months back. According to the neighbours, he has not been seen since.
The Haveli, like most evacuee properties on either side of the divide, was occupied by the locals when the riots broke out in 1947 and people fled to save their lives.
However, none of the neighbours has any inkling of who lived there at thetime of Partition or who owns the rundown property now. The high roofs and arches of the Haveli are believed to have earlier witnessed history in the middle of the 18th century when it was occupied by a wazir (minister) in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar -- the last Mughal emperor.
The dingy four-storeyed Gola market behind Golcha cinema occupies part of the Haveli which was bought by General Musharraf's grandfather Qazi Mohtashimuddin when he retired as a commissioner in undivided Punjab.
General Musharraf, who has now assumed the title of Chief Executive, is the second of three sons of Syed Musharrafuddin, a cashier with the Directorate General of Civil Supplies in Delhi who was absorbed into the foreign service when he migrated to Pakistan at the time of Partition. He rose to be joint secretary in the foreign office.
This information was provided on condition of anonymity by a first cousin of Syed Musharrafuddin. The general's uncle, now aged past 80, runs a small business from a dilapidated shop ina narrow bylane near the Jama Masjid.
Age has withered his frame but his mental faculties are astonishingly sharp. It is with a lump in the throat that he reminisces about his nephew, `hamara khoon (our blood),' who made it big, and how the family migrated.
``Those were terrible times. Riots had broken out and there was blood and mayhem everywhere. Syed Musharrafuddin managed to reach Gul-i-Rana, the mansion of Nawab Liaqat Ali Khan which later became the official residence of the Pakistan High Commissioner. What happened after that I do not know.'' (Nawab Liaqat Ali Khan, who served as finance minister in the interim government later became the first prime minister of Pakistan.) Pervez was the first to join the army from a family of bureaucrats, he said. ``I have not seen him (Gen Musharraf) since my cousin migrated to Pakistan. I was there when he was born in the August of 1943. I also was born in the same Haveli. The Partition shattered my life and divided the family. I saw my daughter-in-law (theGeneral's wife) for the first time when the newspapers carried her photograph after the change of guard in Pakistan.''
``But Musharrafuddin, a graduate from the Aligarh Muslim University, visited India thrice in the last decade -- twice to attend marriages of close relatives,'' he says.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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