by HASAN ALI KHAN
On Saturday, October 9, 2021, I left Karachi with architect and urban planner Arif Hasan, his research assistant, student interns and a friend to head to the small town of Jhirk in the hope of finding the house where some believe Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born before it was razed to the ground.
The plan was to stop overnight in Makli, a sprawling necropolis and Unesco world heritage site, to see the tombs at night, and then progress to Jhirk the next day.
The road to Thatta is well constructed, and a divided highway for the most part — a far cry from the narrow metalled single-track road we used to take as children. In this, we were retracing our steps from my childhood, when Arif Hasan, also my uncle, habitually took us to Thatta almost every weekend where our family had some lands. This was the first time I was going back to Jhirk since I was eight years old, after nearly 40 years.
Most landmarks along the route have either been altered or have vanished; it is cleaner and the tiny towns that lined the old road appear more alive and richer. We arrived at the Archaeology Department guest house in Makli where we were received by our host, Sayyid Ghayur Abbas. We rested briefly and then decided to have lunch.
The unmarked road
??After lunch, we headed to Jhirk, which is an hour’s drive from Keenjhar, where we’d stopped over for lunch, and approached by a deceptively innocuous turn off the highway. Deep into the town, we reached a fork in the road where we asked some men standing around if they knew where Jinnah’s house was.
We were pointed down a side street, which was so narrow that we had to abandon the cars and continue on foot. After passing through the quiet neighbourhood we had to stop a few locals and ask again if they knew where Jinnah’s house was. They produced an elderly Mohana or fisherman, giving the impression that he was a repository of the area’s history.
This gave us hope — that is until he told Arif Hasan that Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s house no longer existed. He knew this because he used to be its caretaker. The house’s ruins had long been razed to the ground and a girls’ school had replaced it. As we heard this, our collective spirits fell. The entire purpose of the trip seemed gutted out.
We turned back, the sadness evident on Arif Hasan’s face. But then, the elderly Mohana suddenly said: “There are other houses here from the same period, especially the mansion of the first Aga Khan Hasan Ali Shah. It’s nearly two hundred years old, as old as Jinnah’s house was. Do you wish to see it?”
The palace in the middle of nowhere
??Life seemed to return to the team and as we followed him, just fifty meters away we came upon a well-maintained property with a palatial gate, and a plaque that read: The palace of the first Aga Khan Hasan Ali Shah, date: 1843.
Dawn for more