Abdul Rahman
Abdul Rahman was born on 3 September 1907 in Kothe Dhab Sher Singwala in Faridkot State, a Sikh-ruled princely state under the wider British Raj. His family spoke Punjabi and lived as Muslims among village Muslims and Sikhs, under the authority of landlords, their agents, and the state police. His father, Noor Muhammad, worked as an attached farm servant, tied to a patron’s household for most of the year. His mother, Bibi Ayesha, kept the house going with cooking, water-carrying, and the steady work of grinding grain, shaping dung cakes, and minding small animals when she could.
Before Abdul Rahman could remember anything, four siblings had already died as infants. Zainab, Amina, Rashid, and Fatima had all died between 1893 and 1901. Their names came up during quarrels and during sickness, and his mother repeated them in her prayers. It was not a house of strict observance; Noor Muhammad and Ayesha kept their Muslim identity and marked Eid, but most days were about work and survival. When the call to prayer carried from a nearby mosque, Abdul Rahman heard it as part of the village sounds, like the creak of carts and the lowing of cattle.
His parents lived with one married son and his wife; Ghulam Mustafa, born in 1903, had already brought a bride into the home. Abdul Rahman grew up watching the older couple and the younger couple share a courtyard, share a hearth, and argue over small stores of wheat. It meant there were more hands, but also more mouths. It also meant the rules were set by elders, and boys learned early how far a joke could go before it became an insult.
He was small enough to be carried on a hip when his brother Sultan ran beside him, and big enough to remember Sultan’s absence. Sultan, born in 1905, died in 1913 after days of bowel sickness that left him too weak to stand. Abdul Rahman did not forget the way the adults spoke in low voices after dark, and how his mother boiled water again and again. A year later, in 1914, Karim Bakhsh died at fifteen. Karim had been the brother old enough to do a man’s load of work, the one who could lift a sack of grain onto a cart without asking for help. His death tightened everything. Noor Muhammad grew harsher, more exacting, because the household could not afford slack. Ghulam Mustafa began taking on the heavier tasks, and Abdul Rahman, still a boy, started walking behind men in the fields and learning by watching.
During the war years from 1914 to 1918, talk of recruitment and higher prices reached even their corner of Faridkot. A recruiter passed through neighboring villages; men argued about whether service brought honor or trouble. Abdul Rahman listened from the edge of those gatherings, chattering more than children were meant to, and then ran off to repeat what he heard with the wrong words and the right enthusiasm. Cloth became dear. Wheat and pulses rose and fell. Noor Muhammad measured the flour more carefully. Abdul Rahman learned that a meal could change with the market. On good days, Ayesha fried bajra rotis with a little ghee and served them with onions and salt; Abdul Rahman ate fast and went back out, chewing as he ran.
He never went to school. He could not read or write. He still learned quickly. By twelve, he could do wage sums in his head, count out a handful of coins by touch, and remember what each person had been promised without writing it down. In the evenings he sat with Bashir, another servant’s son, and teased him about his slow counting. Bashir returned the favor by mocking Abdul Rahman’s habit of talking to every passerby. Abdul Rahman laughed first and loudest, then kept going until someone told him to shut up.
His father’s patron in those years was Chaudhry Amir Khan. Amir Khan’s household demanded steady labor: tending cattle, cutting fodder, spreading manure, hauling water, standing guard over a stack of harvested sheaves. Abdul Rahman ran errands between the fields and the big house and liked the movement. He enjoyed the weekly market day most. He could stand at the edge of a stall and call out prices he had no intention of paying, just to get a reaction. He liked sweet tea when he could afford it, and he ate roasted gram from a paper cone, talking through a mouthful. He avoided strangers who spoke about politics, especially men who pushed slogans and asked for donations; their talk struck him as complicated and leading to trouble.
At seventeen he became full labor, not a helper. He could lift and carry like the others, but he did not move in the straight, steady manner the strict overseers preferred. He drifted into conversation, missed a shouted instruction, or set down a tool and then spent time searching for it. He still got chosen for certain tasks. Munshi Ram Lal, the patron’s scribe, used him to carry messages about workdays and ration amounts because Abdul Rahman repeated the numbers accurately and returned the correct change. Once, a servant tried to slip him a coin to report fewer bundles of fodder delivered. Abdul Rahman refused, and then told Munshi Ram Lal exactly what he had been offered. It gained him no promotion, but it kept him trusted with small responsibilities.
Marriage came in 1926. Sakina moved into his life as a wife chosen through family and village links, a young woman with a plain manner and a sharp sense for household needs. Abdul Rahman did not soften into a quiet husband. He talked his way through chores, teased her about the way she folded cloth, and argued when she insisted on saving coins for lean months. He still brought his wages home, counted out without shaving off an amount for himself. Their first son, Jamal, was born in 1927. Two years later Jamal died at age two after a fever that left him limp in his mother’s arms. Abdul Rahman carried the small body to be washed, then went out and sat with Bashir near the edge of the fields, speaking in short sentences for the first time in their friendship.
Yusuf was born in 1929. That year prices and wages grew harder to predict. The talk in markets was of poor rates and employers cutting days. Abdul Rahman handled the uncertainty with a steady face and quick decisions. If there was an extra job hauling bricks, he took it. If there was a chance to shift to a better patron, he pursued it at once. He did not plan far ahead, but he moved quickly when opportunity appeared. Ghulam Mustafa, now a grown man with his own standing, helped arrange a permanent move in 1931 to a different place within Punjab, linked to another employer, Chaudhry Himmat Singh. Abdul Rahman took Sakina and Yusuf with him, and his parents came too, turning the new household into an extended one. Wilayat Ali, the younger brother, visited and ran errands between relatives when needed.
In 1932 Sakina bore Zahra. Not long after, Noor Muhammad fell into a long illness that did not pass with a few days’ rest. He ran fevers, sweated at night, and lost strength until he could not keep up with even light work. Abdul Rahman still went out each morning to serve Himmat Singh’s household—handling animals, moving loads, obeying the shouted commands of overseers—then returned to fetch water, cut fuel, and do what the sick man could not. Sakina cooked, cleaned, and stayed close to Noor Muhammad at night, waking to wipe him and shift his body. Bibi Ayesha, herself tired and older than her years, tried to keep dignity in the courtyard, but her hands shook when she ground grain.
Abdul Rahman brought in Haji Karim, a local hakim, in 1934. The man arrived with a pouch of powders and a bottle of dark tonic, spoke about heat in the blood, and demanded payment in coins and grain. Abdul Rahman paid without haggling, then insisted on knowing exactly how much the hakim had taken. He listened closely to instructions and repeated them back word for word, then went home and pushed the bitter medicine on his father like a command. He did not waste time on supplications; he did not make a vow at a shrine. He set out bowls of water, kept the bedding clean, and arranged his work so someone was always in the house.
Akhtar was born in 1935. The household now held three children, his ill father, and his aging mother. Abdul Rahman still joked with Bashir when they met, still lingered at the tea stall longer than Sakina liked, still talked too much with the other servants on the way back from fields. He also became the one who carried difficult messages. When an overseer announced wage cuts, Abdul Rahman argued openly, not in a whisper, and then walked the decision back to his neighbors in plain Punjabi, keeping the numbers correct. He returned home calm even when his father had coughed blood into a cloth.
On 15 July 1937, Abdul Rahman died in an accident tied to his work. He was helping load a cart with bundled fodder when the bullocks lurched; he tried to steady the shifting load, fell hard under the wheel, and the men around him could not lift the weight fast enough to save him.
His body was washed at home by male relatives and neighbors, wrapped in a plain white kafan, and carried on a charpoy to the burial ground. The janaza prayer was said quickly, and he was laid in the earth on his right side facing west toward Mecca.