Finally at the last gate he felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder and turned round with a cry: – Najeeb! – Qayyum, no, it’s me. Wake up now, wake up. Qayyum raised himself onto his elbow. Through the open window, the morning light was feeble. One of the most trusted of Ghaffar Khan’s men was there, his face discoloured with weariness – darkness below the eyes, pallor everywhere else. – What is it? What happened? – We don’t have time to talk of what happened. There’s work to be done. The British still hadn’t opened any of the gates, he said, but some of the party leaders from Congress and the Khilafat Committee had been in talks with them to make allowances for the burials of those who couldn’t be interred within the Walled City – the Hindus who needed to take their bodies to the crematorium, and those Muslims who wished to bury their dead beside family members at the graveyard in Shahji-ki-Dheri. The funeral processions would take place in shifts, no more than one set of mourners at a graveyard at one time, and no more than ten people were allowed to accompany each body.
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