The tribe was required to wash it with blood every morning until they avenged the death by killing a man of the enemy tribe. The stone was then handed over to the other tribe to do the same.
Last week, a Sikh teenager came to Tahir Alam, a trader from Karachi, at an international trade fair in New Delhi and asked if he could hug him. "I was pleasantly taken aback," Tahir told Samir Gupta of the Aman ki Asha peace group.
“I hugged him warmly,” said Tahir.
The teenager sat next to Tahir for a couple of hours, didn't say much, then smiled and left.
“I felt very emotional. I just wish that the two countries would become friends and people can travel normally across the border,” said Tahir.
Later, Samir noticed that an elderly man had been following him wherever he went inside the large Pakistani section of the trade fair. He was listening intently to Samir’s conversations with Pakistani traders.
Samir asked him if he was an Indian or a Pakistani, “half-expecting the answer to be a Pakistani, wanting to share his story with me.”
“Indian," the old man said and started walking away. Samir followed him and asked if he liked what he saw and if he had bought anything.
"I do not buy anything from Pakistanis," he reacted angrily. Perplexed, Samir asked him, "Then why are you here?"
He shot back, "They killed my father".
Samir was taken aback. "When?" he asked.
“During the partition,” the man said, fighting back emotions.
"Why did you come here then?" Samir persisted.
“I have a blood relation to them," the man said and walked away.
Thousands of miles away in Northern Virginia, I narrated the story to the regulars at the Alif Laila Tavern.
“I know what you will do tonight,” said Vijay, a New Delhi shopkeeper who now runs a sweetmeat shop in Brookfield Plaza, Springfield. “You will go home, take out Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s CDs and listen to his poems.”
Vijay was right.
“We never raised our heads and the killers never tired of shedding our blood,” sang Iqbal Bano as I played one of the CDs.
But I turned off the player when she started Faiz’s famous poem, “Yes, we will see, we will see the day that has been promised … when thrones will shake and crowns will be hurled on the ground … yes, we will see.”
The song stopped. An eerie silence filled the room. I was inclined to play it again but did not.
Had I lost all hope? No. Did I still believe that the day of salvation would eventually come? Yes.
But today was a day of confusion. So, I wanted a break from the songs of hope and sanity.
Today was the day of the spider and the cobwebs it kept weaving inside my brain, cobwebs of doubts and confusion.
“Humanity comes first, stop the drones,” said the placard in a picture that my friends had sent me from New York of an anti-drone protest outside the UN Headquarters.
In a message posted before Pakistan’s general elections in May this year, Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, revealed the organisation’s plans for suicide bombings in all of the country's provinces on Election Day.
“We don't accept the system of infidels which is called democracy,” Mehsud said.
Mehsud personally appeared in grisly execution videos and his group killed thousands during his four-year reign as the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Yet, when a US drone strike killed Mehsud on Nov. 1, 2013, one of the country’s main religious parties called him a martyr and a mainstream political party launched a countrywide campaign against drones.
And a Taliban spokesman promised revenge attacks at US and Pakistani targets.
Two weeks ago, a group of American peace activists protested outside the White House, urging President Barack Obama to stop the drones “because they killed too many innocent civilians.”
And while Americans were protesting in Washington, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Defence Ministry told the parliament in Islamabad that the drones had only killed 67 civilians since 2008. Hundreds of others killed in these strikes were militants.
While in power in Afghanistan (September 1996-December 2001), the Taliban forced women to wear burqas at all times in public, because they believed "the face of a woman is a source of corruption" for men.
And yet, the same Taliban allowed sexual slavery and prostitution of young boys in the name of bacheh bazi. The practice still continues across rural Afghanistan in the areas controlled by the Taliban, as well as others.
In March 2001, the Taliban destroyed two 6th century statues of Gautama Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which were considered a world heritage.
In the Buddhist majority country of Burma, mobs led by monks, killed hundreds of Muslims last year while forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
Last month, Brussels-based International Crisis Group released a report, saying that more attacks were likely because of “the depth of anti-Muslim sentiments in the country, and the inadequate response of the security forces.”
In India, Narendra Damodardas Modi, the 14th and current Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, may soon become the prime minister of the country.
Modi presided over the 2002 Gujarat violence, which led to the deaths of 2000 Muslims. Thousands more were injured.
So, I decided not to play Faiz’s poem about the day of salvation.
Then I thought of the Sikh teenager who had hugged Tahir. I smiled, although I am not yet ready to play the song.