Monday, May 9 2005 13:42 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mendla Bop (Poonch): Just a piece of land as small as half of a football field and an "invisible line of sorrow" have kept 67-year-old Barak Bibi away from her husband for four decades, but Indo-Pak peace is now set to end the long separation.

Bibi, who lives in Mendla Bop with her schoolteacher son Issac in Salotri border hamlet on Line of Control (LoC) is overcome with emotions as she remembers her husband Naiz Ahmed Khan and daughter Ulfat separated only by a stream and 300 metre field full of water buffaloes since 1965 Indo-Pak war.

Showing a black and white photograph of husband-daughter to a group of visiting journalists, Bibi prays to God every morning for reunion with her husband.

The Poonch-Rawalakote road, which passes through her Salotri village and later touches Teetrinot hamlet in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), is just 300 metres away.

But the proposal for opening this Poonch-Rawalakote (in PoK) road and running on it the "Karvan-e-Aman" (caravan of peace) bus service has rekindled Bibi's hope of meeting her husband and daughter across the LoC.

"My traumatic wait is coming to an end soon. I will meet him (husband) after years by boarding the first peace bus to PoK," Bibi said in Mendla Bop as her voice quivered and tears rolled down her crumpled cheeks.

During talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in New Delhi on April 18, the two countries agreed to open second cross-border road link between Poonch and Rawalakote after Uri-Muzaffarabad section.

Bibi is one of the 2,972 divided families hoping to travel across the LoC in the first or second bus to meet their kith and kin there.

"I will catch the first Indo-Pak bus along with son Issac to visit Teetrinot village in PoK and to meet with husband and daughter when the road re-opens after 57 years," Bibi, who was only 27 with her son Issac four years old and three-year-old daughter Ulfat during Indo-Pak war, said.

This is not the story of Salotri or Teetrinot border hamlets alone but of 202 border villages of Poonch, of which 114 fell on the other side of LoC after the 1965 war, Issac adds.