This photograph dates from 1976 or 1977. My father took it at the cricket ground in Wah where my friends and I are about to launch a model rocket. From left to right, there is Shoaib Zaidi, a boy whose name I have forgotten, Shoaib Haleem, Shahid and his sister Huma, and, in the green shorts, Naveed Asghar. The boy running into the frame on the far left is our servant's son, Munna. He had to run to the ground. Everyone else went there in my father's yellow Volkswagen. I am the boy next to the car.
With a functional imagination it was not difficult to transport ourselves to Cape Kennedy, especially if one lay down on the grass or sat low enough, a foot or two above the ground, so that the dimensions changed - the grass turned into savannah and rocket in the distance towered over its launching pad like a real Saturn V, whence at any moment the engines ignited and with a great swoosh it hurtled up into space. Estes rockets could climb upto a thousand feet. Peering up, we would then wait for the parachute to open and the vessel to return to earth. The excitement of the thing was greatest when things went wrong, the parachute foiled and the rocket plummeted or when it caught fire and corkscrewed in a far corner of the field. We quite forgot ourselves in the thrill of witnessing disaster because it made the play real and true, although the joy was soon clouded over by dismay at the loss of a toy.
