The Night Diary

by Veera Hiranandani

Description: New York, NY : Dial Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Summary: Shy twelve-year-old Nisha, forced to flee her home with her Hindu family during the 1947 partition of India, tries to find her voice and make sense of the world falling apart around her by writing to her deceased Muslim mother in the pages of her diary.

Subjects: | CYAC: Refugees—Fiction. | Diaries—Fiction. | Family life—India—Fiction. | Hindus—Fiction. | Muslims—Fiction. | India—History—Partition, 1947—Fiction.

The diary is covered in purple and red silk, decorated with small sequins and bits of mirrored glass sewn in. The paper is rough, thick, and the color of butter. It is not lined, which I like.

I’ve decided that night is the best time to write to you. That way no one will ask me any questions.

Papa loves us of course because he’s our father and Dadi loves us because she’s our grandmother.

I help Kazi in the kitchen all the time, even though Dadi doesn’t want me to. She says I’ll marry well and have someone cook for me, just like Kazi does for us.

I know how to sort the lentils, grind the spices with his marble mortar and pestle, clarify the butter for ghee, and mix the dough for chapatis.

I like to cook things even more than I like to eat them.

I wondered what that meant, to be free from the British. Why were they allowed to rule over us in the first place?

where we live since Papa is the head doctor for the Mirpur Khas City Hospital. The government gave us a large place to live in, much bigger than anyone I know. We have our bungalow, and a coop for the chickens, the flower and vegetable gardens, and the cottages where Kazi and the groundskeeper, Mahit, live.

Everyone knows who is Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh by the clothes they wear or the names they have. But we all have lived together in this town for so long, I just never thought much about people’s religions before.

I used to think of people by their names and what they looked like, or what they did. Sahil sells pakoras on the corner. Now I look at him and think Sikh. My teacher, Sir Habib, is now my Muslim teacher. My friend Sabeen is happy and talks a lot. Now she’s my Muslim friend. Papa’s friend, Dr. Ahmed, is now a Muslim doctor. I think of everyone I know and try to remember if they are Hindu or Muslim or Sikh and who has to go and who can stay.

Everything is different now, even though it’s exactly the same. I can see it all around us, but I don’t know what to call it. It’s like a new sound I can hear in the air.

I needed all the feelings to stop boiling like a pot of dal and be cool enough for me to taste them.

I don’t know what’s happening, Mama. I wish you could explain it to me. I’m becoming more and more afraid to ask anyone else all the things I really want to know.

I don’t like thinking about things I can’t understand.

Papa used to be happier. Or maybe Amil and I used to be happier. I’m not sure which.

It’s one thing to understand facts and another thing to understand why those facts are facts.

There was one thing I did understand. I would have memories of life here in Mirpur Khas and memories of life in the new India. My childhood would always have a line drawn through it, the before and the after.

Everyone is to blame. He says that when you separate people into groups, they start to believe that one group is better than another. I think about Papa’s medical books and how we all have the same blood, and organs, and bones inside us, no matter what religion we’re supposed to be.

I feel like I do know you, because I know myself and you made me.

She told me I must keep myself as covered as I could with my shawl, that I’m bigger now and strange men can’t be trusted.

It feels like we’re really in a story now. I’ve heard about stories like these, about people who flee their homes in a war with nothing but the clothes and food on their backs. Now that’s who we are, even though there’s not a war here, but it’s like a war. It seems almost like a made-up war.

It is a new month and exactly seventeen days since the world changed.

Since the world changed ... how many kids can say that?

I wish we could go outside and play, then my mind wouldn’t have so much time to think about the bad things.

Why don’t they want me to see what I already know now—that the world is broken.

Everyone is better off when I don’t talk. I’m not going to, Mama, ever again. I will be like Rashid Uncle. When I really need to say something I will write my words down on a chalkboard so they can be erased.

I was a useless girl.

without me. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about another body, my useless body, to fill with water and food anymore.

I am just a small, silent drop of nothing

Papa told us after we got here, after we settled down and were safe, that thousands of people have died crossing the border both ways.

I am broken. I am broken on top of broken.

Sometimes I think about why we get to be alive when so many others died for no reason walking the same walk, crossing the same border. All that suffering, all that death, for nothing. I will never understand, as long as I live, how a country could change overnight from only a line drawn.

I didn’t know we were so rich until we became poor.

1. Why is it easier for Nisha to share her thoughts and feelings through a diary than through talking? Do you identify with this? How or how not? 1b. How does Nisha express herself? What moments and people empower Nisha to make her voice heard? When does she feel frozen or unable to speak? In what ways does she grow? 2. What motivates Nisha to write to her mama? Choose one of the following pages and dig into the reasons: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. How might Mama respond to Nisha? 3. How are Amil and Nisha alike and different? What is the author trying to teach us through Amil’s and Nisha’s differences? In what ways do they have a special bond? 4. Food and cooking play a critical role in this story. How does food bring people together? Why is cooking so meaningful to Nisha? What activity brings you joy and peace like cooking brings her? 5. What significant moments occur at the good-bye party? (here) 6. Describe the relationship that Nisha and Amil have with Papa and how he reacts to each of them before, during, and after their journey. 7. Why is it difficult for Nisha to make friends? Why was she able to connect with Hafa so easily? How does the dramatic ending to that friendship impact Nisha? 8. Nisha writes, “I still don’t understand. We were all part of the same country last month, all these different people and religions living together. Now we are supposed to separate and hate one another. Does Papa secretly hate Rashid Uncle? Does Rashid Uncle secretly hate us? Wh...