THE place: the Circuit House in Comilla, East Pakistan. The day: April 19, 1971. The time: 6.18 p.m. It was the moment that changed my life. Curfew had sounded at 6 o’clock. A few minutes before that I had seen Sebastian and his four companions led through the streets into the headquarters of the local martial law administrator, Major Agha of the Pakistan Army. They were loosely tied hand and foot to a single rope and led by a sub-inspector of police wearing what obviously was a new uniform. Two constables brought up the rear.

I remembered the sub-inspector. That morning, while sipping a glass of coconut milk in Major Agha’s office, I saw him coming with a list of prisoners held in the police lock-up. He put aside his glass. Then, with a casual flick of a pencil he ticked off four names. “Bring these four for disposal,” he said. Then he glanced at the list again. Once more the pencil flicked. “And bring this thief along with them.” The “thief,” I was chattily informed, was a lad named Sebastian who had been caught moving a Hindu friend’s belongings to his own house by way of protection. Now, after curfew, I was to know what “disposal” meant. Suddenly I heard a terrible thud, then a scream. More thuds, more screams. I ran to the far end of the balcony to see what was happening. When you witness men being bludgeoned to death, the sight and the sound are forever seared in your memory.

I was aghast. I tried to shout but no sound emerged. Instead I felt a terrible pounding in my head and chest. Helplessly I looked around for help. It was not the first time I had been brought face to face with the genocide unleashed by the Pakistan Army in East Bengal. But it was the first time I had seen anything so brutal. I sat hunched in a low chair staring upwards out of the window into the gathering darkness and not wanting the sight and the sound of men again. Then out of the gloom I saw huge bats slowly flying across the lake towards my window. They looked like vampires but were only fruit-eating “flying foxes.” I remember telling myself: “the real vampires are downstairs.”

This was worse than anything I had read about Hitler - and it was happening to my own people. I decided then that whatever the cost to me personally I would make the terrible truth known. But all I could see were other soldiers with guns watching the proceedings and still others quietly preparing the night’s meal. I knew it was hopeless. So in despair I turned away and ran back to my room at the other end of the lone balcony. Having lived with this fateful decision through the longest night of my life, I decided next day to play it cool, to see and hear as much as I could and to keep a detailed record of everything in my own compulsive shorthand which no one else can read. It was in this manner that I recorded the kill-and-burn which none I saw in Hajiganj, the rivalry in the Officer’s Mess for the “top score” of heads, and the blunt definition of the target types I was given in the 16th Division’s headquarters.

I flew back to Karachi on April 25 with these notes and got home at 3.30 am. It was my wife’s birthday. The present I was bringing her was not the two pink seed pearls she had wanted for ear-rings but a decision that meant a cataclysm for the family. We talked, Yvonne, my two older sons, Keith and Alan, and I, till the cook came in to prepare the breakfast. I told them what I had seen and what I had decided to do. Yvonne was dumbfounded. More than anyone else she realised the enormity of the decision. It would mean leaving everything because in the circumstances of martial law we could take no chance. It would mean being without a home, income, the things we had treasured, the land we had bought with our savings to build our own house on. Then Keith spoke out. “Of course we will go with you. You must write the story.”

They all looked at me, perhaps realising for the first time the terrible loneliness in my eyes. We cried together, clinging to each other tightly. It was the only reassurance we were to have in the dangerous days ahead and in the subsequent months of trying to make a new life in London. The secret of our decision was shared by no other. We did not want to involve any of our relatives and friends, nor did we want to endanger ourselves. I decided to go to London to The Sunday Times to see if the paper would print the story. This was a matter of prudence, for I had been too long a journalist to know that one could keep indefinitely knocking on the doors of Fleet Street with the best story in the world and not finding anyone to believe it and print it. And, after all, I had only just started writing for the paper.

But it was not so with The Sunday Times. I was heard. Accepted and ready to go back to Pakistan to bring out my wife and children within forty minutes of my first entering Thomson House. There was immediate recognition of the story and I am still spellbound by the journalistic instincts and integrity for that decision.

Coming out of Pakistan then became the big problem. Passports had to be renewed. Exit permission had to be obtained. We had to pack quietly what we could. Most of all, the secret had to be kept. Fortunately I had brought back with me from London some hotel letter paper. I used this to write a note to my wife inviting the family to attend the wedding of her only brother who is a notable fashion designer in Milan, signing his name to it. This was used to get the necessary travel documents for the family. Having only just returned from a visit abroad, I was refused permission to join the “wedding party.” It became question of smuggling myself out.

I then sent a telegram to The Sunday Times saying: “Export formalities completed. Shipment begins Monday.” Accordingly, on Monday June 7, 1 put my family on a Pan-American flight to Rome and took a domestic flight to Lahore and Rawalpindi, with the intention of catching another plane to Peshawar and on to Kabul, Afghanistan, between which two points travel was freely permitted for Pakistanis and Afghan nationals. It was a nightmare journey. On the plane were two senior officials of the Ministry of Information who knew me well. The slightest suspicion on their part would have led to my immediate arrest. Somehow I chatted with them and promised to join them to lunch next day. In Rawalpindi I found the Peshawar flight fully booked. It would have been certain discovery and disaster if I was held up at that stage. There was no turning back.

So I decided to move bold and I was helped by an attractive Punjabi girl sitting alone and giving me the eye from across the small passenger lounge. Folding a hundred rupee note in to the palm of an airline official I confided with a big wink and a nod in her direction : “I need a seat. I’m going to Kabul with her for some fun.” No one in that part of the world can resist the temptation to that sort of chivalry. I am sure, nothing else would have worked. He got a seat by hauling off another man on the “suspicion of smuggling”. We shook hands cordially and I was on my way to Peshawar, Kabul and my date with The Sunday Times in London. I never got to thank the unknown girl who saved my life. She sat in front with another woman. But I quietly toasted her in champagne when we finally flew over the Pakistan border into Afghanistan.