Was it his­to­ry, luck or fate that led me to 93-year-old Ab­dul Hamid Raza­ck?I ar­rived at his gate af­ter a me­an­der­ing trail end­ed on the Na­pari­ma-Ma­yaro Road, where in­den­tured In­di­ans once held pan­chay­ats un­der­neath a 17-foot-wide sand­box tree, amidst gan­ja smoke and a heady mix of old world ori­gins and lan­guages.

Mr Raza­ck's grand­fa­ther, Ca­ri­man, had left Per­sia and trav­elled through Afghanistan, the Silk Road and Hy­der­bad as a trad­er, fi­nal­ly ar­riv­ing on our shores on the first ship from In­dia in 1845, the Fa­tel Roza­ck, thus es­tab­lish­ing his fam­i­ly name in Trinidad.

I hoped Mr Raza­ck could tell me about my great, great grand­fa­ther Syed Ab­dul Az­iz, who was 21 years-old when he ar­rived at a Ma­coya es­tate in 1883, hav­ing him­self trav­elled from the Afghan re­gion of Haz­ara where he was born, to Pesh­war to study, then lat­er to La­hore and Cal­cut­ta be­fore board­ing the ship Lee as an in­den­tured labour­er.

For me, as I trav­elled south with Fe­li­cia Chang, whose com­pa­ny, Plan­tain, is pro­duc­ing a book from our find­ings, it had been a long day of en­coun­ter­ing loss, and not just mine. In the small, lov­ing­ly as­sem­bled room of decades-old house­hold im­ple­ments and Qur'ans, the cu­ra­tor of the Char­lieville AS­JA mu­se­um sor­row­ful­ly told us of how many fam­i­lies had dis­card­ed or mis­placed their an­ces­tors' pa­pers, pho­tographs and books, not see­ing his­to­ry in our own homes, and how many had passed on be­fore shar­ing pre­cious, ir­re­place­able de­scrip­tions and sto­ries.

Such im­mea­sur­able loss had swept over me as I stood on the de­mol­ished site of Ab­dul Az­iz's home on Princes Town's main road, re­mem­ber­ing the house where my moth­er would car­ry me to vis­it his daugh­ter, my great grand­moth­er, Aisha. Its clean wood­en floors, blue-bird coloured walls, light-filled kitchen and back door open­ing to a slop­ing hill.

All around me as a child may have been his hand­writ­ten kut­bahs to Trinidad's Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, his let­ters to colo­nial of­fi­cials ad­vo­cat­ing for the reg­is­tra­tion of Hin­du and Mus­lim mar­riages, and his own records re­gard­ing the East In­di­an Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion, the Tack­veey­at­ul Is­lam­ic As­so­ci­a­tion, the An­ju­man Sun­nat al Jam­mat and friend­ly so­ci­eties such as the Is­lam­ic Guardian As­so­ci­a­tion.

Now, on­ly grass swayed at my feet as wind ex­plored the empti­ness. Like the Lee's miss­ing ship records on­ly for the year my great, great grand­fa­ther sailed or the British Army records that failed to list the names of Afghans who had served, as Ab­dul Az­iz did at 15, a search for pho­tos of the house, at the li­brary across the street, left me emp­ty-hand­ed.

Fi­nal­ly, I sat across from Mr Raza­ck, feel­ing like search­ing through the past is not walk­ing a path back­wards, but col­lect­ing bits of bro­ken fos­sil, and re­joic­ing when just two pieces con­nect, whether be­cause you de­spair or dream of putting to­geth­er the whole.

Such was my un­ex­pect­ed joy on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon. It was Mr Raza­ck's grand­fa­ther who had heard of Ab­dul Az­iz's Is­lam­ic ed­u­ca­tion, and who had helped to arrange for his in­den­ture­ship to be end­ed two years ear­ly so that my great, great grand­fa­ther would be free to be­come imam at one of the first mosques built in Trinidad, by Ca­ri­man in Iere Vil­lage.

There, Mr Raza­ck and I were sit­ting to­geth­er just as our an­ces­tors once had, as they cre­at­ed the trail of arte­facts and mem­o­ries that I fate­ful­ly fol­lowed right back, 130 years lat­er. I can on­ly hope more doc­u­ments re­main with my and oth­ers' fam­i­lies than I know. Like Ab­dul Az­iz's orig­i­nal in­den­ture­ship record in Port-of-Spain's na­tion­al archive, which one day Zi can touch for her­self, such dusty pa­pers are a rich­er in­her­i­tance than gold.

�2 For more in­for­ma­tion on Plan­tain, see http://www.plan­tain.me/