Khamosh Paani director Sabiha Sumar with lead actress Kiron Kher

Rehan Ansari, a writer based in Lahore, was location manager for Pakistani film-maker Sabiha Sumar?s Khamosh Paani. He recalls moments of myth and magic, encountered on the job.

Hasan Abdaal is a town an hour?s drive from Islamabad. It is up on a hill, so as soon as you leave GT (Grand Trunk) Road you are driving uphill. It would be any small town in the region: one main road, one bazaar, one girls? school and one for boys, except that it houses Panja Sahib Gurdwara, one of the fundamental sites of Sikhdom, and a spectacular location in Sabiha Sumar?s feature film, Khamosh Paani.

I was in Hasan Abdaal in the fall of 2001 scouting locations for the film. The film is set in the late 70s and if not for the dish antennae on the roofs, a mosque renovation, the chairs at a barber shop and the consumer items in the market, things are pretty much the same in Hasan Abdaal now as they were 25 years ago, the time and context of the film.

The gurdwara cannot be seen from GT Road. At the gate there is a sign that says absolutely no unauthorised entry, or something as redundant and forbidding. I was told you need an Indian passport to go in. This is the policy enforced not by the gurdwara, but by Pakistani intelligence services. Entry into the gurdwara in Pakistan is a border-crossing.

Panja Sahib was an essential location for the film, so we were forever bedevilled by the question of how we were going to be allowed inside. In those early days of pre-production we did not even want to address the issue of taking a film camera and actors inside!

The gurdwara remains quiet and the town sleepy, until the week when Sikh pilgrims arrive from India and the rest of the world. They come on November 7, most for a week-long yatra that included going to Lahore and Nankana Sahib in Sheikhupura. I accompanied the cast of the feature film to the gurdwara. Sikhs came by bus, by train, by car.

One of the cast members at that time, Saba Pervaiz, the female lead, later dropped for Kiron Kher, is a star of Pakistan television serials. We all found shelter behind her fame and were suddenly allowed easy access into the gurdwara. Some of the intelligence guys swarming around us, starstruck by her, no longer cared about our identity or our reasons for entering the gurdwara.

In the centre of the courtyard of the gurdwara is a pool of water from which rises a newly-built marble structure, connected by walkways over the water, in which the Granth is kept. The man showing me around was a Pakistani Sikh associated with the administration of the gurdwara. Either he was a very gentle man or he had developed a very gentle tone for showing Pakistanis around a gurdwara, or both.

He showed me the panja of the Panja Sahib, a handprint on a rock that juts out on one side of the pool. He invited me to fit my hand into the panja, as the pilgrims do. I asked him for the story of how it got there. There were two saintly men in the area and there was a drought. A spring burst forth and both claimed it as their miracle. The sufi, who lived on top of the hill, rolled a boulder down on Guru Nanak who stopped it with his hand. He told the story succinctly, soft tones underscoring the story of contested realities.

It was very busy inside with the bathing rituals, the langar, babies, women, children, moneychangers furiously exchanging Indian for Pakistani rupees. Delighted faces everywhere. One of the women in our party had tears in her eyes. So did I, coming face to face with our absurd political heritage of sighting no Sikhs at all in the Punjabi countryside, except in Hasan Abdaal.