“Lost..!”

People often say that the only time of peace in Pakistan is between one “Breaking News” and the other. Bombs, killings, accidents, calamities – since 2007 I can hardly recall a day that passed without we suffering from a constant barrage of breaking news bringing in the number after number of people who have died.

“3 people killed in target killing “10 die in a road side blast” “Numerous killed and injured in a suicide blast” – slowly, and I would admit my own guilt on that, we all have become numbed to the notion of death in our country.

It is a strange general behaviour of ours. If anyone tells us of a bomb blast or we read a story on a laptop/TV screen, the first thing we look for is the “number” of people who died in that blast. There is that urge to see “how many?” and strangely enough if we do not see a double-digit number then there is that sense of relief, oh “chalo yaar 5 log hi maray hain” (Oh well only five have died!).

Probably our breaking news-eager media has successfully shaped our national psyche to ignore any deaths that do not stack up to more than 30-50 at a time.

I remember the tale I read in a book somewhere about “Attila”. The Hun ruler who was quiet simply the person for Venice and Rome as Genghis Khan was for Baghdad. A mountain of skulls, plumes of fires seen from miles away was his favourite sight. Ferocious, cruel and clever, Attila is often remarked in the European history around the “speed” at which he attacked his targets. Using a breed of wild Hungarian/Nordic horses, Attila’s main feature of attack was his speed at which he covered at times huge distances and meet his enemy unprepared.

It is said that once Attila entered a suburban village of Northern Tuscany (Present day Italy) and razed everything to ground with flaming horse-archers force. He ordered all the villagers to gather in the ground outside the town area. Somehow, it transpired that the news of their attack was leaked beforehand and most of the villagers were able to flee before he reached the area. When Attila only saw a handful of men, he ordered all the prisoners to be tied to the horses and dragged to the next village. He continued to tie and drag people across 3-5 different villages until he had a massive number of people as prisoners.

He then ordered to cut everyone’s head off and stack them up in a single minaret of skulls. When asked why didn’t he killed everyone earlier he replied “I don’t enjoy killing, I just love counting, the higher the pile the more to count”

For us as a nation we have remarkably lost our sense of empathy. For us the number of killings have taken a far more important place in our consciousness than the value of life.

Today we celebrate “Youm e Shuhda” - when I look around myself and see the beautiful faces I’ve lost to this war and terrorism, I realise what a bunch of wretched humans we are.

We all live everyday engulfed in our little circles of pleasures and procrastinations. For us the breaking news is nothing more than a new number. We do not see the heart breaking stories behind these numbers. We do not think how one man killed on the mountains of Waziristan or the streets of Karachi can mean the whole world to someone. Shahnam, Umair, Jehangir, Sir Imran, Captain TJ, Major Zaka – they all are just names for us. What care do we do who they were? What have they left behind? There’ll be a new blast tomorrow to check the “score” of death. A new calamity to see the “number”, plenty do we have on our minds to think of these people.

Lost…we are lost, in the endless mire of social, moral and conscious bankruptcy..! 

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“The Breadman”

There is always that someone in our lives who might have spent only few moments with us, but when they are lost to the cruel winds of time we end up thinking what if I would have known him better?

Often it is a passing glance, an impromptu smile or a moment of confusion that leaves us with memories of people who came in our lives and swept pass leaving us in the everlasting wonder of who they were?? Why we met? Where they will be now??

Ultimately, incidence years later spark a sudden memory in some remote area of your brain, a face flashes by your eyes leaving you with a pensive smile or painful muttering.

Blessed I am that I’ve had so many people whom I’ve never known who they were, but their memory brings a sudden sense of happiness. I’ve met them in lands apart, in circumstances unimaginably different and reasons I still cannot fathom. But they remain in there, somewhere.

I’ve often thought about writing about these so many brilliant humans I’ve met. I find it very odd that we only praise others amongst us when they are taken away from us in some form. These “Eulogies” define that person who just died as extraordinary and this and that. But somehow in their lifetime, we never praise them enough. It’s just as if we only see the good in people when they are taken away?

So this goes out to someone I’ve literally known for just about few hours. I think if I collate all the time I’ve ever spent with him it won’t exceed more than 3-4 hours. In fact to be very honest we don’t know each other’s name!

Cold, dark, misty and treacherously freezing nights of Quetta. People who have lived in Quetta will be aware that the cold of Quetta is unique in its nature. The dryness of air and high elevation combines to take the wind through your bones and you end up gasping for breath.

It was a night in one of the long dark winter months. Quiet late by Quetta standards, the doorbell rang of our house amidst the roaring noise of winds. Going out from your warm bed to see who was there often was the point of conflict amongst us siblings, so there was that usual quarrel of who will go out and answer the door. I asked in a slightly raised voice:

“Kaun hai?”

“Bhai, am hai. Tandoor wala. Idhar kili kabeer ki taraf ka tandoor wala”

He answered in this voice slightly trembling due to cold.

“Kaun?”

I did not recognise, or perhaps my brain didn’t work out the logic of why a tandoor wala will be standing outside our house in this bitterly cold weather?

“Bhai am aai, am idhar tandoor par roti lagata hai. Who bhai ghar par hai jo aap ka roti lainay aata hai”

By then I did opened the door, wrapped in this torn “pattu”, wearing an old pair of peshawari chappal and nearly shivering next to an old “Sohrab” cycle was this lean shadowy figure.

He removed the part of his pattu from his face displaying the big bright smile and his full of happiness eyes.

“Oh aap mil gaya, bhai am itna dair say idhar chakkar laga raha tha aap ka ghar donndnay ko. Woh kona wala dukaan say am nay poocha tha kay who haji sahib or us ka teen beta kahan rehta hai..am ko naam nhn pata tha to am bus idhar itna chakkar lagaya gharoon ka to aap ka barabar waloon nay bataya kay haji sahib or us ka teen betay yahan rehta hai”

His happiness was apparent from the way he was speaking. Perhaps with his speech glands going numb in that cold he wasn’t sure himself of what he was saying. But he continued.

“Bus bhai am aap say milnay aaya tha..am kal Afghanistan jaa raha hai..abhi pata nhn hai wapsi mapsi kab tak hoga…bus aap kay liay yeh paratha banay tha um nay to yeh aap ko daita…chalo bhai bus dua karna..bara khushi hua aap ko mil kay..Allah Hafiz”

And that was it. He handed me a big shopper that was there on his cycle stand which was brimming with the distinct tandoori “parathas” made especially with butter and milk in Quetta. Handing me the bag he turned around, waved a hand to me and rode off in the dark of the night!

Photo Credits - Mohammad Omar

Who was he? Just our local breadman. He was the one who used to make the “Naans” at our local tandoor with the use of those two long steel arrow type things. And what I did for him? Honestly, I can’t remember. In all its reality at most I just used to greet him whenever I went to tandoor, a smile Assalam o Alaikum which he at times returned and at times not due to his pressure of work.

The most I can remember as “good” I did for him was that I never haggled for my number. Even if someone showed a bit of urgency behind me in the line (or the somewhat queue we had there) I just asked him to serve them first. He was illiterate so often when complicated arithmetic turned up he was nearly lost, so I usually helped him a bit on that. And if it was really busy and all the “Staff” got engaged in making the “Naans” I just sat down on his shop and managed the money in, money out for him (Nothing alarming as in that sense I’ve worked in numerous tandoors, chicken shops and with Sabzi walas)

Yet, when leaving for Afghanistan during the peak times of war, he didn’t forget me. He brought in as a gift the very best thing he had to offer. And I think in a number that he could have managed with the flour in his shop on that day. The bitter cold, bone crushing wind and heavy fog didn’t stop him from looking for more than 2-3 hours for me, he did delivered the “Gift” he wanted to!

I said, I hate writing eulogies. I know we never saw him at the shop again, his colleagues at the shop never heard from him again. No one knew where he went. But there is something telling me that he is alive, somehow, somewhere!

Smiling, as I am!