Maisam’s father : This is a beautiful place, beautiful mountains, Mazar & fields but sometimes it feels like that pond we just visited & we are like fishes, Now imagine if we pond was dried up, It is the same when violence escalates, The road gets blocked, After 2007 when road got blocked there was shortage of food & people who needed medical assistance or had to travel to another part of the country had to go through Afghanistan & many were killed & abducted by Taliban there too. We were fish in a dried up beautiful pond.

Maisam look after goats owned by the owner of the house where he lives in Lahore,
He was feeding them when I asked him about the closure of the road & the incidents surrounding the fact.

I can’t forget the way they beat me & torn my clothes. I thought there was no way I could survive but one of the Sunnis recognized me & in the middle of the night he set us free. That was a miracle by god that he was there & recognized me but I do not remember knowing that person.

Maisam’s father recalled while we were walking in the trees in the morning to be at his shop.

I had to walk in the woods from Sadda to Parachinar which was not an easy, It was cold & i had a constant fear of not seeing my family again, Now sometimes when I go to shop & I am alone, I recall the incident & it fills me with fear.

I think we all should have the right to travel in our own country without any fear. After all we are not goats or sheep we are humans. Our people used to travel from Prewar to Afghanistan & from there they would travel to Peshawar. It would be like asking a Lahori to travel from Lahore to Amritsar to reach Qasoor. They would take it as a joke but for us it was a reality we had to travel into another country just to reach another part of our country. Afghanistan is very close from Parachinar, if you stand on the Pewar Bridge, on a good day you can see Afghanistan from there.