میرا بچپن اور جشن خشونت
On 5 September 1996, following an incident of wall chalking by sectarian students. Confrontation between rival student groups escalated into nine days of sectarian war, in which some two hundred people were killed and many more injured.
Dawn, 19 September 1996. The number for fatalities given by Nawae Waqt (14 September 1996) is one hundred. The inconsistency is often due to the exaggeration of numbers by Shia and Sunni combatants, who tend to inflate the casualties each side has inflicted on the other.
I opened my eyes just a year after 96 clash (chiyanve jang) about which my mother told me multiple times. More than 200 lives were lost on both sides, so we from the very beginning of our life started to perceive that violence part of our lives. A norm.
When you see violence everywhere around you start to enjoy it. It becomes a part of you. You start celebrating the violence.
Mostly it would be before the Morning Prayer because the time to attack was mostly after midnight. We used to spend the whole night on the roof, Firing would start, heavy firing on minarets & villages were set on fire, and we would celebrate that because we would know that this particular village on fire belongs to the enemy. Whenever we heard the sound of big guns, we would say that now we will show them who is in charge here.
We used to celebrate violence. We did not know anything about right or wrong as everything was for revenge.
When Taliban attacked the Parachinar city they beheaded people. When some of the fighter took the revenge and brought Taliban fighter’s head in our village. People were throwing those here and there. There are playing fields near in our village where people play football. Just imagine playing football with a human head that is what I saw.”
This happened as before that Taliban had done the same with the Shia convoy which was bringing food for the city, they had done even more inhuman things with the bodies of the convoy members. They had recorded videos of that.
It had became cycle of revenge. Ignorance was winning the fight from both sides.
The most affected by this war has been children. On both sides Shia & Sunni, The next generation is most affected by this ignorance.
When I was in Parachinar, after every lunch & dinner Maisam’s father used to play flute to keep everyone entertained & often there would be Mareed Ali (Maisam’s nephew) Sumait & shumail (Maisam’s cousins) & me. Mareed Ali loves to try to repair the torch in the house, He imitates his grandfather & his uncle Maisam.
“Mareed Ali reminds me of Maisam’s childhood, Energetic, curious & stubborn. He listens to no one but himself & does whatever his heart says. Whenever I come back from work, He asks me to give him a screw driver so he can open anything he gets his hands on. Sumait is responsible & caring. He tries to be like his uncle Sumait who is with you 24/7 is more mature, He is thoughtful, Inquisitive & responsible. Shumait he wants to get away from this place & I do not blame him for it. He says he will work in Qatar, The way i worked in Kuwait for more than 10 years. He drives motorcycle very fast as it is a plane which will fly him to Qatar. ”
His father started playing again, Mareed Ali was trying to fix his torch, and at one point he stopped & picked it up like a gun & started making the sound guns being fired. Maisam’s father stopped playing, said something to Mareed then looked at me & smiled.
He used to make things, He used to repair electric appliances, good with his studies, sometimes made us bamboozled as we did not understand the purpose of like when he made mortar shells or that drone.
Mareed Ali start to point the screw driver at me and said something in Pashto which I did not understand. Maisam’s father started laughing.
“He is asking you to keep quite, so that he can work”
Everyone was laughing as Mareed was looking angrily.
When I was telling Maisam all this, He was working on a huge sculpture of rangers of Wagah border. We were listening to the recording of his father playing flute.
Whenever There was an incident, Schools & colleges would be closed. I think that was the worst thing at that time. As Knowledge is the only thing that can change the mindset of people. My School was one of my favorite places in Parachinar. you can still find my name on honor board as i got the highest score in 2014 exams.
For me the worst thing was school getting closed.
I still remember the 1st blast that I witnessed. It was near Peshawar Adda It 16th Feb 2008. We used to sell fire wood. My father asked me to get some milk for the tea. When I was returning from there. A huge blast happened,
I can’t get those visuals out my head. It is just stuck there. It has become a part of my self. It was my childhood. I was just 300 meters away from the blast & I fell down. When I got near the point I saw people burning alive.
Some of the people were moving while their whole body was on fire, There was this person whose backside was completely burned & he was just moving his hands & right in front of that I saw a woman whose shawl was burning but she was pointing at her dead son & screaming that his son was dead.
A human face is very beautiful when it is in complete form but when it gets burned in a blast….. When the wood is burned … Just imagine if a human face in the fire burning. These are some of my childhood memories, it is still fresh up here. It still haunts me.
