This past Monday, I sent my son to school after our usual morning hug and kiss. He always says “Bye, mama! “ after he’s done with his mug of milk and almost instinctively repeats the same words after he exits the front door as I shout out to him to make sure he wears his seatbelt. I do this as much for him as myself because I rest easy if I know he’s buckled up. And of course before leaving the house, we go through the daily fussing of getting ready. I make sure he takes a hot shower and dresses warmly. He argues that little girls wear an extra layer under their uniform and I insist that he has to. I clean his spectacles because he always forgets to. I give him his vitamins because he tends to forget that too. I make sure he quickly blow dries his hair as I don’t want him to catch a chill on his walk from the car to the classroom. These are the sum of all my fears - my son catching a cold and being safe inside his car. I know he will be back in the afternoon and I’ll be ready to fuss over something else because that’s what Moms do. It’s our divine right of sorts.
Last week I switched on the television in horror after I heard of the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. I couldn’t think for a moment and that’s a first for me because my mind never really rests. Weirdly enough, I’d forgotten that my own son was in school till my Whatsapp went ablaze with messages asking whether I was going to pick up my son. I felt sick. But somehow I knew that I wasn’t going to go and pick up my son. He’d have to wait this one out because his own mom wasn’t going to lose it and make him afraid. There was plenty to be afraid of, already.
When my son came home that afternoon, I felt relieved but with a palpable hint of guilt. My child was safe while someone else’s had died quietly in a barrage of unspeakable terror. A mom somewhere would not be wishing her child goodnight.
Unlike the majority of victims of APS carnage, the victims of the Bacha Khan University terror attack were not children. Their coffins are larger and heavier, packed with more school years, memories, laughter and young adult heartache. And then there is the dead Chemistry professor who had just celebrated his 3-year-old’s birthday three days prior to the attack. I wonder if there is a “right age” for a child to lose a parent. Is there a magical age where the child feels the loss a little less? With such thoughts, I find myself trying to feel better about it all.
If our children start to fear school, our enemies have won already
Changing our Facebook display pictures also makes us feel better. After the APS tragedy last year, most display pictures went black on Facebook with the slogan “we will never forget”. I never quite got the black colour - red, or perhaps crimson, would have been a more appropriate choice. Better to remember blood in its true color. I didn’t change my ‘dp’ but most changed theirs to feel connected to the tragedy. We are all a click away from absolving ourselves from the burden of these young deaths. It’s quick and as easy as changing a ‘dp’.
What makes such tragedies even more digestible is how we find comfort in the fact that each victim died a ‘martyr’. It helps justify that perhaps the life lost was not in vain. Maybe it was meant to be. The now dead father/son came into this world only to die a martyr while we console ourselves by listening to patriotic Noor Jehan songs. Again, anything to make us help make sense of the grim reality that surrounds us. The APS and Bacha Khan victims were murdered in cold blood. There is nothing consolatory about dying in a terrorist attack. You don’t live your life thinking how great it would be be to die in a hail of bullets. That kind of shahadat (martyrdom) is supposed to be reserved for the people who protect our nation. We have lost thousands of lives to terrorism but it took an APS for us to figure out that ordinary men, women and children should not be in the business of dying for their nation. And yet such shahadat’s are offered every now and then, and we flood Facebook and Twitter with messages of our collective outrage. We get angry and blame everybody but ourselves for the hell that we have created.
Pakistani school children must brave security threats in addition to the elements
Where did this radical Islam come from? Nobody saw it coming. It’s easy to blame drone attacks and the West for all our problems. We won’t send our kids to school because we fear for their lives but are quick to judge Malala for leaving this country to save hers. The idea of lighting candles at a school vigil marking the first anniversary of APS at a private school in Lahore is met with resistance on a Whatsapp parents’ group; lighting candles, it seems, will make us more Christian. It has been five years since Salman Taseer’s murder and all we can do is sip tea comfortably and navigate through the number of likes on a Facebook post. We can muster thousands for the ‘Lahore Bachao’ campaign against the Orange Line Metro but can’t garner enough support to save our own country. The likes of Asia Bibi remain on death row while an infamous cleric in Islamabad displays his fondness for the Islamic State terrorist group. A 15-year-old boy chops off his right hand in obvious fear of being branded a blasphemer; his hand is a small price to pay for his life. And, then, of course there are the Malala haters, caught in a make-belief world of conspiracy theories. It’s a terrific way for them to displace their fears by lashing out at a girl who got shot for going to school.
This week schools were shut in light of rising security concerns. Parents want their kids home and safe - not realising that keeping them home achieves the opposite; kids start to fear school, and if our children develop this dread, our enemies have won already. I read a Tweet shared on Facebook which captured the irony of the current school situation beautifully. The tweet was in Urdu but here is a translation: “Sad that we shut schools because of security concerns but are afraid to shut down madrassahs that give rise to security concerns.” I couldn’t agree more.
As the week comes to a close, I hope and pray that my son goes to school soon. I want to worry, but only about how cold the classroom will get.
