Does pain have any language? Can it recognise the color, creed or race? Does it have the power to unite communities? From Pakistan to London, across the Middle East, pain seemingly flowed through the communities after fresh wave of violence. Whether it was an Islamophobic attack in Finsbury Park or a series of attack by militants in Parichinar, Quetta, Karachi, London, and Manchester; each one of them caused immense pain to the communities around the globe. Pain flows through the brutally murdered bodies of deceased to the ones alive and breathing. The butchered and burnt bodies of the departed condemns our living, if we fail to avenge the enforcers for such atrocities. Pain and suffering connects us more than the happiness.
How can we forget, it could have been me, you or our dear ones instead. These are uncertain times. Law enforcement agencies have failed miserably to safeguard the lives of innocent and blood of Muslims has become so cheap. All we get are the fake promises which fail to materialise. Corpses should remind us of our collective silence and cowardice to challenge the rulers on their colossal failure to protect the innocent lives.
Both the sheer brutality of the enemy and inability of the government to defeat them collectively besieged the sensitive souls to do what? How to liberate or disconnect with this pain? What remedy is there to boost chances of meaningful and brave survivors? If random probability of one’s survival allows him to live, grow study, work, marry and spend a life defeating death by chance. But, continuously witnessing the death around him at few hundred miles traumatises his living. Death of a soul, sleeping subconscious, inability to challenge, fear of change, and failure to come of routine life enforces the living in guilt. Affluent to middle to poor, all will bring their own reasons for being shy of active participation in condemning and enforcing the change which could dismantle the government ferociously until faith in the system is not restored & such atrocities are not stopped forever.
Does pain unites us momentarily or it stays put between us all along? Does it not vanishes with every new incident; reigniting with new incident and making us forget the previous act of barbarism? We seem to have become victim of selective amnesia. It is as it has become part and parcel of our lives. How insensitive have we become? People get butchered around us and we seem to continue living a normal life made possible through random probability.
At a get together, in parties, weddings, birthdays or funeral, we all discuss a new incident at length, based on individual wisdom and out of frustration, we may accuse the different militants groups or terrorist organisation or even political parties for the failure to unite against such elements in wiping them out of this country.
When the Western public by and large fails to feel pain for Muslims dying in various parts of the world as they fail to demonstrate it on social media, while, if a disaster struck in their own country, they seem to show full solidarity with departed souls as well as with the effected and vulnerable communities. Same is true for Pakistanis who at times even shown no remorse for the dead ones and continue as nothing happened around. Only an incident of scale such as the horrific APS attack brought nation together and eventually pushed and backed Army to take an offensive to crush the culprits at any cost.
Can we not make this pain our strength? Can this pain not unit us? Insensitiveness must be limited by awakening the sleeping conscious. Humanism must be embraced. Religious differences must be put aside to protect the most precious commodity all: a human life. Education, a right and balanced education with the technical learning must be embraced and made exclusive part of our schools from very beginning. What makes an English man put his life in danger on busy motorway in England to stop his car to carry a kitten to safety? A right education and upbringing at home and school teach them to value life, whether it’s a human or an animal. Why cannot we Pakistanis connect; even connect with humans let alone animals.
The pain should be persistent enough to compel us to relieve ourselves of this burden by pitching against the dual culprits; the one who enforce brutality on fellow citizens and the other which despite taking verbal and sometimes physical actions fail to uproot the nemesis forever. Psychological damage is taking its toll now, our failures to feel the pain collectively is transforming us into an insensitive and stone-hearted society. Some of us may demonstrate disgust on cowardly acts of terrorism but in the long run or even in days and weeks of an aftermath we forget, chains of pain bidding us breakdown and we move forward in our irrational life lived marginally on game of chance or (random probability of existence).
It’s about time, we must warn the men in charge of this country to take us out of this quagmire and life ridden with chaos with concrete efforts proven through actions, otherwise, we should get rid of elected leaders in upcoming elections. We should force them to mend their ways by virtue of the chain of pain connected through these terrorist and other disasters which jolts us every now and then, making our survival meaningless through disgust of being so coward and fearful of unknown events which could potentially dismantle our routine life. I wish our pain had common language, if this had been the case, our society would not have remained silent on colossal loss of lives of minorities in Pakistan. I wish, we could collectively feel the pain and break shackles and walls of hatred with bridges of hope to kill our common enemy. I wish!
