I opened my eyes on 14th august 1947, with hopes sky high but as the years have gone by blisters of torment burst over, bleeding over my face an agony that the years have showered upon me. I was twisted and torn to be made one yet when I was united, differences sprouted amidst me and what remained was taken apart, bit by bit until nothing but hatred dwells in the hearts of those who inhabit my soil. Those who swell here are united on the same soil yet rifted by imaginary borders; lines on dirt that were drawn not to demarcate but to divide. My name is Pakistan and I am a grotesque distortion of Quaid’s dream.
I cannot describe the seething agony I feel when I see rivers of blood down streets , erasing chalked hopscotch gas it flows. As my loss, is plastered upon TV screens all over the world, as labels of ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’ are chanted, a million fingers pointed and only a handful of mischief makers taboo the entire nation. Our country bleeds in name of cast and creed, and in name of greed and blood-lust, in mosques , and in schools and it bleeds until its veins run dry. We are being murdered on a massive scale, be it our bodies or our souls, we are dying.
I’ll introduce to you, the ways of the people that dwell upon this land.
Burn and drag them on the streets, if only they do not chant the same slogan as thee. Watch them writhe about in pain, for their agony is your ticket to heaven.
Kill them they are not of your beliefs for they are infidels and what we have been taught about infidels? To slit their throats and bathe in their blood. To wreak down their religious places, to wreak havoc at their processions. For that is what our religion of ‘peace’ has taught us, isn’t it?
We bomb, we fire, we shed innocent blood, Oh wait, they are as guilty as they could be! Don’t you see they follow not the Islam that we see it to be! We will punish them for being born into this land of gore. Where not even a child is safe, as plummeting into their homes, comes a stray drone.
If not enough than lets go into madrasas, where terrorists are bred in the name of Lord. Their brains are washed out, picked and brined. Until they are nothing but mere robots, that strap themselves on to a jacket and with the chant ‘Allah Hu Akbar” they go ablaze, along with them a hundred lives. Ironic is it that Allah Hu Akbar, Allah is the Greatest is chanted as lives of his very creation is taken, as mass murder is committed.
So dear fellow beings, I say this out loud and clear ,woe to those who call them our ‘leaders’ and in time of need their eyes turn dim and ears fall deaf.
Their masses are bleeding away, their hopes shattered as their beloved leaders sit about on lush leather sofas, with their bellies bloated as a dying child lights up on their LCD screen as they hastily change the channel. Ahh better now, a reality show from the states. A lot better than the ‘reality’ that hits them in the face once they exit their luxurious mansions as people exist who earn less than 2$ per day in the very country where dogs are fed 200$ foods.
“Close your eyes, and they will go” For the poor are nothing but an infestation. They believe not in the end of poverty but to cease the existence of the poor.
We are caught in an endless cycle, a Pandora’s box of corruption
Clutch your hearts as what I am about to tell might chill your soul, the horrendous reality of how corruption has sown its seeds so deep that even sisters are sold on markets. Meat markets as such are inhabiting in every nook and cranny of every neighborhood. Women, in our country are the subject to avid domestic and sexual harassment yet the authorities do they part by turning deaf ears. Such is our land of the pure,that daughters of Hawwa dance as sons of Adam lick them with their sticky eyes
What are we, if not lost souls. As our minds are never freed from the chaos of the belly. A hungry man, you see, can never think anything astray from food. So how are we to think beyond, when our hearts lay confined in the dilemmas of our lives. Living in our own bubbles of solace, we run in a haze as they are popped. Like zombies, latched on to an invisible thread in our lust for more gnawing at our conscience, we skip aimlessly, from day to day until we die and in our graves we lay, taking with u nothing but sheer regret.
The truth stares us like a naked bulb in the harsh light, shocking as it may seem and woe be upon me for voicing these words but the truth is that Quaid’s soul must be truly disappointed at our plight, for this was not the Pakistan, The land of the pure he had strived his life for. We are lost beings, following blindly our lust for more, and in the end we all fall into a bottomless pit of self-loathing and wallow. The slogan of unity, faith and discipline is lost somewhere between the lust for more and the regret for none.
Submitted by: Hadiya Rehman From Riphah University
3rd Prize Winner
Photo From The book, "The Youth Of Pakistan"
