This moving video shared by my friend Capt. Saleem Fida made me feel guilty of my own selfishness if not of the society as a whole . Often, young school-going boys in KP approach me to sell sweetened corn pops, which I used to discourage, thinking it was a form of begging. Little did I realize that these boys were the sole breadwinners in a male-dominated society where women faced persecution, abuse, and discrimination.
In the video, seven sisters carry their youngest brother’s coffin on their shoulders, as the males failed to protect him, and they were left to depend on their only bread-earning male member, who lost his life in the Bajaur bomb blast during the JUI convention in Khar at Bajaur where he had gone to sell the pop corns to earn a few coins for his family that hardly sustained them amid the backbreaking inflation that the government keep imposing on these hapless souls without compromising on any of the luxuries they enjoy at the cost of their sufferings pushing millions below the poverty line due to their selfishness.
As a champion of both Islam and democracy, I wonder if JUI Chief Maulana Fazal Rehman ever thinks about this innocent child and his surviving seven sisters, rather than just focusing on maintaining his power and helping his own son remain in power .
In such a hopeless situation, I can only think of my school fellow Engineer Shaukat Ullah Khan from Bajaur, who briefly served as Governor KP, and I hope he takes care of these abandoned souls as if part of his own family his family being the traditional leaders of the tribal society of Bajaur will impress me both with his benevolence as a human being and besides his social responsibility towards those who need support on a self-help basis after being betrayed and abandoned to suffer in silence.
This video deeply affects my conscience, as I had ignored the struggles of these adorable children trying to earn something for their female dependents, who are confined within the walls of their houses due to cultural, social, or religious reasons.
The sisters’ rebellion to carry this heaviest of coffin on their shoulders of their only brother showed the child’s heavy responsibility in an insensitive society that expected him to uphold both honor and upkeep of his sister as his sole responsibility towards his female family members without any support neither from the government that hoodwinks the world fighting for democracy and the society that occupies itself with Islamic rituals of Haj and Umras as a social status but not sparing a penny to send these little children to school and help settle these purdah observing females in their lives.