I am again not celebrating an Eid that reeks of blood; if at all the smell is stronger than ever before. I can’t bring myself to pretend joy as Pakistan wails in desolation on the breath of hate and slaughter courses through its veins. What is there to celebrate when our people are being dissolved by the fires of bigotry and violence as the phallus of abhorrence continues to harden on the promise of a prurient afterlife? Our world is burning in an obsequious serenade to the biases that have been held fast in Arabia. I can’t playact an Eid Morning in the midst of a descent into a bloody sunset. Instead, my heart goes out to every mother whose life is now reduced to a blubbering mess in the wait for reuniting with her age’s future shade. I have now lost hope that one day a bomb blast somewhere in Pakistan will make it one attack too many.

Shias and Sunnis; male and female; the small and innocent; the young and promising; the old and wise, all alike are falling victim to this ruthless parade of savage barbarity by the TTP, LeJ, and SSP. My heart goes out to the neighbourhoods that pull along shattered as their inhabitants are left to mourn the loss of their loved ones. The break of each day offers no comfort or warmth as every dawn is laced with fear and hopelessness. In every home where there was a victim, laughter has long ceased and smiles have been wiped off faces that were once glowing. Heads are bowed in sorrow and with pain hearts are left heavy. But, yet, the chief mourners are the mothers, who struggle to accept that their loved ones have departed.

So I will shun this Eid’s festivities in respect for the pain (which I am unable to share) of those whose loved ones are blown in bomb blasts, or targeted and killed, or die in the blasts in their school vans, or are killed for working for the security agencies. Their breadwinners, husbands, fathers, and brothers are gone without bidding them goodbye. They have lost their children who were all they had for now and forever. Like the dart of a sword in the heart, the terrorist attacks have left so many  parents reduced to epithets of agony. How many more will we allow to be drawn to the caresses of darkness? How many? Is there a dawn for us somewhere?

Meanwhile the despair that our current state of affairs engenders compels me to let this Eid go by as it should, like any of our ordinary days which have all turned into dark nights.

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