Fakhra Younus, an acid-attack victim, committed suicide less than a month ago – a horrid crime leading to a murder. Not many would be uninformed about the incident and unaware of the woman herself; for, it received heavy media attention followed by prolonged criticism and condemnation by different segments of the society. The subject of the Oscar winning Saving Face not only made every sensitive and sympathetic heart ache, it also highlighted the crime, unusually so, of a son of a powerful man. Fakhra Younus died; but her suffering and pain were acknowledged and the world stood beside her.

Only 5 days before Fakhra’s death, a Shia family not even as lucky as Fakhra, was travelling from Islamabad to Parachinar. A young mother of 3 children, with her little ones as well as old parents, was heading home after having had her 3 year old daughter, a heart patient, checked up in Islamabad. “We were almost home”, her old mother says, “when a road-side bomb exploded and I saw my husband breathe his last right before my eyes”. That is not it. The old eyes could not even see the funeral of her husband; because, she had to be brave enough to let her husband’s body be taken home and she had to be strong enough to stand by her injured 28-year old. She had to turn around and take her daughter to Peshawar for First Aid.

When I saw her, it was 10 days after the incident, when the ‘sensitives of the town’ were busy babbling about the new “in”: Fakhra. She had been brought after initial medical treatment to Islamabad. I entered the hospital to see the bright eyed girl with the beautiful smile lay pale and motionless, wrapped in bandages; her face swollen with wounds and her eyes lifeless. She had nasogastric feeding tube in her nose and her neck was pierced through by a tracheotomy tube. Her jaw was broken and her teeth crushed. They said she had a piece of bomb shell in her brain.

It is obvious, even in my least painful text that she was critical and needed urgent medical assistance; but her medical report disagreed. The public hospital report said that the victim with a 6-inch opening on her skull and a piece of bomb shell in her head needed no neurosurgical intervention and was fit to be taken home. They disagreed for more than 5 hours while the starving victim lay empty-eyed on a stretcher in a dirty corridor. After probably more efforts by her family than what got Sharmeen Chinoy her Oscar, she was finally ‘awarded’ a bed in a ward. Lucky enough – some do not even get to that point.

Having seen her almost-lifeless body lie in a dingy corridor while her family ran and wallowed to get her admitted to the hospital, I realized how unfortunate the Shias of Pakistan are. They are subject to a systemic genocide which does not seems to have stirred the conscience of Pakistan’s human rights groups and activists.  Shia women do not qualify to be ‘subjects’ of elitist film-makers and bloggers.  Pakistan’s Jejune liberals have time to tweet endlessly to try and prove themselves as connoisseurs of every science and art that ever existed and to defend and promote the racist paranoid ramblings of their elitest counterparts. However, when it comes to speaking for Shias, some cat (Aabpara perhaps) gets their tongues.

When it comes to the ongoing Shia genocide in Pakistan, Pakistan’s Jejune and opportunistic “liberals” simply find one excuse or another to either avoid or misrepresent the topic.

While some Iran or/and ISI-infected Shia Mullahs are obsessed with halting NATO supplies, the Deep State continues to use Shias as bait and punch bags for its (good and bad) proxies; and the fake liberals forage for more sexy topics that do not besmirch their liberals credentials or hurt their chances with ISI, the injured lady lies in the same condition in the same hospital, miles away from her infants – her crime: belonging to a less acceptable minority; a lesser Muslim sect, something that renders her unluckier than even Fakhra Younus.

Comments

comments