PukhtunWomen

Ghulam Dastageer

PESHAWAR: “Is anyone there to hear my voice and help me out? I, representing the whole Swat valley, beg for peace for my people. I ask for peace from you (audience), the government, politicians and the whole world. For heaven’s sake resolve this issue…restore peace to Swat. ”

Eleven-year-old Paghunda --- the traditional Pakhtun name which can rightly be translated as the blossoming cotton flower--- was presenting the case of Swat before the participants of a seminar who were as power less as one can be in the bringing normalcy to the once peaceful but presently hellish Swat.

Her emotional speech made almost everybody weep, at least there hearts were crying but no body had any answer to her questions. No body found any courage to come forward and solace the 6th grade schoolgirl from Swat and assure her that “Don’t worry nobody can stop you from going to school.”

She started her speech with the words: “I am a grief-stricken girl of Swat and (today) I want to talk you about Swat, which was once a peaceful land surrounded by the lush green fields blessed with present whether. It was the land of flowers where tourist from across the world would come. It was called the ‘Switzerland of the East’.”

“But now it’s a past story. The people of Swat are passing through a time where lawlessness, fear, enmities, bloodshed have reigned in. Its people are deprived of there basic rights, forcing even not to get there kids immunized against polio; where the girls are being deprived of right to education.”

She questioned why her school was bombed despite even ‘complying’ with the orders of the self-defined decree of local Taliban not to go to schools?

“When we were asked not to go to schools we stopped going schools. Even then our schools were bombed. Adding insult to injury, they also blasted the schools for boys (but reservat6ions they had over the male education).” With her bright red face, Paghunda queried the civil society members what reaction it showed when she was forced not to go to school?

“I didn’t witness any remarkable reaction when my future was being dragged into obscurity. From now onward no lady doctor or female would come from Swat,” she said.

She raised another question that in an age when even handicapped children were being adorned with education, why the normal girls of Swat were being pushed into an era of obscurantism where girls were buried alive.

“The people who are carrying out activities in the name of Islam must bear in mind the glaring fact that the right to education has been given to me by Allah and His last Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (Sal Allaho Alehay Wa Alehee Wasallam). But, they are hell-bent on depriving me of the right given to me by Allah and His prophet.”

She also recited an English poem, innocently seeking her way back to school:

‘Education is my basic right

But my books have been burnt

My pen has been broken

My school has been torched

O’ protectors of human rights and justice!

Come out

Give me my books back

Give me my pen back

I am the daughter of Eve

I am a mother, a sister and a daughter

I am an honourable part of this global village

Is anybody there to hear my voice?

To hear Swat?

But at the same time she appeared to be quiet optimist rather determined to wriggle her land out of the current mayhem when she recited a Pashto couplet:

‘Ka da zalmo na poa nashwa

Grana watana jenakay ba day gateena’

( If the men of my soil failed to win [peace for] you, [don’t worry my land] the girls will come forward to do the same).

According to official data, 122 girls and 65 boys schools in Swat have been bombed while another 62 have been closed down owing to the serious threats.

Likewise, security forces stationed in the volatile region to curb militancy have occupied 18 schools.

Paghunda, most probably is the first voice from the militancy-wrecked Swat valley seeking revival of girls education in her land-the first drop of the rain-which, definitely, will give courage to her other fellows to follow the suit.

Because poet-philosopher from Lebanon Kahlil Gibran says: “I came to say a word and I shall say it now. But if death prevents its uttering, it will be said by Tomorrow, for Tomorrow never leaves a secret in the book of Eternity…What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by many hearts…(because) from the heat it has sprung and to the heart it shall penetrate.”