NATIONS that forget their past become rudderless and confused. They can also lose a real sense of national purpose. With the passage of time, it seems that there are many people in Pakistan who have forgotten the background to the creation of Pakistan as well as the historical motivations of the Muslims of the subcontinent that eventually led to the creation of a separate country in 1947.

Instead, there has been a considerable distortion of historical facts by certain quarters, which have been pursuing agendas of their own. One of such historical facts is that the Muslims made the demand for the break-up of India only as late as 1940. Partition was not their first preference. This demand was made by the Muslims only when it seemed to them that the Hindu majority was absolutely determined to deny to the Muslims their due rights within a united India.

The political struggle of the Muslims since 1858 had centred on securing their political, economic and cultural rights in India. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the great pioneer of Muslim political revival, had himself been a strong believer of Hindu-Muslim unity, until he was jolted by the Hindu agitation against Urdu, which was the lingua franca of the sub-continent and the language of administration in many parts of India. Urdu was also the repository of the best in Muslim literary and cultural traditions.

The campaign against Urdu was, therefore, seen by Sir Syed and by most Muslims as an attack on their very existence as a distinct religious and cultural group. This impelled Sir Syed to describe Muslims and Hindus as two nations, but he never demanded the break-up of India on religious grounds. Of course, at the time, Sir Syed saw British imperialism as unchallengeable and the issue of independence and a separate Muslim homeland probably did not seem relevant to him.

However, when the British rulers decided in the 1880s to introduce a system of rudimentary democracy in India, Sir Syed told the Viceroy that the English system of open elections would not be suitable for India. The English people had a common religion and culture but in India there were vast differences based on religion and caste. A system of open elections would mean that the majority (Hindu) community would totally override the interests of the minority (Muslim) community. He, therefore, asked for separate electorates so that the Muslims could get representation according to their number.

Separate electorates and one-third representation in the Central Legislature (corresponding to the percentage of the Muslims in India’s population) were the two main Muslim demands until the 1930s. The Hindu-dominated Congress Party conceded these two demands in 1916. The Lucknow Pact, negotiated by Jinnah, was seen at the time — and could well have been the solution to Hindu-Muslim differences. Unfortunately, the Congress soon thereafter went back on its pledged word.

Even so, Jinnah tried hard in the Delhi Muslim Proposals of 1927 and his three amendments to the Nehru Report of 1928 to reach a common ground with the Hindus. He even managed to persuade the Muslim leaders to drop the demand for Separate Electorates but insisted firmly on one-third Muslim representation in the Central Legislature. As it was, the Congress summarily rejected even this modest and eminently reasonable Muslim demand. Jinnah said this was the parting of the ways. Still, neither in his Fourteen Points of 1929, nor in the three Round Table Conferences held in London from 1930 to 1932, there was any Muslim demand for the break-up of India.

When a Muslim student, Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, put forward the Pakistan idea in 1933, Jinnah and other Muslim leaders were unwilling to accept it. The division of India would have meant leaving behind the traditional centres of Muslim culture, as well as a significant number of Muslims, in a Hindu-dominated India. This was seen at the time as an unpalatable choice. However, the Congress Rule from 1937 to 1939 became the turning point for the Muslims of India who had the shock of their lives as the Hindus went all out to impose their political and cultural ideas on the Muslims. Many Muslims now feared the destruction of their way of life in a Hindu-dominated independent India.

Thus, the demand for the break-up of India in 1940 was made when the Muslims came to the conclusion that the Hindu majority was simply not willing to concede their basic rights in a united India. In this context, the bitter Muslim experience during the Congress Rule acted as the catalyst.

It is arguable that if the Hindu majority had adopted a fair and reasonable attitude towards Muslim demands, there would have been no division of India and no Pakistan. It is also worth remembering that, even as late as 1946, when the Cabinet Mission proposed a united India in which two regions in the north-west and north-east would have assured Muslim majority, the Quaid-i-Azam persuaded the Muslim League to accept this proposal. This proved that the first priority for the Muslims remained the protection of their rights in the whole of the subcontinent, while the creation of a separate state was negotiable.

The second historical fact, forgotten by many, concerns the nature of Pakistan’s polity. The Lahore Resolution of 1940, which enunciated the demand for Pakistan, did not say that Pakistan would be an Islamic state or that Islam would be its state religion. Instead, it stressed that the rights of the non-Muslim minority in the new country would be fully safeguarded. The Lahore Resolution expected that the whole of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal would be included in the new state. This would have meant that a significant non-Muslim minority (Hindus and Sikhs) would have been living in Pakistan.

Hence, the Lahore Resolution did not say anything about Pakistan becoming an Islamic state. In fact, till his death in 1948, whenever the Quaid-i-Azam was asked, he kept insisting that Pakistan would not be a theocracy. He was a life-long believer in secularism and there was nothing in his political career that suggested that he would opt for a state in which religion would take primacy in state matters.

This was also what the Quaid-i-Azam envisaged in his speech of August 11, 1947, while presiding over the first session of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, when he said that Muslims and Hindus would have equal status in Pakistan. It is also a fact that some of the greatest Muslim rulers of India, like the first five Mughal emperors and Sher Shah Suri, were secular in their rule. Incidentally, out of over fifty Muslim countries in the world, at present, the overwhelming majority has secular constitutions.

As it turned out, since the death of the Quaid-i-Azam, contrary to his wishes and the declared objective of the Lahore Resolution as also the background of the Muslim political struggle in the subcontinent since the 19th century, the Islamic extremists have in effect hijacked the Pakistan demand. They have been busy rewriting history and indeed misrepresenting the motivations and background of the Pakistan movement. It is even more ironic that most of such Islamic extremists belong to the parties that had resolutely opposed the demand for the creation of Pakistan during the 1940s and, at that time, missed no chance to abuse the Quaid-i-Azam himself for demanding Pakistan. But since then, these parties have assumed the mantle of protectors of Pakistan’s ideology!

The third historical fact that we should remember is that it was the Muslims of the minority provinces (which now constitute India) who had led the struggle for the creation of Pakistan. They were the ones who had suffered most from maltreatment by the Hindu majority, particularly during the infamous Congress Rule, which inspired them to work wholeheartedly for the creation of a separate country for the Muslims. These Muslims in the minority provinces knew that they would not be going to Pakistan and yet they staked everything in the belief that, in a united India, Muslims had no real future. They were determined, therefore, that at least their brethren in the Muslim-majority provinces should have a place under the sun where the great Muslim way of life could be preserved.

Nor should we forget the key role played by the Bengali Muslims in the struggle for the creation of Pakistan (even though tragic misunderstandings led to their separation from Pakistan in 1971).

Many in Pakistan who claim a monopoly of patriotism need to remember that in the Muslim-majority provinces, which now constitute Pakistan, the attitude of many towards the demand for Pakistan was less than enthusiastic. The Frontier Province came out in favour of Pakistan only one month before its creation. Punjab had a non-Muslim League government until four months before Pakistan came into being.

It is strange that, forgetting the historical record, there are those who take all the credit for the creation of Pakistan while forgetting the sacrifices of the Muslims left behind in India. We also take little or no interest in the welfare of Indian Muslims who continue to suffer for their role in the creation of Pakistan. As a nation, we must recall history in the correct perspective, avoid distortions and learn the right lessons from it.

Pakistan wants the World Bank to increase its annual assistance to a billion dollars from the current 600 million dollars and intends to use the enhanced aid in three strategic areas — water and power, roads, and human development.

The World Bank is committed to develop the infrastructure and is willing to arrange the aid, but that is linked to Pakistan’s performance. If the performance is good the aid can be increased but if it is weak the aid can be reduced from the current level of 600 million dollars or withheld until the performance improves.

The World Bank, after exploring various approaches to help develop the economy, has now come to the conclusion that Pakistan needs a variety of reforms in key sectors which have to be sustained and made totally productive. The reforms sought are in the civil service, police, judiciary, CBR and above all the greatly money-losing public sector, particularly WAPDA and KESC. The government gave an assistance of Rs 52 billion last year to help meet the financial deficits of these entities, and may have to do the same unless the KESC and the distribution systems of WAPDA are privatized soon.

The new Vice-President of the World Bank for South Asia, Praful C. Patel, who visited Islamabad last week pointedly expressed his dissatisfaction with the performance of WAPDA and KESC. Mr Patel, a Ugandan national, who has been with the bank for 29 years, also wants the economic growth rate of the country to rise to 6-8 per cent against 5.1 percentage achieved last year. Without that, he believes, poverty reduction in Pakistan cannot take place within a reasonable short period, as the situation demands. He says the President of the World Bank James Wolfensohn also wants the aid to Pakistan to be stepped up to enable it achieve the essential 6-8% economic growth, while finance minister Shaukat Aziz talks of 6-7% growth.

But a high rate of economic growth is not possible without reforming the CBR to reduce corruption and enhance revenue collection, with the police and judicial reforms to enable the people to obtain justice and civil service reforms to ensure good governance.

The Public sector reforms are imperative to consolidate the economic achievements. The annual loss of Rs 100 billion through the public sector has come down to Rs 60-70 billion following privatization of a part of the sector and some stringent economy measures. But last year WAPDA and KESC were given financial support of Rs 52 billion. And the fear is the same may happen this year unless far more units are privatized and more stringent economic measures are taken in the left over units. The fact is as long as KESC losses are 40% of its output, or 60% as some assert, and somewhat similar case with WAPDA’s distribution units, power will be too costly in Pakistan and that will push up production costs both in agriculture and industry. And that will give a spur to large power theft too.

Now Mr Patel says the World Bank will put forward some proposals in respect of the power sector and work with the Pakistani authorities to move forward with the reforms, “as this is the most critical and complex area and Pakistan’s effort to move on to the second generation reforms are dependent on this sector”.

The reforms all around have to be real and sustained. They cannot uphold schools without teachers, or hospitals without doctors, or both schools and hospitals only on paper. The World Bank wants effective institutions to come up with the support of the people, and for their benefit, and not remain a handmaiden of the waderas.

What matters now is not only a high rate of economic growth of 6-8% but also a real improvement in the quality of life. If instead the rich become richer the growing poverty in our midst cannot be reduced. The Bank wants continuity of reforms and no reversal of the reforms with each change of government or local officials or departmental secretaries or ministers. We need such reforms to be re-enforced over a period of at least 10 years to make up for what is described as the “lost decade” of the 1990s.

The fact is that we are borrowing heavily for reforms in civil service, CBR, police and judiciary. The loans have to be rapid with interest. The total aid indicated exceeds 2 billion dollars and we are asking for more to finance further reforms, but unlike the water and power and roads for which we are asking for enhanced loans now, the reforms are not tangible and there may not be one opinion on them in the country. So how do we ensure that the country gets the best out of such loans while it goes deeper into debt?

Of course we need an educated and new trained workforce to cope with a new trade pattern ushered in by the World Trade Organization. We need a management and workforce that is committed to achieving excellence and perfection. And that is essential in the small and medium enterprise sector as well. We need teachers, too, who are committed to excellence and who should be better trained and higher paid than they are now. In brief the commitment to excellence has to be truly national in this globally highly competitive age.

Of course, we cannot ask for excellence from a workforce forced to suffer a failing or faltering electric supply or an uncertain water supply. The state and its mechanisms should not be seen by the people as derelict or failed institutions. And they should not be a bad model for all others.

The reforms that are being sought now are inter-dependent. If one fails the other will also fail more or less. If the police fails the judiciary and the prosecution fails, commercial disputes cannot be settled quickly. If the police will not produce the real witness or present the wrong witness the trial is bound to fail. If judgments are not enforced even when they are delivered after a very long period, the judicial process fails. Hence many good men do not become members of the vitiated judiciary. Inevitably the judiciary degenerates. And now the killing of four judges who visited the Sialkot Jail shows the new dangers to which the judiciary is exposed.

The quantum of aid has increased from the initial 1.2 billion dollars from the US to an average of 3 billion dollars annually now and the total aid so far touches 70 billion dollars. Now in addition to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank is also to give a billion dollars a year. It is for us to make the best use of such enhanced aid for accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and promoting social sector development. The people will not be content with a new trickle down strategy in place of the old one that failed.

Amryta Sen wants the South Asian countries to learn from China which has made tremendous economic progress along with social sector development, particularly in respect of education and public health. China is accused by the West of not having a democratic order, but for us in Pakistan, too, democracy is an occasional thing that fumbles, fails and folds because of the adverse environment.

But for the broad mass of the people in Pakistan what matters is employment, lucrative employment instead of a social climate that drives the unemployed either to commit suicide or to take to big time crimes. The government should give serious attention to this problem and begin it with a real index of the unemployed instead of phony figures.

IF anyone needed any convincing about Ariel Sharon’s intentions with regard to the Middle East ‘roadmap for peace’ these were clearly spelt out in last week’s prisoner release. Falling far short of Palestinian demands, and considerably short of Israeli promises, the release highlights Sharon’s duplicity.

The roadmap, as the word suggests, consists of a number of stages. The first is an end to violence by both sides and a series of confidence-building measures.

On the Israeli side these include a halt to settlement activity and the release of Palestinian prisoners. This last condition is not specifically stipulated in the roadmap, but the implementation of an earlier plan calling for release of ‘all Palestinians arrested in security sweeps who have no association with terrorist activities’ is.

The Palestinians, of course, do not accept the title ‘terrorist’ for any of their detainees: they see them as engaged in a legitimate and totally justifiable struggle against an occupying force.

This is the defence for members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who have carried out attacks on Israeli targets. But many of those held by the Israelis have never committed acts of serious violence. Stone-throwing, illegal entry into Israel, simple suspicion — these are the spurious grounds on which hundreds of Palestinians have been detained for months at a time. Legal process figures only nominally in their arrest and imprisonment.

Given this context of unjust and illegal detention, the Palestinians are calling for all 6,000 of their compatriots being held in Israeli jails to be released.

The official Israeli position is that some prisoners could be released, but not those with ‘blood on their hands’ who could pose a threat to Israeli security. Applying this condition very liberally, the Israelis promised to release a mere 540 of the 6,000 detainees.

On actual release, they cut this figure even further — to 334. All but one of those set free had been due for release within the next year anyway. The vast majority had only a few weeks or months of their sentences left to serve.

A significant number were criminal prisoners, jailed for offences like theft and entering Israel without a valid permit. Bottom line: this was anything but the release of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other fighters that the Palestinians had been expecting.

Such a release would have signalled to the Palestinians that Israel is serious about the roadmap. It would have been a major concession by the Israelis, on a par with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups’ decision to observe a ceasefire. It would have allowed further progress on implementation of the roadmap.

The release that actually took place — of a fraction of the total Palestinian prisoner population, all small fry — did not signal Israeli commitment. Rather it proved to the Palestinians and other doubters that, on this occasion as on many others in the past, Ariel Sharon’s commitment to peace is only verbal. He has no desire and no intention of working to achieve this.

The nominal prisoner release staged by the Israelis allowed their spin doctors to claim that Israel had made huge concessions to the Palestinians. It allows Ariel Sharon to assure George Bush that he is sticking to his part of the deal. But the reality is that Israel is acting out a farce. Virtually nothing has changed on the ground — if it has, it has been to the detriment of the Palestinians.

Israeli raids on the Palestinian territory continue. As the sidelined Yasser Arafat pointed out, in recent days the Israelis have detained more Palestinians than they have released. The halt to new settlement construction and dismantling of illegal settlements has been as farcical as the release of the prisoners. A handful of empty one-building ‘settlements’ have been dismantled — even that amidst vociferous protests from the Zionist right — and the construction of completely new settlements has abated.

But to make up for this, the existing settlements are being expanded and built on at a greatly accelerated rate.

And around all this, the Israeli ‘security fence’ continues to go up. This fence is being constructed without any consultation with the Palestinians, without any resolution of the dispute over the Israeli land and the Palestinian land. Its course is decided unilaterally in Tel Aviv.

On the Israeli side, the fence simply incorporates illegal Jewish settlements built in the Occupied Territories and, once inside, designates them and the land they are on part of Israel. On the Palestinian side it forms an effective prison to keep the Palestinians enclosed in (what is left of) the Occupied Territories.

There can be only one explanation for these actions. Sharon is pursuing his old strategy of altering the reality on the ground in favour of Israel (by settlement expansion), so he can present this in negotiations as a fait accompli that cannot be reversed.

Once the Jewish settlers are established in a Palestinian region, the Israeli prime minister can argue that concerns about their safety necessitate that the area be included in Israel. This occupation by bricks and mortar is more insidious than occupation by tanks and guns, but even more effective in permanently securing land for Israel.

How the Palestinians can be expected to have faith in their Israeli counterparts, and how they can negotiate a division of territory when Israel is seizing more of their land, everyday, is a complete mystery.

Or rather, it is not a mystery. Ariel Sharon knows it will be impossible for the Palestinians to negotiate in these circumstances. He knows that the failure to release Palestinian prisoners, to halt settlement construction, to stop work on the fence — all this will force the Palestinians to pull out of talks. It will force Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others to take up their weapons and suicide bombs again. It will finish the peace process.

Nothing would please Ariel Sharon more. In such a scenario he would righteously claim that Israel was committed to peace and took steps to prove its commitment (like the prisoners’ release) but its overture was rejected by the Palestinians. He will argue that Israel did whatever was asked of it in the roadmap, but the Palestinians failed to rein in the ‘terrorists’. [And, of course, we all know that Israel will not negotiate until all violence ceases.] The outside community, especially Washington, will lap up Sharon’s lies as it has always done — Israel’s PR machine and lobbying being infinitely more effective than that of the Palestinians.

The alternative (but highly unlikely) scenario that the Palestinians remain quiescent and do not pull out of the roadmap, is also very beneficial to Sharon. For if persisted within its current form, the roadmap would deliver a ‘moth-eaten’ Palestinian state.

Israel would be able to retain Jerusalem and the many other parts of the Occupied Territories on which it has established the settlements. The Palestinian entity [‘state’ hardly seems appropriate] created by this process — being surrounded by ‘Israeli’ territory — would be subservient to Israeli control, and thus pose no security threat to Israel.

The tragedy is that — as obvious and predictable as this derailing of the roadmap by Ariel Sharon is — nothing can be done to stop it. The Palestinians are powerless while the Americans, who could have done something, are either taken in by Sharon’s hypocrisy or are distracted by troubles in Iraq. Once again, Ariel Sharon could get away with it.

To this day / and To this day’s sorrow / This day’s sorrow which is indignant at life’s resplendent garden. / A forest of yellow leaves / A forest of yellowing leaves, which is my homeland.

— Faiz Ahmed Faiz

“Aaj ke Naam”

IN the distance the shapes that loom before us waver and vacillate between substance and the delirious imagination of those lost in a desert. We are in the middle of nowhere; yellow earth, yellow sky, yellowing bones of the doomed surround us.

The horizon is a faint line running across what remains of a sense of direction. We know where we are going, yet something tells me that even when we get there, we will still be marooned on an island of ignorance and indifference.

Awaran, the headquarters of a district which has apparently never been electrified in the five and a half decades of our beloved country’s existence, is situated in southern Balochistan, the Mekran Coast Range at its southern edge forming a natural barrier between the desert and the ocean opening up at Gwadar. I am accompanied by the wonderful researchers, companions now, loaned to me by the Institute of Development Studies and Practice, run by Dr. Quratulain Bakhtiari in Quetta.

We are driving from the port city of Gwadar where we have been taken care of by a young bureaucrat, a native son, Javed Baloch, then Assistant Commissioner, Pasni. The vehicle, ably handled by Lala Akbar, has been loaded with many bottles of water and packets of biscuits for emergencies. On the vehicle’s stereo we listen to Pashtu songs of love and longing, of betrayal and bereavement, and we are lulled into a stupor at the thought that the singer’s voice speaks to all of us separately, each one of us lost in our own universe of secrets.

We drive through the vast desert which stretches itself endlessly before us, like the hungry belly of an orphaned child. After many hours of navigating an empty land, with no markers for direction, no signs of a metalled road, we approach Turbat, the district headquarters of Kech. It is 50 degrees Celsius, there are metalled roads running through the city, and in the heat the tar has melted and sticks to the hooves of the few horses which desperately breathe through flaring nostrils, their lungs bursting with the effort.

We are headed for two small villages in Awaran district. I shall be filming the process through which the researchers will elicit responses from the communities regarding poverty. Using participatory methodology, the researchers will be facilitating discussions with the communities centred on the perceptions of the poor regarding their own conditions.

Who are the poor? What does it mean to be poor? How do the poor cope with stress? What kind of recourse do the poor have in emergencies? To what are the poor vulnerable? How do the poor think they can get aid of poverty? These are the questions to be posed as part of the Participatory Poverty Assessment of Pakistan, an exercise designed to feed our country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper with the voices of the poor, enabling anti-poverty strategies to be formulated with the needs of the poor as a backbone and not just as a cosmetic veneer common to such policy preparation.

We have left Turbat and are headed towards the town of Hoshab where the dirt track forks, one branch heading off towards the district of Panjgur. It is now 54 degree outside, Akbar Lala is dosing off, having woken up before dawn for his prayers and to ensure that we have enough time to make it to Awaran before sunset. Several times the vehicle veers off the road, landing us in shallow ditches or on top of sand dunes which shift before us like the goals we often set for ourselves, only to see them slipping away in the face of adversity.

I am compelled to take over the driving, with none of my companions feeling confident enough to handle the massive four-wheeled drive cruiser. We lurch along, the gears failing to engage when necessary, and I have to keep slapping my face with tepid water to stay awake. The monotony of the desert wears down the mind while allowing the imagination to run wild. Were we headed in the right direction, should I have turned off at the fork we just left behind, is that another vehicle before us, shrouded in a cloud of dust?

The vehicle is giving us trouble; I have to manage driving over rutted tracks without altering gears, maintaining break-neck speed to lessen the impact of the jumps on shock-absorbers which have worn down because of the stress of the journey. Other vehicles pass us, losing themselves in the trail of fine, sandy dust which they whip up on their frenzied journey. Some of the pick-ups stop when they see a woman driver in their rear-view mirrors, some of them gawk and smile and even blink their eyes in disbelief. I believe it was the first time they had seen a chaddar-clad woman behind the wheel in the middle of this abominable landscape where every man is an island unto himself, and where women are buried deep beneath the sand like a troubling memory.

Towards sunset the vehicle sputters to a halt — we are either out of fuel, or the engine has packed up in the heat, or the radiator is about to blow with the steam which has worked itself up into a rage over the past many hours. Akbar Lala is woken up — we have nowhere to go while he studies the innards of the car’s engine, so we remain inside, cowering beneath a shelterless sky.

Some of us rest, taking the opportunity to nap while the car is stationary. I look around myself — a desert storm is approaching, vermilion dust rises on the horizon, and we are engulfed rapidly in a fury of wind and sand. Lala Akbar dashes into the driver’s seat, tries the ignition, the engine lurches forward, we begin to move out of the eye of the storm. The sky has darkened now; night falls softly on the silence around us.

It is late when we arrive at Kahan Zeelag, having lost our way for a while before a passing vehicle guided us to this small hamlet of a few families huddled within thatched houses standing like mounds in a landscape marked with nothing but vast, empty spaces. I am worried that I will not be able to shoot in the failing light.

I am a one-person film team, having sacrificed my male crew to tradition which dictates that only females shall enter the domain of veiled women. The participatory assessment of poverty demanded that women be included in the process, and in places where we were granted permission to film, it would have been impossible to do so with a male crew. So, armed with camera and mike and some emergency lights, I set off towards the village with two women researchers guiding me safely over scrub and an unknown terrain.

At nine that evening I watched the amber glow of the sun as it set beyond the mountains which form the Makran Range in the north. We have been invited to meet the women and children inside the largest of the several homes which house this community. It is pitch dark inside, like a womb. I use a torch to find my way around. I am dazzled almost immediately by the brilliance of the mirrors embroidered into the fabric which decorates the shelves displaying various tumblers and platters marking that family’s wealth.

We ask for a lantern and one is brought out. A young woman strikes a match to light it — the wick has frayed and there is not enough oil in the container. We ask for kerosene, and feel incredibly foolish having done so. The nearest town is many miles away. It would take a good part of the night to go and return with a bottle of fuel for the lantern. Another lantern is dug out and grudgingly lit.

I try to reassure the women of the village that I shall pay for the fuel, feeling ashamed of my noblesse oblige, my desperation to avoid using halogen lights in this setting where artificial light was entirely unknown. The women laugh and someone passes a remark that what they really need is a girl’s school and a hospital so that their people don’t die for want of medical aid. I switch on the record button on the camera, my researchers begin the discussion, and the voices begin to emerge from some deep well buried under years of neglect.

We have nothing, the women tell me — the land belongs to God, but the landlord claims it for himself, and expects us to pay tax for tilling it. When we cannot pay him, when the harvest is lean, when there is a drought, he takes our animals, he threatens to have us imprisoned. It has not rained for several years now, the crop we harvest for the mats we weave has perished, we have nothing except the clothes on our back, frayed and dirty and not fit for respectable people.

There is no school for our girls to attend — it is too far for them to walk, there is no doctor for miles, those with money can afford to send the ill to Karachi, but where can we send those who need help? Many women die here during child-birth, many children die, too. Our men have no work, we have no food, our children cry themselves to sleep, and we are robbed of our sleep. How can we sleep when our bellies are empty and our children hungry?

What about the government, we ask. What help has been extended to you by the state? There is silence in that dark, tomb-like space. Nothing, a woman replies. No one has come this way in a long time. No one knows we even exist. It is as if we fell off the earth and no one even heard us cry.

It is midnight when I pack my equipment and make my way outside. The sky is purple now. There are no stars above us, and below there is only the sound of the wind rustling between the dried leaves of bushes forsaken by rain. Dried, yellowing leaves, softly speaking their tale of the anguish that is my homeland.