January 14, 2008	Monday	Muharram 04, 1429

KARACHI, Jan 13: As the incident of December 27 at Rawalpindi and its backlash across the country seems to have overshadowed the sufferings of the twin bombings of October 18, a mother of a missing boy has finally identified the remains of her 17-year-old son at the Edhi morgue after an agonising search.

“It was the evening of Oct 18 when Shakeel came up to me and said that he was going to see Benazir Bhutto’s welcome procession. When I tried to stop him, he asked me to go with him,” said 55-year-old Bilquis Idrees.

Although not associated with the Pakistan People’s Party, Mohammad Shakeel, a student of class nine, ventured out just to enjoy the colour, fanfare and festive mood that prevailed throughout the city, especially on Sharea Faisal on Oct 18, the day Ms Bhutto returned to Pakistan after a lengthy self-imposed exile.

However, Shakeel never returned home and it would be the last time that his mother would see her son.

Following the twin bombings, which claimed over 140 lives and wounded several dozens, Shakeel’s family launched a frantic search for him.

“My elder son Khalil and my husband looked for him in every hospital and also went to the camps set up by the PPP hoping that they might have some clue or his name would be on their list. But it was all in vain,” she said.

They kept looking for Shakeel at every probable place he could have gone, but failed to find him. “With every knock, I used to feel as if Shakeel was at the door,” his mother recalled.

Whenever she asked Khalil to take her to the Edhi morgue, he refused, saying that all the remains at the facility were unrecognizable. Quoting her son, she said that he had seen all the pictures of the bodies pasted outside the morgue, but Shakeel was not among them. However, Bilquis was not satisfied.

Acting on her instincts, she headed out of her Green Town home for the Edhi morgue. Looking through the remains of those who were killed in the blasts, she recognized the amulet of her son and a mark on his forehead.

“Only the torso and the head were at the morgue. It seems that the rest of the remains were obliterated due to the impact of the blast,” an Edhi staffer suggested.

Shakeel was the youngest of three children the couple have; the victim’s father Mohammad Idrees has suffered a mental breakdown while searching for his son.