WE came across a maple on a morning walk, at its base a gaping black hole, a hollow for a heart. Some tramp made fire here. And still, the gnarled old tree grew.

Maples, it would seem, are more resilient than men. They can survive a hole in their side. Of the people of Parachinar, I wouldn’t be so sure. I can only detect a simile for their sorrow in a wounded maple, the tree the town is named after.

On the road to Parachinar are other metaphors for human suffering and struggle that the Kurram Agency has come to suggest. Discerning allegories in anything is a matter of one’s fancy; I read them in the foliage if only because it is abundant there. Take, for instance, trakha or the bitter weed — Artemisia kurramensis, the anti-malarial herb named after Kurram where it is found. Legend has it that during the Raj, the local tribes fought with medicine companies who ferried truckloads of the herb from their lands, without permission or recompense.

Bruised maples. Bitter weed wars. On this road from Tall to Parachinar, empty and ominously quiet except for the sound of cicadas in the fields. It will remain so for the rest of the day. The authorities closed it down since the townspeople sat in the streets on Eid day, demanding their religious leader be brought back. On roads and streets they sat, close to graves. “We would embrace death rather than give up protest if the authorities used force to disperse us,” said a determined tribal greybeard. The glow in his pale face was dying. Red rims around his faded blue eyes. Exhaustion.

Allama Nawaz Irfani was banished last December by the political administration of the agency for alleged hate speech, for the misappropriation of funds, for supporting a candidate in the 2013 elections. There are whispers of support for him from Afghanistan, Iran and India. His followers disagree: the authorities want to punish him for standing up against the Taliban when they infiltrated Kurram in 2007, they say.

“Expelling the Allama, who has long been a thorn in the side of political authorities, will end resistance, providing the state the opportunity to use Kurram Agency for its strategic designs in Afghanistan,” says a local tribal elder.

Like others in Fata, the Tall-Parachinar road too has come to symbolise suffering, having taken on the monochrome of sorrow as exhausted, displaced people trudge towards unknown destinations. In the year that is the centenary of the First World War, the war to end all wars, barricaded roads to and from Fata and elsewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have become stark settings for migration, fortification and the prevention of people from returning. The suffering and sacrifices of these locals remain unsung and unseen.

Last Saturday, protesters in Parachinar were pooling money to bring media to the besieged city. The road to Parachinar was closed because the authorities feared people joining protesters. Between 2007 and 2009, this road remained sealed for 15 months, cutting off all supplies to Parachinar in Upper Kurram. The people had to take the long road through Afghanistan to travel to destinations in Pakistan.

“The road that came through the settled areas of Hangu and Tall and had security checkpoints every few kilometres saw Taliban attacking Shia travellers and beheadings,” said a local journalist, adding that people’s suspicion of authorities was rooted in decades of persecution of the Shia community.

At Balash Khel near Parachinar, we stood for hours at the Frontier Corps checkpoint. One of the men was distracted: now and then, he would climb up the truck parked in front of us to check on something. Turned out, it was chickens. He pulled out a few and released them on roadside, where they lay exhausted. He was afraid they would run away. Others around said they wouldn’t, because they were dying.

I traversed this road reminiscing with a fellow passenger, a bright young tribesman studying computer sciences in China, about the three months I spent here as a child. The abundant apricots and apples; the gleaming peaks of Koh-e-Sufaid, the mountain that got its name from perennial snows.

At Shah Kamal, a man-made pool for the freshwater springs of Koh-e-Sufaid, the pool looks too big for the lone old man swimming in it. Shards of light wink over crystal waters. Fallen maple leaves float on the surface. Once, you would have found it hard to secure a spot to stand here, I am told. Now, the authorities deliberately keep down the water level to discourage swimmers, lest they attract suicide bombers.

These days, when people point at the peaks of Koh-e-Sufaid, they offer Tora Bora as its distinguishing feature. Koh-e-Sufaid, the White. Tora Bora, the Black. Black and White. Us and Them. Shia and Sunnis. Liberal and religious. Patriots and traitors. Somewhere along the way we lost sense of the shades of grey.

Up at Maykay, the mountain that has the British-era log cabin where Zulfikar Ali Bhutto stayed, I look at the ancient, lonely rocks frozen in time from the mere burden of being. Up here, the wind blows for no one, the birdsong goes unheard. Suddenly, gunfire, ricocheting from the rocks. The birds go quiet. I spy young men with an AK-47, the bitter legacy of the Afghan war. The curse lingers on.

On the way down, a little girl leaves an orange drop in my lap, a Fanta sweet. What is it, I ask? A niaz, an offering. I look up at the child’s face and find myself wishing, desperately: please God, receive this offering for her sake, for Kurram needs You.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014