UP north kadoo, pumpkin and squash in English, isn’t much favoured as a vegetable. Hosts take care not to serve it on a feast, just like they won’t have saag or dal.

‘Kadoo’ used as an epithet denotes hollowness. When used for a person, the term connotes a lack of grey matter. It is not uncommon for Pakhtuns to employ the term, earnestly or by way of jest, for someone who is witless.

So when a displaced elder from the North Waziristan agency used the term for politicians leading the Azadi and Inqilab marches in Islamabad, it seemed a tad harsh. But then, being politically correct is not something that the displaced aspire to.

“A head without true understanding of revolution is but a pumpkin,” said Nisar Ali Khan, the president of the Qaumi Committee for the Displaced Population of North Waziristan agency, addressing a procession of the displaced in front of the Bannu Press Club. “Let it break. The authorities appointed to care for the displaced have been leaching our blood while Imran Khan and Qadri act out their drama in Islamabad. Their corruption has robbed us of our food; we have nothing to give them. Imran Khan should remove the ‘Khan’ from his name as he has failed to represent the Pakhtuns.”

Also read: From Datta Khel to Sohrab Goth: IDPs’ nightmare

On Sunday, Nisar Ali Khan stood in the dusty Char Bijli Chowk receiving tribal elders of the displaced Wazir and Dawar tribes. The small, single-room Qaumi Committee office is in a basement of a hotel. A young cook stands sweating in a vest, placing large rounds of thin dough on an outdoor tandoor made of a metal cylinder. The supple bread is perfect for Suhbat, a local specialty of bread softened in meat gravy. Hosts insist on serving it, guests find it hard to resist.

The elders are here to plan their presser at the Peshawar Press Club on Monday. They sit in a circle on a carpeted floor, taking turns to speak about problems the IDPs face. Among them is Haji Amin Rehman, president of the Teachers’ Association of North Waziristan. When he speaks, he often lapses from Pashtu into Urdu. His language seems customised to the needs of journalists — it’s as though he’s reading out a press release, complete with journalese characteristic of the Urdu press. He, and the other elders here, are more cultured than their unassuming appearances initially convey. They quote Bahadur Shah Zafar and Pitras Bokhari to convey ironies and their predicament.

For someone fed on stereotypes about tribesmen, it throws up a stark insight: perhaps the people of Fata are far more enlightened and integrated in mainstream Pakistan than the state would like us to believe. When I bring this up, they say their culture, education and society was deliberately distorted to serve the state’s ‘jihadi’ agenda.

With so many strong voices and opinions, it takes effort to steer the conversation back to the marches in Islamabad. “It’s a conspiracy to take away the media attention from the IDPs,” says Haji Amin. “The politicians have been shedding crocodile tears to secure a photo opportunity with the IDPs for political point scoring. But when it comes to our real problems, they have closed their eyes.”

Why do they feel the marches are a deliberate effort to take attention away from the operation in North Waziristan and the displaced? “Because there were no marches between May 2013, when Imran accused the government of rigging, and June 2014, when the military operation happened,” says Humayun Dawar, a writer from North Waziristan. “We protest against Imran Khan and Qadri because if the military operation was started to clear the agency of terrorists, taking it to a logical conclusion should have stayed a national priority.”

The elders say that more than a million people have been displaced. They want their villages to be cleared so they can go back home. “But the attention has been taken away from the operation and possible returns,” says Humayun. “It is one thing that we have been subjected to suffering and humiliation; but this drama in the capital is like rubbing salt in our wounds.”

The elders say the NGOs helping them have closed down their offices because funds and supplies are not coming in due to political uncertainty and the closure of routes. They say the authorities are distracted.

“Imran Khan marched here against the drone attacks but now that we have been displaced by military operations, he has disappeared,” says Haji Saeed, a tribal elder. He and others think that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government is just as bad because it approved the military operation.

The conversation somehow segues from the problems of the living to the disposal of dead. One minute, we speak of education for children in local schools, separate distribution points for women, resuming salaries for minority government workers and space for people displaced from schools, and then: “Let alone the living, the space in Bannu is falling short for the dead,” says Haji Amin. “We have no burial space.”

“We bury our dead as amanat, to be exhumed later for reburial in our ancestral graveyards, among our forefathers, when we go back home,” he continues. He then quotes Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal king who died in exile in Rangoon: Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar dafn key liye, do guzz zameen bhi na mili koye yaar main.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2014