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AT an upscale bakery on Karachi’s Zamzama Boulevard recently, I was helping a child select a cake for his birthday. The proprietors gave us a folder of designs, most of which were pretty much what you’d expect: Dora, Tom and Jerry, Lightning McQueen, footballs, cricket, dolls, and so on. And then there was a cake decorated in white, upon which was a detailed representation of a pistol, serial number and all.
I asked the gentleman behind the counter how often this one was selected. He said as much as any other, and that it was usually picked by pre-pubescent boys.
Meanwhile, reports in the press last week quoted attendees at a peace convention in Islamabad saying that in Swat, there had been a discernible increase in the number of children fond of and using weapon-shaped pens. Writing tools in the shape of rocket launchers, pistols, knives and so on were being sold freely, they said. One participant, a Saidu Sharif college student, said she had visited several government and private schools where such pens were in vogue. “I saw children acting like the Taliban and talking about kidnapping and killing each other,” she added.
What children play in a milieu of violence is hardly hope-affirming.
Now consider this: the house where I live overlooks a yard where a group of eight to 10 children play together every evening, both boys and girls, ages in the six to eight years bracket. They are from well-off families, go to good schools and play the usual games.
I hear them discussing what they’re going to play. On some days, it’s baraf pani, or cricket, or kho kho, or a replication of a classroom. On other days, they play ‘suicide bombing’. This entails one child shouting out, “Bang!” after which they all fall about saying things like, “Oh, my arm is broken” or “My head is bleeding”. Yes, I really have heard them calling out, “Let’s play suicide bombing”.
They also play bandits. Curiously enough — or perhaps not — this is the only one in which they divide themselves up gender-wise. The game involves the boys hiding in a corner, the girls walking round it chattering, and the boys jumping out at them yelling and generally being aggressive. The girls scream and run away.
On Friday, the day the MQM called a strike across the city to protest the arrest of some of its workers, a seven-year-old solemnly informed me, “sheher kay halaat bohat kharaab ho rahay hain [the situation in the city is worsening]”.
Given the violence that rules Pakistani streets, whether it is bombings or armed hold-ups, it would perhaps be surprising if children from Swat to Karachi did not play these sorts of games, and show such predilections. Across the world, through the ages, children have mimicked in their games a watered-down version of the adult world which they are grappling to understand. Along with the good, the horror that they are too young to comprehend gets turned into stories and songs, administered, so to speak, to little minds in small doses.
Consider, for example, the nursery rhyme ‘Ring, a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies,’ which is believed to have its origins in the Great Plague of London (though some dispute this) — that the ‘all fall down’ refers to falling down dead. The Brothers Grimm’s stories are far from cheery, and the cowboys and Indians game reflects a regrettable history. The world is, after all, not a pleasant place.
Nevertheless, it can be argued that regardless of the origins of the games and stories I’ve recounted, the realities of children playing them in the modern world are far removed from the risk of plague or being abandoned in the forest by poverty-stricken parents (Hansel and Gretel).
The situation Pakistan’s children face is different, though. Fear and death are the constant wcompanions of many millions of the hapless, with terrorism and poverty only the beginning.
What will be the outcome of this? What will the generations that are growing up in modern-day Pakistan, with all its problems and fault lines and divisions, look like? Some scenarios can be guessed at.
Amongst those that are relatively insulated from violence and active threats, such as children born to wealth and privilege (though even they aren’t immune), it might instil a glaring lack of empathy and human compassion.
In those that are utterly exposed to the vagaries of fate in a violent society, it may produce the glorification of and predilection for violence — hence the rocket launcher-shaped pens in Swat. Whatever scenario can be imagined, none of it is hope-affirming.
What makes me despair, though, is the cake with the gun. That means that even in the educated, wealthy and world-aware sections of Karachi, there are parents actively encouraging the gun culture. And somehow, that’s not really surprising.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2014
