SEHWAN: As pigeons fly over the grave of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, an easy calm prevails inside the mausoleum of the great Sufi saint on Friday morning, following the deadly suicide bombing that claimed the lives of dozens of innocent people on Thursday evening.

The shrine’s white floor was littered with debris and the belongings of the victims. A stench was easily felt as the inner sanctum of the shrine and the courtyard were not washed after the blast. There were massive bloodstains on the floor, blackened by smoke, suggesting that the bombing took place on the left side of the grave.

Windowpanes of the dome were smashed and a portion of the wooden door from eastern side (qadeemi Alam Pak area of shrine) was broken. False ceilings were badly damaged and blades of a few ceiling fans were bent; some were collapsed on the right side of the grave.

However, the chandelier right above the grave did not suffer any damage. Only a part of the lower portion of the wooden frame — called zari — and a small silver-coloured grill of the frame was broken from the left side, but the rest was completely intact. There was no crater as it appeared that the entire impact of the blast was absorbed by hundreds of devotees who on Thursdays gathered there in large numbers.

At around 9.30am, the eerie silence was broken all of a sudden when a number of highly emotional devotees, while raising slogans of Labbaik Ya Hussain stormed into the shrine from the eastern side. Some policemen simply left the premises instead of stopping the mourners from compromising the preserved crime scene.

As tears rolled down their cheeks, the young and elderly mourners kissed and touched the dark brown wooden frame around the grave of the Qalandar as a mark of respect.

At the Sehwan hospital, Saeeda Chandio and her minor son were being treated. The woman did not know that she lost her niece, nephew and a sister in the tragic incident. “We have not shared the news with her,” said her husband, Pyar Ali Chandio.

Arshad Ali Otho, an Auqaf department employee, was busy receiving chador and floral wreaths from devotees when the blast took place. “It happened right in front of the zari and I just collapsed,” he recalled.

Thursday’s incident was the first one at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar ever since the wave of terrorism, particularly of suicide bombings, gripped Pakistan following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The shrine has recently been developed and renovated with multimillion rupees’ expenditure. Development works for expansion of the shrine are still under way. The expansion was ordered by then president Asif Ali Zardari and the project was still pending although major renovation work had been completed.

Dr Syed Mehdi Raza Shah, the custodian of the shrine, believed that the continuity of dhammal even a day after the blast would send a message to the terrorists that “we are undeterred by their cowardly act.

“Terrorists want massive coverage in the media to terrorise the people and that’s why they targeted the Qalandar’s shrine. That is what they want. But we won’t give in,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2017