KARACHI: The flight from Quetta had arrived. Media personnel crowded outside the airport’s cargo section, waited for a glimpse of the casket carrying Saulat Mirza’s remains after his execution at Machh jail early Tuesday morning. Suddenly, they were asked to make way for the family.

Her eyes searched for someone as an ashen-faced older family member kept her close with an arm around her shaking shoulders, Nikhat Saulat, who until Monday ran from pillar to post trying to save her husband from the gallows, was a broken woman. Other family members, children included, all followed. And then came the cries.

Take a look: Saulat Mirza executed at Balochistan's Machh Jail

The casket was transferred into an Edhi ambulance and driven with police escort to their centre at Sohrab Goth for the ritual bath. The family following in a procession in their personal cars with hazard lights on pulled up once again and got down. The media followed. No one stopped them except at the entrance where the widow turned on her heel to politely request them to give her some privacy. “Please, I do not wish to be photographed. Please, I need to be alone with him,” she said quietly as most backed off.

Farhat Ali Khan, Saulat’s brother, a cancer survivor with a bandaged jaw, came forward to greet certain members of the press whom he recognised. “See, beta, our lion left us,” he hugged a journalist sharing his grief with her. “He was our youngest brother, our baby. He faced death bravely like he faced life,” the brother said.

“Please do not believe TV reports which said Saulat fainted or wasn’t eating in his cell. He gave us all strength till the very end. The entire night he spent reciting the Quran and when it was time for the execution, he recited the kalima thrice and embraced his fate,” the brother said before shaking hands with another journalist and asking him to step under the shade.

A woman in a black chadar crossed the road to ask all kinds of questions. To the family she said she was a journalist, to the journalists she said she was just from the neighbourhood wondering what the commotion was all about. Learning that it was Saulat Mirza who had been brought to the Edhi Centre, she said: “Hey, wasn’t the proof he claimed he had enough to save him?” Turning to a member of the family she said: “His time behind bars was like life imprisonment, they could have let him go after that, couldn’t they? Do you see any party workers here? They should have come to pay their respects, don’t you think?”

That was when one journalist snapped: “Dear lady, this is not a political story any more for us to be looking for party workers now. It is a tragedy. If there are any workers here, hope they learn from the example of a young man becoming disillusioned and going astray. That’s what Saulat had said also.” From the Edhi Centre, the ambulance, vehicles, police escorts and satellite vans turned to Gulshan-i-Maymar. Saulat was home. The house, which once echoed with laughter whenever the young man found the time to spend with his family during his early acquaintance with the party was echoing with wails on Tuesday.

A family friend there to offer his condolences mentioned how Saulat’s family was particularly careful not to let the family children talk to strangers. “They are a decent and educated family of 11 siblings of whom the youngest somehow fell through the cracks. But they are very protective of their children now,” he said.

The tearful goodbyes left the family children wide-eyed and confused. Some were also crying. Just over a month ago when Saulat’s execution had been deferred they had chased each other into the drawing room amid giggles as the elders had stopped talking about the execution in their presence, explaining later that they didn’t discuss such things in front of the children. “We had told them stories about their uncle but since this past Thursday all finally met him in Machh and came to love him,” Farhat Ali Khan said.

As evening fell and the time for Saulat’s last journey to the Mohammad Shah graveyard in New Karachi approached, the ambulance door slid open and Nikhat with her and Saulat’s 10-month-old baby boy in her arms rushed inside the house after having said their final goodbyes. And the other elders held on tight to their young as they cried.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2015

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