As Farhat Paracha, 56, reads out excerpts from a letter written to her by her 26-year-old son Uzair Paracha, tears well up in her eyes. Head down, she stops and becomes quiet.
Uzair wrote the last letter on October 22 last year after he was sentenced to 30 years and moved to a penitentiary in Colorado, US.
On his first business trip, right after his graduation from the IBA, he was picked up by the FIA, in February 2003, on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda, the terrorist group believed to be behind the September 11 attacks on the United States. He has been in US prisons now for over four years.
Five months after her son’s arrest, in July 2003, Farhat’s husband, Saifullah Paracha, 60, based in Karachi, was picked up by US intelligence from Bangkok airport, where he had gone for a business meeting, and was taken to the US airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan. Fifteen months later, in September 2004, he was moved to the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“I don’t know if I will live to see my son,” says Farhat, folding the letter. “I keep all his letters with me and read them over and over. This way I can compare how he’s grown over the years.” This last letter brings some cheer for Farhat as it reflects a more positive attitude from the last note in which he’d written: “I’ve nothing more to write to anymore from this place.”
“I’ve now engaged a new lawyer, Joshua Dratel, for my son. It’s going to take a toll on our finances but he’s my only hope.”
Dratel is the same person who represented David Hicks, the young Australian who became the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to plead guilty under the US Military Commissions Act passed last year.
The communication from her husband is either through emails she receives sporadically from international human rights lawyers who visit the Cuban prison, or through hurriedly written notes on the back of International Committee of the Red Cross pages. “He never talks about his plight or his health. That I learn through newspapers or from the lawyers.”
However, there is one other source from which she gets to know about her husband. It is from prisoners released from Guantanamo. She either gets a phone call or through a meeting, usually arranged by a rights organisation.
“I recently met someone who had come for treatment at a hospital to Karachi. He said he was Osama bin Laden’s driver, but could speak Urdu. He told me that he was also in Camp V, the same prison block as Saif’s. He spoke very little but said he and many others there were indebted to him for making life just a bit ‘liveable,’ although he had never seen or met him in person. When Saif would get chest pains, since he’s an angina patient, they would all bang their doors to get the attention of the security guards.
Saifullah Paracha made news recently when his petition to be transferred to a civilian medical centre for a heart operation was rejected. For his part, he has been resisting treatment at the prison. “He says he made this decision as he finds the camp facilities inadequate. It’s not an emotional decision but a rational one, because he wants to live and meet his family,” says Farhat. For their part, the camp authorities have already informed lawyers that the equipment brought for him will soon be returned.
Farhat Paracha’s tragedy typifies the devastation wrought on families inflicted by enforced disappearances and Pakistan’s role in the US led ‘war on terror.’ Not only has it made ordinary citizens suspect, but it has taken a toll on bereaving families socially, emotionally as well as financially.
With her life on hold, Farhat does not deny contemplating suicide. Her voice quivering with emotion, she lays bare her soul.
“Yes, I’ve often felt that my life is over. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I did become suicidal. I then sought the help of a psychiatrist. It horrifies me to even think the idea crossed my mind. I have three other children who need me.”
She’s been kept on anti-depressants that keep her “simmering” anger, “a feeling of utmost dejection” and the “gnawing” loneliness in check for her to be able to get through the day.
Leading a hermit-like life, she doesn’t like meeting people for she feels self-conscious. “Obviously our family is suspect. Not one, but two people from our family have been picked up, one after the other, for their alleged links with Al Qaeda. So why would people want anything to do with us?”
Not charged with any crime, the elder Paracha was suspected of having links with Al Qaeda, which he has denied.
“Mr Paracha is alleged to have been part of a plan to smuggle explosives into the United States for Al Qaeda. He is also alleged to have spoken to Osama bin Laden,” says UK-based human rights group Reprieve’s senior counsel, Zachary Katznelson.
For Farhat, leading her life and bringing up three kids has been an uphill task. “I’m at a loss as to how to bring up my children. I really don’t know my status. I am a single mother, yet neither a divorcee nor a widow. It’s not easy to play this endless waiting game and stand at crossroads. I don’t know when to give in and when to be strict.”
She gets perturbed by what she terms “utter indifference to what Saif and Uzair are going through” by the carefree and very normal attitude of her two youngest children, Mustafa (17) and Zahra (14).
“How can they enjoy life when their brother and father are in so much pain? Why don’t they miss them as much as I do? It scares me to think they have come to terms with life without the two most important people of our family. Have they forgotten them already? Asking them to write two lines to their brother is a gargantuan task.”
She fails to see 17-year old Mustafa’s behaviour as a normal teenager’s rebellion. Zahra’s happy laughter irks her too.
“Mustafa is always short of money, gets into fits of anger, sometimes gets very nasty and even violent and thinks he has a dysfunctional family. Maybe he’s right. Who wouldn’t be in the circumstances?”
And so it is left upon her elder daughter Muneeza, 24, to provide solace. “It’s from her that I draw all my strength. She’s a godsend. It is she who keeps our family, what is left of it, together and out of mischief,” she says, letting out a slight smile.
And yet Farhat cannot help agonise over the fact that “the poor girl, such a miniscule thing,” has “too much on her plate” already and at such a tender age, when she should be having a good time.
Having had to grow up in a hurry, Muneeza, a business graduate, has started taking care of her father’s business. Knowing that the two women are inexperienced, and that there are no men in the family to support them, people around them are taking full advantage. “Every day is an ordeal. We have to deal with much harassment and humiliation at the hands of all kinds of people, even those who are employed by my husband. They know we need them, so they take us for a ride.”