ISLAMABAD, May 10: Moms around the world are being celebrated with flowers and gifts by their loving children on Mother’s Day on Sunday, but not all moms will be that fortunate.

Naiz Khaila, living in a run-down locality of ‘Islamabad the Beautiful’, is a great mother but will receive no card, no text message, no lavish dinner on the day. Why?

“Every child loves his mother but not all have the means to express it in material terms,” the fragile but intelligent mother of three from Karak district of NWFP told me in her broken Urdu in an interview.

Looking in her late sixties, she said she was barely adult when she was married off to Khail Ghani. After she had borne three beautiful children to him, however, he started distancing from her.

“You are not nice,” she recalled him telling her, and whammed the back of her head to show how he used to hit her to demand that she leave him for him to remarry.

Then one day when her youngest son, Ishan Ghani, was just six months old, he threw her out.

“For three years I could not eat or sleep. My brothers used to give me hope but it did not work. Finally they took me to Khail Ghani’s house, held him up at gun point and asked me to grab my children and run. Alas!, I had only two hands,” she said regretting she had to leave the eldest son behind.

Fortunately when he grew up mother’s love rejoined the two.

Back in her village after reclaiming the younger children, she took a bus to Islamabad the next day to be safe. “My youngest son did not recognise me but the three of us slept snuggled together for the next few unpredictable days in make-shift shelters,” she said.

Reliving the sad and hard years that followed Naiz Khail recalled toiling endlessly to bring up her two children. She worked at construction sites for Rs4 a day — Rs5 if the contractor was more kind.

“I would bring back empty cement sacks (of cloth in those days) and stitch them into rugs and blankets,” she said

She remembered going into the Margallah Hills to pluck garanday (berries) and sell them. She would collect wood for less than Rs10 when there was no work.

“I went without many things for myself so that my children could have food,” she said.

Today she lives with her youngest son Ishan Ghani, his wife and her six grandchildren. “He is a mason and is working hard now as a contractor,” she said as her favourite grandson Taimur-i-Ihsan tugged at her constantly for money, throwing away the Rs2 and Rs5 coins she handed him.

How could the kid know how his granny had to toil to earn the amount that he was rejecting as worthless. It is not money, gifts and food that Naiz Khaila yearns for but for something priceless — love.

While all the puffed up mothers in posh Islamabad would be enjoying Mother’s Day, Naiz Khaila would most probably be up the hills picking garanday.

“I have little mouths to feed,” she said with a chuckle. Celebrations, in Islamabad, nonetheless, have been replete with platitude, showy sentimentalism as well as love. Stores are decorated with special Mother’s Day cards with messages like ‘Go mama’, ‘you’re the best all rounder in the whole universe’ and ‘to a very special mother’ as well as gifts mugs, flowers etc.