Another martyr, another widow
Twenty years old with a two-month-old daughter named Rameen, Touba sadly recounts how her mother was widowed when she was only three years old. Now, her own daughter’s fate seems startlingly similar. Touba’s father, Ikram Ullah Khan was a jailer at the Central Prison, Lahore. He was killed by a prisoner at Litten Road on 16 September 1992.
The war of rhetoric will come to an end and it will again become 'business as usual'. The temporary attention of the security establishment to the families of its fallen soldiers will wane. The military establishment will continue to fight a war in which it does not know which side it belongs to. Another orphaned girl will struggle through the rough times that this homeland readily offers. And she will never know whose side her father sacrificed his life for until the next accident which will be labeled as martyrdom.
* Photos also provided by author