IN THE LINE OF DUTY
The death of a breadwinner is never a statistic. It is a human tragedy which has recurring implications, like concentric ripples that continue long after the pebble that caused them has sunk from view.
Each day until they themselves die, the families of all those who died in suicide-bomb attacks will suffer, in their own different ways, the pain and the consequences of these senseless attacks. They too have become victims - living victims, who have to survive something their breadwinner could not.
Watching scenes of carnage "“ whether on Shahrae Faisal at Karachi or outside Liaquat Bagh at Rawalpindi or opposite the GPO at Lahore "“ should have reconciled most of us by now to our fragile mortality. Images repeated relentlessly on news channels should have inured one to the omnipresent companionship of death.
Nothing though is preparation enough for the sight of sixteen stark coffins, hastily assembled from planks of unseasoned wood, their uneven lids nailed down haphazardly, lying shoulder to shoulder on charpoys, just as their lifeless occupants had stood earlier that day in the line of duty outside the High Court of Lahore.
These sixteen policemen were only some of those who had died in that attack at Lahore on 10 January, but they are symbolic of a commitment our nation's police force makes daily to deter, to guard, to protect, and if necessary to die so that others may continue to live. It is in a sense ironical that while the lawyers' community within the High Court's railings was agitating for the protection of the law, those policemen on duty outside deployed to protect them stood armed but defenceless against a sole, determined assassin.
It is perhaps symptomatic of our lack of common concern that, later that same night, there was not a black coat visible amongst any of the 500 or so mourners who stood in the Police Lines off Empress Road to bid farewell to the police martyrs.
There was police everywhere "“ men in uniform, in plainclothes, swathed in chaddars against the biting cold. There was press everywhere "“ cameramen, commentators with their handheld microphones, reporters with their ears compressed flat by mobile phones, and press photographers jostling for the perfect photo-op.
Eventually, at 11.00 pm, the VIPs came, stood in the front row ahead of the other mourners, and then offered the namaz-i-janaza while the cameras clicked noisily like restless crickets. For some reason the namaz was read twice "“ once for eight shaheeds, and a second time separately for another eight. After the VIPs left, the grieving families were left to retrieve their own. Some of the coffins bore labels, others not, but each pallbearer knew who he had come for.
As each coffin was borne aloft and carried to the waiting ambulances that would transport them to their villages "“ some to Sheikhupura, a few to Kasur, one or two to other suburbs of Lahore "“ one was overwhelmed by the impersonality of it all. No name was called, no roll-call taken of those who had been martyred, no individual reference by which one could identify who they were, not even their police badge numbers. Except to their bereaved colleagues and families, they were a step away from becoming a statistic in the next morning's papers.
Only those employed in our police force know that true extent to which they are called upon every minute of their working lives to serve and to obey, to endeavour despite the odds, to wear a uniform with dignity and with posthumous courage, even a shroud.
The average citizen prefers to limit his contact with the police. It is an understandable reluctance on the part of those who subcontract their security to the state or to private guards. The cost of the latter is quantifiable; the cost of state security is beyond calculation but it is one borne in the end by the entire community, and more often than we are prepared to admit by the policemen themselves.
Every morning, there is a pot-bellied policeman who stands at a particular street corner in Lahore's Defence Housing Society. He waits for a lift from anyone "“ a motorcyclist who will then be forgiven for flouting the laws by having a passenger ride pillion, or a considerate motorist, who does not mind listening to a policeman's lament.
If you were to ask him how he reaches his duty station every day, will reply that it is through the kindness of strangers like yourself.
If you ask him at what time he leaves his house each morning or returns to it every night, he will reply that he has leaves soon after dawn and returns home long after dark.
And does he have any children? "My wife tells me we have five children," he will say, simply. "You see, they are asleep when I leave in the morning and they are in bed when I return at night."
It is more than likely that on that fateful morning of 10th of January, the children of those sixteen shaheeds were asleep when their fathers left them to go on duty. That night, their fathers returned as usual to sleep, this time forever.
F. S. AIJAZUDDIN
13 January 2008. / Dawn 15 January 2008