My friend Jonathan Mardell, from Winchester, England, advises me through emails not to get anxious about recent events in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and think positive. He suggests, “My elder son, Robert, says that the newspapers are always full of gloomy news. Occasionally they have a ‘good news feed’ with happy little stories of people helping each other and we show these to him to cheer him up!”

“Anyway, there are people here who hope for a bright future for Peshawar!” he reassures me.

Jonny and his dedicated team comprising young men and women, worked for ‘Save the Children’ during the heydays of Afghan Jihad in early 1980s, and lived opposite Edwardes College. Life was normal to the extent that his friends, both men and women, went to the lone five-star hotel for swimming. We visited Peshawar sites freely, besides adjoining districts and agencies. His parents came for sight-seeing. Elder sister Elizabeth working for the BBC was besotted by the diversity of the landscape and fell in love with Chitral as did many expats. The happy carefree moments of the bygone period still evoke a heart ache.

The birthplace of Gandhara and being one of the oldest living cities of the subcontinent, Peshawar was once renowned for the Mughal era gardens and flowers.

The 2000-year heritage sites and historic walled city with interlacing labyrinths connecting narrow alleys, handicraft shops, qahwa khannas, a mosaic of artisan streets and boutique shops , leading into Qissa Khwani (the storytellers bazaar) connecting Chowk Yadgar – rivaled the magic of “Trafalgar Square” in London.

No wonder the French named Peshawar, “Casablanca of the East” for its mystique – the British, their passion for the former NWFP, called it a “Land of romance”. Lately, Jonny like other expat friends are not only worried for the unraveling of the heritage sites – but also the death toll that seems not to subside. The frenzied media reporting bomb blast and suicide attacks have become newsworthy items from Peshawar.

Being member of a group of well-meaning individuals desperately trying to preserve and conserve the natural and built environment of the old city, engulfed by conflicts and pouring of IDPs, have tipped its ecology and architecture into becoming a concrete and human wasteland. Maureen Lines (Frontier Heritage Trust) is one such lady, inflicted with some age-related health problems - but her romance for KP and Peshawar remains undeterred.

Like Afghanistan and Iraq, being conflict zones, KP too is fast losing its tangible and intangible heritage, the predatory consumer and market forces too are contributing to the destructive cycle alongside the extremist ideologies and their deadly byproducts.

Just when I meant to write something “positive” and creative about Peshawar, instead of focusing the “negative” I was greeted by an ambulance and police sirens, Tuesday morning, as I approached the Khyber Medical College gate. Another major bomb blast on Khyber Road targeting a bus carrying passengers was the latest such incident.

As fate would have it – a set of eight mutilated bodies – another “breaking news” for the voracious electronic media that thrives on death and destruction – greet us today.

The upper body blown away, torsos missing, limbs gone and heads severed…..are the newsworthy items for the world. The unidentified bodies were dumped in mortuary of the Forensic Department, where worried Professor Dr Hakim Afridi informed me how hard it is to keep one’s sanity in these conditions and 24 hour emergencies. The dilapidated walls and halls of the mortuary itself reflect the insensitivity of the society at large and the uncaring government having failed to equip and upgrade the existing facilities to handle the frequent and heavy emergencies since four years.

Watching the mainstream media extolling the two reigning gladiators – Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif – vying for the throne of Punjab, obviously, excluding the rest of Pakistan, where genocide goes on unabated speak volumes about our callousness. Daily human tragedies are just blips on our collective psyches and TV sets.

Who knows when I can write one again about the city of gardens and flowers? Am not sure during my lifetime, if I live another day?

I am sorry to Jonny and other expat friends I have no good news to tell. At the moment I am, like many in Peshawar, at loss and do not have a choice either.