Ordinary days are special, but we do not realise it — not until we are deprived of perfectly ordinary days. We take each day for granted, never pausing to think how extraordinary it is to begin and end a day in peace.

Like millions around the globe, the people of our city didn’t appreciate this simple blessing until it was snatched away from us.

In those days I lived near a busy road. I got up early, like others in the neighborhood. We had to. This was the disadvantage of living near a busy road. The mornings were noisy, so noisy that it was difficult to sleep after 6 am.

Although I went to work at 10:30, I would often get up very early, open the window and watch the road coming to life.

The city woke up quickly. Most people were still sleeping — in the streets, on their roofs or inside their rooms — when I woke up. But by the time I made a cup of tea and sat by my window, many were up and about.

We lived in an old rickety building in a neighborhood that had aged rapidly and looked older than it was. It was always noisy there. So it took more than a little noise to wake us up. And it were the government buses that rattled us from sleep with their commotion as they came early to collect the workers, and later brought them back in the evening from their factories and offices.

Most of these buses were old and falling apart. Few had doors. None had glass in their windows. Windowpanes were broken. The screws were loose.

Each part added a different voice to the chorus. The wheels, because of the rubber patches inside the tires, turned with a distinct thud, thud, thud. The doors, which could not shut or open fully, rattled loudly. The chassis groaned under the passengers’ weight, and the engine creaked and whined as it tried to pull this racket along.

Besides these individual noises, the bus also made a collective protest as it struggled against the potholes that gave our road a distinct look. Every part of the vehicle joined the agitation.

Waken rudely by this din, I would open my window and watch as people began their day.

The first man I saw was the overweight bank clerk who lived in the opposite apartment. He often came out of his door as I opened my window, as if we had synchronised our moves. He walked fast. Almost ran, bouncing on the road like a rubber ball. He jumped over empty beds and open drains, avoided sleepy dogs and sharp bends. And halted abruptly at the bus stop, like a broken wind-up toy. He preferred being in the front of the queue and tried to enter the bus before others. He was very quick for his size.

His friend, the typist, joined him soon. They both worked in a local bank and were known as the odd couple. The typist was as thin as the clerk was fat. The clerk had thick, graying hair. The typist was bald. The clerk had small sharp eyes like an elephant. The typist wore thick glasses and blinked like an owl. They were close friends. Perhaps it was the contrast that attracted them to each other.

Within few minutes a small crowd would gather at the bus stop, each waiting for the bus of his or her route. They dispersed as quickly as they gathered. Every time a bus came, it swallowed a part of the crowd, leaving the stand to the latecomers.

Schoolchildren stood separately, holding their bags and books. In their white shirts and gray trousers, they looked so innocent, so pure that I found it difficult to believe once I was like them, too.

In a third corner stood the girls from a local college, also waiting for their bus. Opening windows announced their passing. The more courageous among the idle men even ventured out for a little walk that allowed them to have a closer look at these college girls.

From my window I could also see pigeons flying overhead and returning to their rooftop roosts to rest before flying again. Their fearless flight in the clear blue sky increased my faith in myself and prepared me for the day that I was about to begin.

I watched this almost every day. This simple routine gave me a pleasure I can’t define. It was not an overwhelming feeling. It did not make me jump with joy. It just made me feel alive. I felt connected to the process of living. And I accepted it without acknowledgment.

But now this routine has been taken away from me. Abruptly. Without any warning. We don’t have crowds at our bus stops any more, although people still go to work. They come out silently and maintain a safe distance from each other.

This change came after the city became a hostage to various ethnic and sectarian gangs who kill without apparent motive. They came and wet as they pleased. Everyone was their target — people waiting at bus stops, coming out of mosques after the morning prayers, returning home or children on their way to school. They usually came on motorbikes and when they saw a group of people standing together, they sprayed them with bullets and disappeared.

Some mixed with the crowd and blew themselves up, leaving behind a trail of blood and death. Some do it in the name of God; some for their language and some for their political beliefs.

I don’t open my window any more. Stray bullets can kill, too. So now my day starts inside my room, although the government buses are noisy as ever.

I don’t know what happens outside. I don’t look. The morning has lost its magic or mystery for me. I sit quietly in my room and feel the morning advance into a day until it is time for me to go to work.

I have no feelings left for ordinary things. Only big, grim and ugly events can move me. But even these feelings do not last long. Instead a strange fear has occupied our minds. We are afraid of strangers. A neighbor returning home late or rising early scares us. A screeching car startles us. And people walking in groups make us quicken our pace, this in a city where people always stuck together, gossiping till late into the night.

Our road had tall green trees on one side, adding color and shade to an otherwise grim neighborhood. Every time I saw the trees I thanked God for them. I felt that the trees protected us against rows and rows of ugly concrete that kept mushrooming everywhere in the city.

But soon my feelings changed. The trees scared me, too. Every time I came out I looked at the trees as carefully as possible to make sure that no one was hiding behind them. In some areas people had felled these trees for safety. We did not. Perhaps because we loved our trees or perhaps because we knew that even felling the trees will not stop the killers. But we are now too scared to sit under those trees.

A part of this road is called Shaheed Chowk, or the martyr’s square, named after a young man killed by the police many years ago. But so many people have been killed since then that we do not have enough places to name after martyrs. We do not call them martyrs any more. We just call them the dead.

Before the killers took over our city, this chowk had been my favorite spot where I spent many evenings with my friends. We often stayed till late at night. I was a latecomer. I enjoyed the relative calm of the late summer evenings when the shops closed and vehicles became less frequent, making it possible to talk without interruption. We stayed until midnight, as it was impossible to go home before that. Until then most of the apartments in our area were hot as ovens, emanating the heat they absorbed all day. That’s why people in our neighborhood preferred to sleep out in the streets.

Although summers are still hot, people have now stopped sleeping outside. We don’t visit the chowk either. But when we did, we enjoyed our time there. We were young, still in our early teens. Perhaps kids our age in more prosperous areas of the city had better things to do. We did not. We just gathered at the chowk and gossiped.

Some of us went to schools as well but were not very particular about them. We could go in and come out any time we wanted. Our school had hundreds of children and only handful of teachers, so it was not physically possible for the teachers to go after every child. In such schools neither the teachers nor students are terribly interested in education. Teaching is one of the lowest paid jobs in our city. Most teachers join schools not because they are interested in teaching but because they cannot find another job.

The students also come because their parents send them. The cane is still the favorite instrument of discipline in our area, and the parents are not shy of using it. So it is the fear of the cane that makes them go to school, not the desire for learning. Although there are always some exceptions: brilliant kids who do well in examinations and make life difficult for those who do not.

We had a convenient arrangement with our teachers: We did not expect them to teach, and they did not expect us to learn.

Although not highly educated, most teachers had to teach several subjects — Science, English, Urdu Literature and Islamic Studies. This did not allow them to become experts on anything.

But such schools are not meant to produce experts. The idea is to teach children to read and copy — not write — business letters so that they could work as clerks in various government departments and private companies. Those who actually tried to learn something were often ridiculed by other kids.

And thus it was no surprise that our schools had a high dropout rate. Most children would leave the school as soon as they found something more useful, such as an apprenticeship at a factory or a workshop. We took little pride in our schools.

In poor families, students are seen as a burden. Instead, everyone appreciates those who start working early. Those who brought home some money — no matter how little — earned everybody’s praise. They were our role models.