This story was originally published on Dec 16, 2021.

I REMEMBER coming home from school that dreadful day — Dec 16 — seven years ago, completely oblivious to the carnage that had unfolded a few hundred kilometres away. I had no idea that while I had been studying math and science, children wearing the same green sweaters as me and writing in the same Army Public School and College System (APSACS) notebooks I had been writing in, were being massacred.

I remember the TV blaring with the news of an attack on a school in Peshawar and the shock and confusion I felt. An attack? On a school? Of all the places, a school? Why? It made no sense. I remember how, as the day went on, the news only got worse.

The gory details slowly trickled in. Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) gunmen had stormed into the school in the morning and had gone on a shooting spree. They had shot children in the middle of a lecture on first aid in the main auditorium. They had killed children in the middle of a class, some paying attention to their teachers, others daydreaming about how they would spend the coming winter break.

They had burnt the principal alive. We learnt of how children had laid beneath the bodies of their friends to stay alive, of how children had been shot in their faces, arms and legs, and had seen their friends die in front of their innocent, bewildered eyes.

We learnt of the heroic accounts of teachers who had given their lives to save their students’, of children taking bullets to protect their friends, of how the brave principal refused to leave for safety without her students. I remember how it all seemed unreal, and how I wished it was all just a bad dream. It wasn’t.

I remember seeing pictures of it all on TV: the blood-stained corridors and chairs, children being rushed out of the school. I remember watching children a little older than me screaming and crying, and parents wailing in grief and disbelief. I remember how when we went to school the next morning, the only thing we talked about all day was what had happened the day before.

To our class of 30 something sixth-graders, it made no sense. Yes, we had heard of terrorist attacks, but never did we imagine that someone could attack a school. Why? I would not lie and say we felt no fear at all, but soon we realised that this fear of ours was exactly what the terrorists wanted.

Those cowardly murderers thought that attacking a school would scare us away. But they forgot a simple fact; we are resilient Pakistanis. We have proved time and again that our resolve cannot be shaken. We always rise above such cowardly behaviour and we will not give those murderers an easy victory. We will not cave in to fear so easily. We will fight back. We will continue to learn and go to school, we kept telling each other. We kept telling ourselves, in fact.

Our fear was thus replaced by determination to prove to the world that no matter what, we will keep learning .The survivors of the attack chose to avenge and honour the lives lost by coming back to school, proving that the terrorists had failed and the survivors had won, we had won, the nation had won.

Today, especially for my generation, Dec 16 not only marks the anniversary of the day about 150 lives were lost in one of the most horrific attacks in Pakistan’s history, but is also a day of reflection and introspection. It is the day we remember and honour the lives lost and the dreams cut short.

Today, three huge white marble walls stand towering over the vast grounds of the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Etched into these walls and into our hearts are the names and memories of the lives lost in that attack. Standing at the foot of this imposing structure, one is reminded of the haunting memories of that day and also of the debt we owe to these martyrs of hope and courage for a better tomorrow. After all, the motto all us APSACSians chant in every morning assembly is: ‘We shall rise and shine!’ And rise we will … shine we will.

Aamina Binte Khurram
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2021