On a multi-coloured mat lay various photographs of missing persons. A group of Baloch women are seated on the mat with the backdrop of a mural of activist Sabeen Mahmud, who was killed raising her voice for the same cause.

One of these women, 18-year-old Saeeda Hameed, sat in this camp outside the Karachi Press Club for more than three weeks around Eid-ul-Azha, in July. On the first day of Eid, she continued to sit along with other families of Baloch missing persons, in the demonstration held against enforced disappearances.

Neither the sweltering heat nor the monsoon downpours have been able to dissuade her. Her resolve to continue her sit-in is such that she attended the camp even during her second-year board examinations. At the time of the story going to press, she was at a sit-in in Quetta.

“We have weathered intense heat and rainfall, sitting outside KPC with children, and it was after Eid that a provincial minister from PPP came to meet us ,” says Hameed. “I will continue my sit-in until my father is released, no matter what.”

At the camp protesting Baloch missing persons in Karachi, tales of anguish and tears and children forced to grow up too fast

Abdul Hameed Zehri, her father, was whisked away from his home in Karachi on April 10, 2021.

“In pitch darkness and the deadly silence of the night, they barged into our house,” says Hameed, recalling the events from that night. “They said they were with the police, surveying the vicinity. They didn’t touch anything in the house but went straight after my father. After identifying him against his CNIC photograph in their phones, they took him away.

“When my mother ran after them, they told her they’d release my father in five minutes, but those five minutes have turned into fifteen months and we are still waiting,” she adds.

Despite the family’s desperate efforts to register a First Information Report (FIR) the day after the unwarranted arrest/alleged abduction, they encountered many obstacles at the hands of the police. Police officers allegedly misbehaved with them and initially refused to file the FIR. Eventually, it was filed against ‘unknown persons’.

Hameed, the eldest among her siblings, is deeply concerned by the impact their father’s abduction has had on her and her siblings’ education, especially given that her father had moved the family from Khuzdar to Karachi for better education opportunities.

“They have stripped us of our childhood and robbed us of our peace of mind, while continuing to sleep soundly every night with no remorse”, she laments, “We were once position-holders, but all we think about is our father’s suffering.

“In a recent exam I took, I twice found myself writing “Meray baba ko baazyaab karo” [release my father] on the answer sheet.”

Eid stirred up tormenting memories for Hameed. “When baba was home, he would wake us up after offering Eid prayers and greet us,” she says, wiping tears from her cheeks. “We’d go out to celebrate and meet relatives. Now Eid has no meaning, except that it marks 15 months since I last saw my father. We feel his absence every moment.”

The camp has become a place of solidarity for the families of the missing persons. Not far from Hameed sits Seema Baloch along with her toddler and her mother. A 27 year-old missing-persons activist, the pensive Baloch has been frequenting protests every year to demand the safe release of her brother Shabir Baloch, who has been missing since 2016.

Brought together by the same acute grief and uncertainty, the women here imbue the camp with a sense of fraternity. They share some subdued smiles as Mahrooz, Abdul Hameed Zehri’s three-year-old daughter, plays with Baloch’s toddler.

“This isn’t the first Eid that we are spending on the roads,” exclaims Baloch to the assembled protestors. “For the last six years, we have been on the roads. Six years of insufferable and tormenting wait and six years of not knowing what Eid means. For us, Eid would be the day our loved ones return home.

In pitch darkness and the deadly silence of the night, they barged into our house,” says Hameed, recalling the events from that night. “They said they were with the police, surveying the vicinity. They didn’t touch anything in the house but went straight after my father. After identifying him against his CNIC photograph in their phones, they took him away. “When my mother ran after them, they told her they’d release my father in five minutes, but those five minutes have turned into fifteen months and we are still waiting,” she adds.

“We are tired of begging the government that if our loved ones have committed any crime, bring them to the courts,” she adds. “Anything would be better than this languishing uncertainty. But there is no one to listen to us, everyone has turned a deaf ear to our appeals.”

Baloch shares that every time she leaves for a protest, her ailing mother wants to accompany her, but Baloch convinces her to stay home by promising that she will return with some news.

“Today my mother, weak from years of silent torture, is here with me, with a nebulous hope that she would get some news of Shabir.” With that, tears spring down Baloch’s face as her voice cracks. Seated in the front row on the road, Shabir’s wife and mother too break into tears.

Everyone understands the universal language of tears. “Do mothers raise their sons with love, care and affection so that you can fill your dungeons?” asks Baloch rhetorically.

Meanwhile, three-year-old Mahrooz chants slogans far beyond her age. “I am here to save my baba — what should I do, I want my baba!” Her tiny impassioned voice moves even the organiser of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee Karachi, Amna Baloch, to tears.

“Why is the police not freeing my baba?” continues Mahrooz. “Please someone save him. I am the daughter of Abdul Hameed, I am his angel. I come here every day to find baba. I want to go home with baba.” Her elder sister, Saeeda Hameed, too sobs at a corner of the road.

These slogans and speeches are the lessons that Mahrooz is learning as she grows up protesting on the streets. On May 27, when the Sindh Police arrested protestors, they threw little Mahrooz too into a police van and took her to the station.

Despite such tribulations and being forced to grow up too quickly, Mahrooz is still the playful, lively, vibrant girl she should be — running here and there and playing with Baloch’s and other baby girls. Like many others here at the camp, she still yearns for a semblance of a normal childhood and the return of someone very dear.

The writer is a feature story writer.

She tweets @sommulbaloch

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 21st, 2022