Eyes are treacherous. They betray you because they can't lie. That’s why at our tavern, we close our eyes when we share our stories. We want the audience to know only as much as we want to show. Not more.

But this is not possible if you keep your eyes open. Eyes do not only see. They show too. They show our fears. Our sufferings. Our dreams. And our desires, both fulfilled and unfulfilled.

Eyes also expose our weaknesses. So it is good to keep them shut. Besides, we have already seen so much. We don't want to see anymore.

The more you see, the more you want to know. You ask stupid questions, such as: why did this woman, who fled after hitting a White House barrier on Oct. 3, 2013, had to be killed? Miriam Carey, 34, was unarmed and had a year-old child in the car. Officers who surrounded her before she tried to speed away again must have noticed this and yet they killed her!

Questions like this have no answers. They never did, neither here in Washington nor where we came from. It is worse where we came from. There people are always helpless. And they know it too but they do not want to talk about it.

They do not even want to listen to those who try to tell them that there’s a way to end this powerlessness. This helplessness forces them to keep their eyes shut.

Most of us, who are from there, would prefer to live a normal life, but cannot. So much of what happens around us is abnormal, insanely abnormal. There are few among us who have not seen a murder, a beating or a flogging. Sometimes people are killed just because they happen to be in the wrong ethnic or religious neighbourhood at the wrong time.

We have seen young boys being kidnapped, tortured and sodomised. They were forced to cooperate with the rapists because they promised to let them go once their ordeal was over. But they were taken out and shot dead.

Women are raped and paraded naked. People watch the parade but stay quiet. The same women are later forced to pardon the rapists. Parents watch their children murdered and then are coerced into forgiving the murderers.

We have seen people being beaten with batons and flogged in public because they saw or said something that they should not have. In some of our prisons hanging is a ritual.

All this makes us cynical. Since there is not much we can do to stop this, we just watch. We talk too but only after the murderers, torturers and rapists are gone. Then we chatter, like monkeys, repeating the same thing again and again.

And then, there are these bombings that have already killed more than 40,000 people in the last 10 years. Some of them are carried out by suicide bombers. Many of these bombers are in their early teens and are persuaded to do this with promises of a better life in the hereafter.

Since many come from families where even one meal a day is a luxury they cannot afford, it is not difficult to convince them that death is better than life.

This violence, by both individuals and groups against each, has been going on for years. Most of us can't recall any other experience more vividly than the bombings, hangings, floggings, and killings that we are forced to witness. Although most of us are silent spectators, we are deeply affected by what we see. It stays in our systems and haunts us for the rest of our lives.

During the last three or four decades, this is what the people of our cities have been experiencing. There are some who grew up in better days and when they have time, they do talk about those days. They have stories to tell, stories of love, trust and romance. But such tales are rare and since they do not match our experience, they have little effect on us.

The younger generation also had its moments of glory. We also shared jokes and talked about sporting events. But all such experiences were overshadowed by the collective violence that happened around us.

Even now when we speak of a personal event, we relate it to an act of collective violence. "Ali met his future wife a few days after the big bombing that killed more than a 100," one says; or another, "Hassan went abroad for studies days after the big public flogging."

At colleges, we spend more time watching protest meetings and rallies than studying. Although the majority does not participate, it is affected nonetheless.

In the recent past, such rallies often led to clashes with police. Such clashes then led to the closure of the college, sometimes for months. Because of these disturbances, some of us did our two-year courses in four years. This made a large number of people overage for government jobs or for admissions to professional colleges. Since most of us came from lower middle-class families, such delays in jobs and admissions meant additional problems for our parents.

In our society, important family events are often linked to the employment of the eldest son or daughter. So, for us, not getting a job on time meant delaying a sister's wedding or postponing another son or daughter's education. It forces our fathers to work after their retirement as well. We all had to face such problems because of the collective violence our cities always seem to suffer from.

But even worse is the impact this violence has had on our personalities. I am not an expert and I have done no case studies, so I don't know how much this violence is responsible for shaping the society in which we live today. But I feel that if today we live in a violent society, where there is very little individual or collective tolerance, it is because of what we went through in the past. In a way, we suffered twice. First when we suffered and witnessed all these hangings, floggings and killings, and later when we had to face their consequences.

Like other cities have administrations too. But instead of helping us lessen our burden, the administration adds to our problems. Police head the list of the troublemakers.

Our rulers – both despotic and elected – use police to perpetuate their rule and eliminate their critics. They encourage police to arrest, beat, kidnap and even kill their rivals. This has turned police into a criminal force.

In some of our cities, dozens of people are killed every year in extra-judicial murders by the police. These killings are often reported by the media but such reports have had little impact on the rulers. They are happy as long as it is their opponent who is killed.

There are few in our cities who will go to the security forces for protection. In fact, most people feel unprotected when security forces are around. This has encouraged self-protection.

Most political, ethnic and religious groups have formed their own vigilante gangs to fight both police and rival gangs. Like everybody else in this business, they also believe that offence is the best defence. So they often attack their rival groups to remove real or perceived threats to their interests. This means that the gang fights never abate. Often innocent people are also killed in these clashes.

In recent years, violence against women and religious minorities has also increased. Women are the most vulnerable. They are beaten up at home. They face sexual harassment when they go out, and are often victimised because they are unable to defend themselves. The society projects them as weak and vulnerable. Women are encouraged to stay at home. Those who venture out are seen as asking for trouble.

All this violence has made us mentally deranged and insecure. We often overreact, get irritated and tense. We often worry more than we should. Even while having fun, we worry that it would soon end, and the collective misery will return.

How much of this fear is rooted in our personal weakness and how much in our collective sufferings, we do not know. Sometimes we try to imagine how our personalities would have developed had we grown up in a less violent environment.

We wonder how it would feel to live in a place that does not need ethnic or religious gangs for protection, where borders are peaceful, and where political parties do not engage in gun battles for power.

Our villages are worse. Big landlords own most of the agricultural land. They hate change as it makes them insecure. So they oppose anything new, even roads, schools and hospitals. They fear that such developments would bring the people in contact with today's world and change their thinking. They will not remain submissive and helpless. They will start demanding their rights.

Even in the 21st century, the landlords run their own fiefdoms where nobody dares to oppose them. Those living on their lands are forced to vote for them or face eviction. This means that it is only the landlords who win elections from rural constituencies.

And since the majority live in the villages, the landlords have always dominated the parliament. They also have a strong influence over the civilian and military bureaucracy.

This situation has created a lot of frustration in the cities. The city people see no place for themselves in the system. No scope for upward movement. The country has a large number of educated unemployed and even a greater number of those who are under-employed.

Disappointed by the political parties, they are turning to various ethnic and religious groups that use violence as a means to achieve political gains.