I am not hopeless! – Fareeda Baloch

Brother! We all hear this word, I was also familiar with this word, I was aware of its significance, and the love and compassion attached to this word, but the separation and the long wait of three years has made me more aware of the importance of my brother and his need.

Everything in the universe has its own significance but for each one its importance, value and stature is different, even, sometimes I think about life that its importance is different for every member of society. There are countless people around us who consider this life to be the reality of the world, you will find countless people around you who will consider this life a mere deception for whom real life is about to begin after this life. We have also seen people whose lives revolve around one ideology. For some, their own life is everything, while for others, the people involved in their life are important and this attitude has been maintained by human beings since ever. For some, years are not important and for others, even moments are invaluable.

December 26, 2018, is just a date, for many people just like ordinary days that come and go 365 times in 1 year of human life but just as the moment is important to a person, this day is also enough to kill me 365 times a year.

There is no shortage of creatures that walk, crawl, fly or swim on this earth, there may be countless creatures for our consciousness that has no merit. The human who has been called the noblest of creatures may be this should be worthless to these countless people, but the man I know who values everything in the universe loves them and worships them but to him these trees, rocks, mountains, rivers, earth, sky are all inestimable. For this, whether it is ants walking on the ground or birds chirping early in the morning, all of them are invaluable and that subconscious made him worthless. Today that precious man is living in prisons with no idea what suffering he is going through.

My estimation of the value of an individual in the collective life of a human being was understood only because of being apart of this priceless person.

Individually, a human being is not just a body, which is born, grows, walks, speaks and one day embraces the death forever, rather, everything in society is connected with this one human being, the value of the moments spent with it cannot be paid from the caravan’s treasury. It was only after Rashid’s disappearance that I realized how precious the moments I spent with him were, his words of scenery, and of the beauty of the ink that came out of his pen I remember everything he said to me frankly or seriously, but the value of these precious things came to me when that star of my eyes was taken away from me.

He is not just a person who is missing. He is the accumulated wealth of my entire life. He is the complete asset of a family. That is why the matriarch of this family reaches out to every protests in the country and pleas for the sight of this light. Also a little girl from the same family speaks, screams and struggles to wake up the deaf people sitting in the halls and that lonely girl becomes so strong that she crossed three provinces alone and reached Islamabad so that her voice could reach the walls of GHQ, but these walls are lifeless walls, helpless walls!

I heard that the walls also breathe and the walls between which there is life are the same foundation, otherwise they become ruins, that is, the walls also breathe, they are also alive but these insensitive walls do not allow my voice to reach the oppressors sitting inside, neither of this old woman nor of this little girl Mahzaib’s.

I still remember when Rashid took the secondary exam, I often asked him what to do next, where to go, he answered with a smile, I don’t know. Whereas we were aware of all the issues of Rashid’s struggle for political and human rights, when the forcible disappearance of our close relatives and martyrdom in the hub of political friends frightened us.

This fear forced Rashid to drop out from education. He was looking for a civilized society far away from here where he could live and expose the oppression of his people. That’s why he chose United Arab Emirates and decided to go to take refuge there.

Today I think that it was the biggest mistake of his life rather it was also not a civilized society because there my brother was treated the same way as Majeed was treated in Pakistan, as we found the mutilated body of a 12-year-old boy as a gift after his disappearance. Today , this civilized UAE deported my brother after forcibly abducting him and handed him over to the brutal state in an unconstitutional and immoral way without a passport.

He was not given any right to say anything in his defence in the court of this civilized society. He did not even know what his crime was. He would just come home from work and even at home there was only a laptop and a few books were the rewards of his earnings. The way Rashid was forcibly deported and the way all the machinery of the state of Pakistan including parliamentarians, media, bureaucracy, courts stood on one page and on every channel of Pakistan, they would thank Interpol for celebrating Rashid’s arrest and deportation of Pakistan, but after a few days, they forgot everything and stated that Rashid is not with us.

Here I am forced to wonder if there really is a thing called global human rights in the world or any organization can exist for its protection or is it all a drama. Otherwise, a so-called civilized state takes Rashid in a private plane in the name of Interpol and brings him to their country and another makes a performance in the name of Rashid that I am leaving this country with my will and this whole world, world nations are silent spectators, Interpol (whose name all this drama was created) is a silent spectator, UNHCR, United Nations, Amnesty International are all silent spectators.

The only impact it has had is on the the people around him, his family, friends and a few sympathizers of humanity but I am not disappointed nor desperate I know that humanity has not died but humanity is still alive and the day will come when my brother will be told his guilt only because of the struggle of those who are sympathetic to humanity. He will be given a chance to prove his innocence by standing in the court and for once i will be rewarded with my brother’s affection, love and companionship.