By Ganjal Baloch
It’s the 27th of April, 2026, 4:40 PM. Dear Ustad, how should I even begin? “Dear” feels too small, too fragile a word to address someone like you. Even now I find myself trembling as I write your name, choosing each word carefully, how could I not be careful with my words? How could I not be scared, knowing this letter is in your name, Ustad.
I opened my laptop and as my fingers touched the keys, I broke down, tears flowing freely. I’m not ashamed of that, Ustad. Crying is the least I can do right now. Your martyrdom—it’s like a fire that’s burned through everyone who knew you, leaving us scorched.
In the background, Ustad Mir Ahmed’s song is playing. I can’t understand a single word but I let it play. I will listen to it anyway. Some of his songs I grasp and some of it slips past me but that’s okay.
My head is aching terribly. I lit a cigarette, letting the awkward smoke fill me, hoping it will help me continue. How else can I process writing to you, Ustad? In my life, whenever something troubled me, I wrote about it. And now, if I don’t write to you, I don’t know how I’ll make it through this day without smashing my head.
Since this is a letter, I am writing it—it’s not something I’m writing on you. You cannot be written. I am clear on this. So let me make it known: this is a letter from me to my ideal person, the one I have always looked up to, the one who will never be replaced.
Mani Ustad, Mani Ra’hbar
I lost the flow of my writing. By 4:54 PM, there was something else in my mind, something that slipped away like the smoke from the cigarette I just finished.
Ustad, just few months ago you told me you read me. You also told me you don’t that much cared for writing because you were a man of war, but my storytelling—you said you loved it. “You do it Kamaal,” you said. I laughed, half-embarrassed. Guzara kanaga, Ustad, and you in response said, “Na Sher, continue it.“
And so I guess, this is where I should begin by telling you a story I’ve held onto. It was 2018, the night of December 25th—cold, very cold. I was young then, freshly enrolled in university for a BS in English Literature and Linguistics. But my sense of the war for liberation had always been clear, instilled in me since childhood by my father.
It was an exam break and I was in my hometown. I remember a friend texting me, saying there was news of Ustad Aslam and his companions being martyred. I told her it was a lie, that it couldn’t be true. But deep down I knew it was true because in our world, death is never fake. Yet, my mind refused to accept it. And it wasn’t until it was officially confirmed that I truly grasped the weight of the news.
My father came back from the sea that night. I rushed to hug him. He told me he smelled of the sea, of fish, and still, I held him tight while sobbing in his arms. He looked at me, confused, and asked what was wrong. I told him, “Ustad Aslam has embraced martyrdom.” He, too, told me not to spread false rumors. But even he understood that the news was, in fact, the truth.
We didn’t have dinner that night. The loss of Ustad Aslam is a national loss. And even now, as I sit here at 5:22 PM, I pause for a moment.
Ustad Jee’ o Jaan,
It’s now 7:30 PM. My laptop remains open, the Word file still holding what I was writing just a while ago. I offered Maghrib prayers and as I finished, my mobile was beside me, now with your picture as the wallpaper and a small note from me for you.
It’s believed that after offering prayers, one should make a dua to Allah. I intended to do so but then a notification appeared, pulling my attention away not because of the notification itself, but because my phone screen displayed your picture. A wave of sadness swept over me. I immediately folded my prayer mat, feeling the weight of the moment.
I am not someone who often prays, Ustad, but since the day I heard of your loss, I’m praying five times a day not missing a single one. I do it in the hope that I may cling to life and not fall into madness. My heart is so heavy. Pakistan bas gark baat. Ameen.
Ustad, Rashoon
It’s now 8:16 PM. After a pause, I came back, put something on to cook—I’ve been starving, didn’t eat the whole day, just had a chai. I see your pictures on social media, and it kills me. It has killed my appetite too.
Beloved Ustad, I was earlier speaking about the news of Ustad Aslam’s martyrdom. That was back in 2018. I wasn’t as mature back then, I must admit. It’s 2026 now, and in between, I’ve witnessed the loss of too many people including my father, many brave hearts, including Ganjal, alias Mazar Jan, whose name I’ve chosen as my pen name, and many others who gave their lives for this land. There are also those still in the enemy’s torture cells.
In between all this, my heart has grown both strong and weak. After all, a person like me, who is mostly emotional, how can the heart not falter? Ustad, I won’t compare anything, but I write and speak what I feel. Your news, to me, was as painful as General Aslam’s loss. For me, it was the same kind of pain. I recall the day General embraced martyrdom. I kept wondering what would happen to the struggle, how BLA would manage. But I guess that’s how the blood of General Aslam and courage and sacrifices of hundreds of brave-hearts have kept his legacy alive—made BLA stronger, more powerful, fiercer. But his loss, is a loss that can never be filled.
And for you, I will say—you are irreplaceable, Ustad. You will forever remain irreplaceable. Brave hearts like you will continue their fight, their battle. Your space will remain empty, for men like you are born only once. I don’t praise you, Ustad. I hate praises, and they don’t suit your timeless character. But I believe in saying things as they are.
On a personal level, Ustad,
Your loss reminds me of losing my father all over again. It feels like I have entered another period of mourning—as if, once more, in the heart of my home, a beloved has been buried. And what does a person do when a beloved is gone? mourns.
A dear friend always called you ‘Pith-Abba,’ and that is what you were to me as well. Ustad, this pain feels like that. I knew you only for a short time, but even in that brief space, your strength, your words, the way you stood like a shield… it gave a kind of shelter. And now it feels as if that shade has been taken from above my head once again.
Ustad, it is said that one must not mourn the brave, that one must carry their legacy forward. I have always believed that. But tell me when someone like you falls on the battlefield, how does one not mourn? How does one move forward when life itself begins to feel like a funeral after you?
Ustad, trust me, I don’t even know what I’ve just said, but I have to stop. I need to light a cigarette and inhale some smoke… it’s heavy, very heavy. You should not have gone so soon.
Okay, I have to stop here.
Ustad, the man of war.
It’s now 10:20 PM. Again, I have broken down. I kept crying. You would be wondering because when we used to talk, you always said, “Mani Sher,” and even told our other friend that I was a bold person. That’s how I carried myself with you. When you asked for something, I did it instantly. That was my respect for you, direct.
And today, I sit here writing to you, and I am crying. Not because I have changed but because your martyrdom has shaken me to my core. My respect for you: yesterday, today and tomorrow remains the same. But something inside me has cracked.
Ustad, one of your close friend, the one who joined the struggle after you left for the mountainsand the one I just mentioned earlier, he just came online today around 10 PM. I wait for days to see him online. When he appears, I smile a little. We talk, we laugh, we share memories. But since the news of your martyrdom, both times he came online, it only made me weaker. It made me cry more because every conversation somehow circles back to you.
After February 2026, he had gone offline. He came back on the 18th of April. I asked about you. The last time you and I had spoken was also at the end of February. You told me you were going on a safar, that once you had internet, you would definitely talk.
Ustad… in my wildest imagination, I never thought that would be our last conversation. Your final voice note still echoes in my ears.“Sher man line aa guda kaayaa tait ey halhawlae kana…”
Why, Ustad? Why was your shade taken from us so soon?
So when our friend came online on 18th of April, I asked him about you: “Ustad yar chuny?”
He laughed and said, “Ustad ady trundh ey.” We laughed. He said you had a lot of work, that’s why you weren’t coming online.
Then he sent me a picture of himself—he had shaved. I asked who did it. He said, “Ustad did.”
I joked, “So Ustad is experimenting on you guys?” He said he was the first customer.
We laughed, Ustad. We laughed. That night, he went offline. Later, I checked and saw news about a military operation in Zamuran. My heart sank for a moment. I just said quietly, may Allah protect the brave hearts.
Perhaps that was the same day you embraced martyrdom. We received the news on the 21st of April. It felt like qayamat. As if life itself had left my body. I was frozen like stone.
I won’t go into all of it that how I felt then, how I feel now. Life has become a kind of funeral. That’s all.
Coming back… I lose track so easily now.
He came online again on the 22nd of April. This time, he didn’t send a text like he usually does like “Chunay” with my nickname. He sent a voice note. I didn’t open it at first. I texted another friend, told him he was online and had messaged me. He told me to reply. I said I didn’t have the heart.
But I opened it. And it broke me again. “Man jod naha…” His voice—so heavy, so broken.Then another voice note: “Ustad ay haal aa sarpade…” I cried. And I replied, unfortunately, yes.
We talked that day. I don’t even remember what we said. Both of us were hanging onto each other’s words, trying to console, trying to remind ourselves of the nature of war… of loss, and more loss.
Ustad, the man of power you are.
It’s 8:47 PM. 28 April 2026.
It is still April—and I have begun to hate this month. Ustad, last night that friend of ours was online. I will tell you about his words later. Not now. He spoke about you, and it brought a fever over me. I haven’t smoked today. I’m not well. But April keeps pressing against me, so let me turn to a short kessa. Ustad, during my Master’s, I had a course—Poetry. That is where I first encountered T. S. Eliot and his long poem The Waste Land. I still remember how it began:
“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”
Ustad, that first line never left me, “April is the cruellest month.” Back then, it was only a line. Something to analyze, to underline, to write about in exams. I did not know that one day I would feel it. I did not know April would become something I would carry like a quiet blade lodged inside the chest.
Now April has your blood in it. April carries your name. April took you from us. And now, I think, I will carry this hatred for April for the rest of my life.
Ustad, The Irreplaceable You.
It’s 2:19 AM, 29 April 2026.
And still—April. I hate that it is still April. I want to skip this month forever, yaar.
In between, I keep shutting down the laptop and opening it again. I try to write, and then it feels like a drought settles over my mind. Nothing moves. Nothing forms. Beside me is a small diary where I’ve written down fragments of our conversations there, as if I was afraid they might slip away.
Ustad, it was the third day of Herof 2… or maybe the fourth. I don’t recall exactly. My memory is usually sharp, but today it feels blurred, perhaps this is what your loss has done to me, loosened something inside my mind.
You asked me about Herof 2—my thoughts, my sense of it.
I said, “hope.”
You asked me, how?
And I told you that after the Jaffar Express attack, the enemy had escalated violence, killing more and more. For a while, BLA carried out actions, but not at the scale people expected. There was a silence heavy with waiting. And then Herof 2 happened and we knew. This time, more brave hearts were ready to give their lives. The intensity itself told us that.
And again, we felt it—they are here, our kungurs. Our protectors are here. We are not abandoned.
Even though we all knew the enemy would respond with worse brutality, it did not matter in thatmoment. The enemy was defeated and that was enough. People lived those moments with the brave-hearts.
And you kept agreeing. But during that conversation, I kept rereading my own words before sending them. Me: who usually speaks without hesitation was suddenly careful. Because it was you, Ustad. I had to measure every word. And when you agreed, I remember saying, almost to myself, “Man wa gap zani baii…”
Ustad, I don’t know how to say this clearly but it feels like someone has filled my mouth with burning sand. I’ve lost my goyaak, I don’t even know the right word for it in English. Maybe it is speech. Maybe it is the ability to speak. Whatever it is—it’s gone.
It feels like I am standing in a desert, barefoot, and the ground is scorching. I am burning, Ustad. And your shade is not there anymore.
Shade—that’s what you were. and still, I try to believe, you are not gone in the way we fear. You are something that does not end. Your blood will remain our shade.
My beloved Ustad.
It’s 3:01 AM. And suddenly, I remembered something else: your laughing voice note. It came after my reply to you about Herof 2. I had said, “Pakistan aa wa Kamash ey hairstyle aa proshta, bike e chalaenag o gariyaal angat bil.” And you laughed.
Ustad, that laugh, it wasn’t just a sound. It carried warmth, a kind of ease, like for a moment the weight of everything had lifted. I remember replaying it, not once, but again and again, just to hear that breath of life inside it.
Now I sit here, in this hour that doesn’t belong to night or morning, and I try to recall it exactly the tone, the pauses, the way it rose and fell. But memory is cruel in its own way. It gives, and then it withholds.
Still, I hold onto it.
That laugh of yours.
Because in that brief moment, you weren’t only Ustad, the man of war—you were simply there, listening, responding. And I, without knowing, was holding onto something that would later become all I have left of you in sound.
Ustad, It’s now 3:43 AM. I paused for a while in between. I’ve taken two tablets for the fever, maybe I will sleep, or maybe I will keep writing. I don’t know yet.
Mani mehrawany Ustad.
It’s 3:55 AM. Now, I can tell you about the conversation with our friend. He told me he heard of your martyrdom. He said that in all his life, he had never prayed, but when he heard the news, he prayed for it to be fake, for it not to be true. He only came to believe when other companions confirmed that they had laid you to Gulzameen’s embrace.
Ustad, as I write this, I break into tears. Though I know, Ustad Jaan, even in death you will fight. You are a character forged in eternal battle. Your blood is not the kind that fades or dries over time. You are timeless. Your blood will find its way to the throat of the enemy.
But Ustad, I can’t help but imagine that moment when you were drenched in blood, taking those bullets, and finally lying on the land you loved the most. How you laid there, how it embraced you, Ustad… uffffff.
He also shared with me that just seven days before your martyrdom, he was with you, in your company—someone as close to you as this, standing beside you. I don’t know how he must be, how broken his heart is. He’s still in the mountains, still fighting, still braving the harshness of this battle. The brave heart he is. But he told me he’s unable to process it, unable to come to terms with it.
He said to me, “Pako aa mara prosht.”
I told him, “Ustad’s, blood won’t let that happen. It will break the enemy.”
He simply replied, “Inshallah.”
And in that moment, I could hear the weight of his words, the same weight that now rests on all of us. How can one process the loss of you? How can one bear the crushing weight of it?
My hands should stop writing, or they will scorch in this very moment. 3:59 AM. I stop.
7:32 AM, Ustad, I just recalled something you told me. You said you had never met me in person, but you had heard of me. See how unlucky I am that I could never see you in person. I could never tell you that Ustad, you are my forever ideal. How much I followed you. How much I was inspired by you. But you told me, since we now have each other’s contact, and since we are in halhawaal, it means we have met.
And then I told you, “Ustad, I will forever regret that I never got the chance to see you.”
You said, “Inshallah, if there’s life, ‘gendag am beh.”
Sigh, deep breaths.
Ustad, you remain timeless.
It’s now 1:49 PM. Just five minutes ago, I made myself chai, and was about to shower, preparing for Zuhr prayers. But as I sat there drinking my chai, my thoughts went back to you, Ustad. I can’t believe you’re gone. I lost my Ustad, and yet, life continues, bloody and relentless. I won’t hear your voice again. I won’t get a text from you again, asking me, “Sher hal kan, che korta, che kanaga ay?” How unlucky can one person be, to lose someone like you in this short life?
Ustad, gone too soon. Too soon. You should’ve lived a little longer, though I know brave hearts are meant to leave for eternal journeys. But Ustad, my heart still refuses to believe it. My cup of chai remained half-full, untouched. I couldn’t finish it. I turned to write you, because if I didn’t, I felt like my heart would explode.
For you, Ustad, the dearest thing was always your motherland. You left home, you left the luxuries that life could offer, and you chose hunger, you chose stones, you chose thirst, sleepless nights, and endless walks that cracked your feet, just for the sake of land. And that’s how you became drenched in its mountains, soaked in blood, and turned into part of the soil forever.
Ustad, whenever we talked, you always spoke of war. You spoke of how intense it could be, how much more we could do, and how we could involve everyone: drivers, fishermen, farmers, laborers, women, men, young and elderly. You said that everyone from every walk of life should be involved in this struggle for liberation. You even said that if someone gives a glass of water to a sarmachar, they too contribute. “This war is everyone’s,” you said. ‘No specific age or group of people but everyone, we all must own this war.’
You were always restless about the war, about how to defeat the enemy, how fast we could work, how much more we could process. Today, I imagine you resting, at peace. The mother of all—your land—has embraced you in its lap. It carries your blood, and now, it lets you rest. At ease. At peace.
Your sacrifice, your every drop of blood, was for the liberation of your land, of your gulzameen. I don’t know why I am so emotional over the martyrdom of a brave heart like you. But let it be. I can’t explain it.
The Ustad.
It’s 4:48 PM.
A man like you, whose war ran through his veins, whose grace, wisdom, intellect, and power didn’t speak of books or fake plans and assumptions: you were/are the definition of reality. You embodied what it means to be in the time of war, to understand how one must contribute and belong to cause. You didn’t give false hope, Ustad, you showed us the truth—the reality of the land, the reality of the war. And no matter what, you said one must be part of this war.
A leader like you, who was not just a commandar on the battlefield, but who kept leading others on the ground, will forever be our Ustad. And you cannot be written. Your character can never be captured in words. Though once you told me, “Shary ma shaeed buta, mae sra nebishta knay tao”, I replied, “Ustad, may you have the age of the ocean. This land and these people need you.” Ustad, how can I write to you, when in this entire letter I haven’t mentioned your name even once? You are that sacred to me that I cannot even bring your name to my tongue.
Though your life, in one sense, has ended, you are eternal. You are forever in power. You cannot be written, never and ever because where this flood of literature ends, you begin. Where human thinking ends, you begin. Where the ocean may be waterless, you will begin. There’s no end to you, Ustad.
You will forever live on. Though the enemy may have broken us at one point, because your martyrdom is beyond words, let your blood guide us. Let its color stay with us.
Ustad, I end this letter here with this thought that the worst is not that you embraced martyrdom and left. The worst is that I am still here, living after you. May in death, we meet.
In the embrace of Gulzameen,
stay in the power that you are.
Your legacy is not just in the battles you fought or the land you loved—it’s in the undying strength and meher you’ve passed on to us. May you forever rest in the embrace of your soil, but remain untouchable, in the power that only you can possess.
I end this letter here, but I will keep sending you letters, till…
till the moment I can write no more, till the words fade, or till we meet again in a place beyond time.
Wednesday, 29 April, 2026, 9:15 PM.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Balochistan Post or any of its editors.