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| Rakhshinda and Tabinda - not for weak hearts |
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| timbuktu |
| 07/30/04 at 09:54:08 |
| [slm] I wrote a story for IoL, and I thought I would share it with you here. As usual, this is also a true story, based on newspaper reports. The times have been juggled a little . [center]Rakhshinda and Tabinda[/center] I do not know if I will ever be able to write out for you Rakhshi’s and Tabi’s lives from the day they were born to their final days on this earth. I do not even know if I should give you a more detailed account of the last four years of their lives - perhaps maybe some other time.Today I will just tell you that on their last day here on this pleasant planet Earth, I don't think they said anything, I think they just looked at each other in sorrow, pity, resignation, and a longing for what they did not have. Then they must have hugged each other tightly for a long time before going to separate rooms in their two-roomed “flat”. And what was it that they did not have? Rakhshinda was now 18, Tabinda 17. Life had been difficult but bearable for these teenagers in the early years of their existence. For many years now, to them a good day in life was when they could eat just one full meal in a day. That happened rarely, on Eid days perhaps. Their father, never in good health, lost their job two years ago. He had lost it when the company he worked for went under, and he never found another steady job. He now went out looking for work as a daily wages laborer, sitting on the footpath by the road every morning, with other hopefuls. But by afternoon, he would still be sitting there, together with many others who had not been selected for day labor and who now included men in good health and able bodies. When these able-bodied young men had not found work, what hope was there for him? So he came home, day after day, without any thing in his hand to give his daughters to eat. In the afternoon these un-hired laborers went around the residential sectors, seeking food from housewives. Usually they did find it, but that had become scarce, what with the inflation and the freeze on salaries and wages. The housewives now had to think first of their own families. He heard of some hotels, where some God-fearing people paid for a few meals as charity, and where nearby the laborers who hadn’t found work or other poor people gathered, and sat patiently, in order of their arrival at the hotel. When the hotel’s waiter shouted, “three”, or “six”, or “ten”, that number of these people stepped forward, and were given the minimum meals the “philanthropists” had paid for. They would go back in a corner, and eat there. The condition was that they eat at the hotel and not take it homa. This was done presumably to stop people from hoarding meals. This distribution took place strictly in turn, those arriving first to be so served, stepping out first. This was in total contrast to other walks of life, where disorder reigned. Obviously the hoteliers had enforced this order, for a disorderly rush for food might drive off their more effluent clients. Some laborers still remained unfed, and went home hoping for work or a free meal the next day.He joined these hopefuls, and was able to feed himself at times, but what about his daughters! How were they to be fed? He couldn’t take the food with him. Occasionally he managed to hide his share of the food in his ragged clothes, and on those rare occasions the three shared a meal meant barely for one. One day the sight of his daughters’ famished bodies and hungry looks made him courageous enough to talk to the waiter, who sought permission from the hotelier, and he was graciously allowed to take the food with him, but it was still food for one. So the three went semi-fed at best all the time. Four years ago Rakhshi and Tabi had lost their mother, after her prolonged illness. She had worked as a housemaid, and as long as she also worked, they had full meals, sometimes bought and cooked at home, sometimes what the Begums gave away when there were feasts in the houses, and the girls got occasional change of clothes, hand-me-downs from the Begums. But her illness and funeral had put the family under a heavy debt burden. The girls had tried their hand at being maids, first with the clients of their mother, who had insisted they pay off their mother’s debts by working free. Work from dawn to late night, and to the satisfaction of the Begums, wasn’t possible without being energetic, and that wasn’t possible without enough food in your stomach, so these girls soon lost whatever jobs they were given. As now the economy was on a steep downhill slope, jobs had shrunk. On top of this the labor market had swollen with healthy young aspirants to maids’ work, and the sisters could not compete with them.So Rakhshi and Tabi and their father lived in perpetual hunger, day after day. Occasional daily labor’s work, performed poorly because of poor functioning of an ill-fed body, food for one that their father could sometimes get from the hotel, or rarely a plate to share from their slightly better off neighbors, was all they lived on.The family was more than a year behind in paying rent of their modest, very modest, accommodation, and the landlord’s patience had gone beyond wearing thin; he had now threatened to evict them. Their electricity and gas had long been cut off for non-payment. The landlord did not know this. Had he known, he would have thrown a fit, for he would have to pay the arrears and fines and the reconnection charges when he would finally throw them out. They had no money to pay these bills. They never had a phone in their house; even if they had it, whom would they phone? Perhaps they had never ever used a phone. They had not even traveled on a bus for ages, for the bus fare could be put to better use by buying a few morsels of food. Their only means of transportation were their legs. And their clothes! Oh, these had become rags, and by now they were unable to hide their bodies fully in them, so going out to seek the ever-elusive maid’s work was now out for them. Who would take a second glance at those shriveled bodies? But that wasn’t the point. The neighbors would talk, and their fiancés would hear of it, and although they were dying of hunger, they still had a sense of modesty left. They had been engaged to be married when they were still children, and now had come a demand from their fiancés for marriage. Their father had told them of the demand, but he didn’t need to tell them that this was an additional burden he couldn’t carry. His slumped, famished body said it all. They knew it would cost at least fifteen thousand Rupees each for the poorest of marriages. That was a total of thirty thousand rupees. Where would he find that kind of money when he couldn’t feed or clothe them with the barest minimum? They knew nothing of the macroeconomics or grand designs of this world. Sanctions had been in place on Pakistan, which had served faithfully its master at every stage. It had obediently sent in its soldiers whenever asked, without compensation. It had waited patiently for a few crumbs to be thrown its way. But its governments had made one big mistake. It is a Muslim country, and the governments sometimes had to cater to national interests, so when a non-Muslim hostile neighbor went overtly nuclear, the government and people of Pakistan sacrificed everything they had to obtain some from of deterrence. They had seen that being the “most-allied ally” did not save them from coming under arms embargo when India invaded Pakistan in 1965. For the Jihad in Afghanistan the US turned a blind eye to Pak efforts, and the people of Pakistan thought they had a friend for whom they had sacrificed the peace and tranquility of their nation. The Soviet Union and its client states targeted Pakistan for being host to the Mujahideen from the world. There were eleven bombings within the space of half an hour in Islamabad one evening. One took place in my market, and my pharmacist died in this. The President of Pakistan was murdered with his top generals in a missile strike on his C-130. He had been told something was brewing, and he took the precaution of inviting the US ambassador into his plane, but the sacrifice of an ambassador is perhaps acceptable to the US, for not much has been heard of that fateful killing. As soon as the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan, the US turned its full fury onto its erstwhile ally, Pakistan. Loans to Pakistan suddenly dried up. And when India exploded five nuclear devices, and threatened Pakistan, no reassurance was forthcoming from the US for its slave. All that the President of the US promised was to talk it over with the Congress. So Pakistan had no choice but to demonstrate that any aggression could and would be met. Pakistan was suddenly put under severe sanctions. The government of Pervaiz Musharraf was concentrating on keeping the creditors happy, so when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ordered a macro economical health prescription, it was followed to the letter. To gain this health, the Government of Pakistan when asked by Bush whether they were with him or not, had no need for second thoughts, and thus the Taleban were sold out. The IMF/WB representative, Shaukat Aziz, was installed to oversee the creditors’ interest, which has coincided with the interests of the USA throughout the history of these Breton Woods financial controllers of third world governments, as envisioned by their creators. Fortunately for the Governments (and that means the elite of Pakistan), Shaukat Aziz was a continuation of the age-old tradition of US-trained, US-installed Finance Ministers, who made sure that the economics was in line with the ever so clever masters in Washington, DC. Many a Pakistani intellectual had pleaded with the US to incorporate Pakistan as a State of the US of A, since we were doing the bidding of the US government; but why, when the US can get its work done cheap, why take on the responsibility. Shaukat Aziz announced that now there were 12 billion dollars in the Pak kitty. He did not announce that these 12 billion dollars are kept in a New York bank, because the people of Pakistan may ask what is their money doing in New York, when they are going hungry. They do not know that theirs is small change in the world of Finance, as the Saudis have trillions of dollars in the US. They do not know that it is insurance for good behavior of third world governments that the money belonging to its people is kept in the West. This way the third world can never ask for true independence. This way their only recourse is to rise in rebellion in country one after another, to be crushed cruelly, being labeled with any of the obnoxious names the US media, intelligentsia and population is ever so inventive about, and the beauty of this arrangement is that for their own suppression their own money can be used to buy armaments from the West, enriching further the investors in the arms industries of the West. It was with considerable hesitation that this fact was made public that the State Bank of Pakistan has purchased six billion of these dollars from the market. The implication was not spelled out though, that the government will now print that much worth of extra rupee notes, thereby causing more inflation and increase in number of people going below the poverty line. One really good bit, though, is that the 40 billion dollar short term, high interest, loan has been replaced with 34 billion dollar longer-term loans on lower interest rates - good, that is, unless some hidden clause emerges to qualify this. The sovereign debt rating for Pakistan was revised by Standards and Poor, the top ratings firm for so-called sovereign states, and the rating went from C minus to B plus (It is A now). Of the Third World countries, Pakistan Treasury notes were now most in demand. The IMF and the World Bank chiefs praised Pervaiz Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz. What is more, the President of the US of A, yes, I should be proud to repeat that no less a personality than the President of that great nation, now phoned Pervaiz Musharraf regularly for the good job the astute General was doing for Pakistan. If that is not good news, I do not know what is. That was the good news on the macro-level. On the micro-level, the level that lesser mortals like me can think and understand, the family of Rakhshinda and Tabinda needed 50-60 dollars a month to survive on.The marriages of the two sisters could have been arranged with 600 dollars. The same day of the good news announced by Shaukat Aziz, Rakhshi and Tabi hanged themselves from the ceiling fans in their flat. When the police arrived, the rags on their bodies were still insufficient to hide their nakedness, their poor neighbors not having extra sheets to cover the bodies. So the policemen, in a rare show of empathy, brought sheets from their houses to cover them. Good for the policemen, who normally are known for raping girls as a means of controlling the populace, so the class that could speak would keep silent in fear of losing its honor to the hungry policemen. All I know is that the father of Rakhshi and Tabi just sat there, unable to move, unable to cry, or should he cry even, he wasn’t sure. At least his daughters would not go hungry now. At least their bodies were now covered. At least he did not now have to worry about their marriage expenses. The funeral was arranged with donations from some worthy individuals; may God reward them all. I do not know if the girls cried before taking that final, irrevocable, step? I have no report on whether marks of weeping were found on their cheeks, shrunken from hunger. I can guess though that when dying, the girls were not aware that the misery they had endured had contributed to the swelling of the Government of Pakistan account in the New York Bank by 12 billion dollars? Shaukat Aziz is now projected to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. We can expect a further swelling of the kitty, followed by purchases from the US, the people of this neo-colony contributing their share to the recovery of the US economy, and we can also expect more suicides of people like Rakhshi and Tabi. Perhaps I should tell you that the percentage of those living below the poverty line in Pakistan has officially gone up from 20% to 33-34%. In reality, it is closer to 40%. By what I remember, at the last count the number of suicides due to hunger in Pakistan was between 400-500 a year, something I never even imagined would happen in an Islamic country. In India, massive suicides took place last year, perhaps of the order of 4,000 – 5,000 among the farmers of Karnataka alone. We cannot change the course of events, and we cannot do what Rakhshi and Tabi did, but I wish I hadn’t read the newspaper that day. Perhaps I should discontinue my newspaper, and order comics featuring Archie and Veronica and Bettyinstead. _____________________________________________________________________ copyright © peacedove@islamonline.net peacedove and PD are my nicknames on IoL. |
| Re: Rakhshinda and Tabinda - not for weak hearts |
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| Khariya |
| 08/04/04 at 15:45:46 |
| [slm] jazakallah khair brother. You really opened my eyes. When I visited Pakistan, I was surprised to read about how many suicides took place, almost at least one daily from what I read in dawn. I couldn't figure out how any muslim could do such a thing. I talked to my friends about it, most people were sad but didn't really seem concerned. I wish this was just a story, the whole thing was so senseless there is so much wealth and opulence, that there is no need for a single person to go hungry. I feel like cursing the rich but for a few months when I was among them, I acted like them, concerning myself with moronic things like new clothes, when I have so many. May God forgive us all.... |
| 08/04/04 at 15:47:50 |
| Khariya |
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