In the line of duty: Struggling journalist among twin blast victims

Naveed did not feel financially stable enough to get married.


Express June 13, 2011

PESHAWAR:


Abid Naveed was the archetype of the struggling journalist in Pakistan. Though Naveed had begun his career in 2002, he had only landed a full-time job in a local newspaper sometime earlier in the year.


His stint as a freelance writer was much longer – and probably as unstable as it was unproductive from a financial point of view.

Even three months into the job, Naveed, who was otherwise known as Asfandyar Chamkani, did not feel confident enough to accept a marital alliance that his younger sister came up with a few days before his untimely death.

The prospective bride was from Abid’s own village. But Abid turned down the proposal, saying that he would only look at the option of marriage once his job at the daily Akhbar Khyber was regularised.

Late on Saturday Abid and another colleague in the media became the latest casualties on the terrorism frontline in Peshawar. Several television and print journalists, among them the Peshawar bureau chief of Dunya TV Safiullah Gul, were also wounded in the twin explosions that rocked the busy Khyber Supermarket in the Cantonment area.

According to BBC Urdu, Abid was a resident of Chamkani village located on the outskirts of Peshawar. After his father’s death he moved to the city in search of a job that he hoped would support his family.

Abid had done his master’s in Islamic studies from University of Peshawar and joined a school run by Jamaat-e-Islami as a teacher only to switch over to journalism later on.

Abid’s mother had died when he and his two younger siblings, both females, were still young. His sisters were married off when his father was alive. But they wanted their brother to settle in life.

Several journalists from suburban Peshawar live in apartments and bachelors’ hostels located in the Khyber Supermarket, which is commercial-cum-residential area in the high security zone of the city. The offices of several newspapers and television channels are also located in the vicinity.

The Lala Restaurant – the site of the twin blasts – is a famous eatery of Peshawar and most of the journalists used to eat their dinner here. Last month, a bomb attack in the same locality claimed the life of tribal journalist Nasrullah Afridi.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13th, 2011.

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