Standing tall: ‘I am proud to be the father of a martyr’

Mohsin Murtaza, the son of a former army official, attained what his father wished for himself.

HARIPUR: As Ghulam Murtaza stood among mourners at a funeral in his village in Haripur on Tuesday morning, he was unaware that the next funeral he would be attending would just be a few hours away; his last goodbye to his beloved son.

Ghulam, the father of eighth-grader Mohsin Murtaza who died in the senseless rampage Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants carried out at Army Public School (APS), is a retired subedar major who served the country for 34 years.

“I have yearned for over three decades to lay my life for my motherland but instead of me, my son embraced martyrdom on Tuesday,” Ghulam told The Express Tribune.

A bright spark lost

Sitting in his house in Sumbal Mohri village of Rehana union council, Ghulam says he moved his family to Peshawar in 2000, the year Mohsin was born.

According to Ghulam, Mohsin, the seventh of nine siblings, was a brilliant young man. “He passed all his exams with flying colours from the beginning of his schooling. His school progress reports showed he was exceptional in Math and Computer Studies,” says the bereaved father.



Being athletic, Mohsin was an excellent volleyball player and had played matches at local and school-levels. “Although he was a mischievous child, he was adored by everyone in the family and his friends because he would keep them entertained by playing pranks,” Ghulam recalls.

Looking back at the day that left a permanent scar on his life, Ghulam says he had come to the village to attend a relative’s funeral. Around 12:30pm, Ghulam received a frantic call from his son Yaseen who told him militants had attacked APS. “He was crying; he said he had searched for Mohsin but there was no sign of him at the school,” says Ghulam.

The devastated father immediately called an acquaintance who confirmed the school had been attacked and there were casualties. “I called Yaseen and told him to go to the hospitals to look for Mohsin and he found his body at Lady Reading Hospital.”

The teenager had been shot in the head and had injuries all over the right side of his body. “The militants must have shot him when they realised he hadn’t died of his other injuries,” says Ghulam between uncontrollable sobs.

The loss is unbearable for the aged father who cannot understand why the militants killed his son so savagely when he had done nothing wrong. Yet, Ghulam says he is proud to be the father of a martyr.

Of dreams that died

Young Mohsin would always tell his family that he wanted to join the army when he grew up and sacrifice his life for the country. Ghulam feels his son has achieved that goal but left behind a vacuum in their lives.

What haunts the family most is that they sent him to school on that horrific day despite the fact that he had been reluctant to go. According to Mohsin’s elder brother Mujtaba, Mohsin had been insisting his elder sister buy him a new hoodie. “She promised him that they would go to the market when he returned from school, but he never did. Now, the entire family regrets that we didn’t fulfil his wish,” says Mujtaba.

I can’t believe Mohsin is no more, says Mujtaba, a master’s degree holder who is receiving religious education at a seminary in Karachi.

“Killing innocent children is not among Islam’s teachings. I am also studying Islam and it does not allow the massacre of women, children and elderly people,” says Mujtaba. “I would advise them (the Taliban) to stop this bloodletting and seek God’s forgiveness,” he added.

Mohsin’s mother was too grief-stricken to be able to speak to this correspondent.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2014.