Second truth

Last week, I received a letter from a father who had just sent his daughter to France for higher education from Lahore. Written on her birthday, the letter is more than a message — it is a confession of love, fear and defiance. It reveals not only what opportunities and challenges await our daughters abroad, but also what is painfully missing for them at home. How do protests and strikes bring life to a standstill, endangering the lives and property of the common citizen? How polluted the air in Lahore is, slashing the lives of our loved ones. The letter reads:

The house still holds your laughter, though your suitcase has been gone for over a year now. You left Pakistan like millions of other young people - full of hope, fear, and the unspoken desire to breathe. From Lahore to Paris, your world expanded faster than our understanding of it. You — who once weren't allowed to visit Anarkali Bazaar alone — now stand at train stations across Europe, board intercity trams, navigate airports solo and look strangers in the eye without flinching. Some men stare there too, yes — but they do not touch. They do not follow. They do not feel entitled to your fear.

Here, roads are blocked without warning — by anger, by politics, by mobs inflamed by ancient rage. If you had been here today, stuck between Lahore and Islamabad for a flight, how would you have reached the airport? Somewhere, a group holding sticks would have declared a revolution on the highway while a confused government shut down what was left of life. Imagine the weddings that never happened, the funerals people never reached, the job interviews and exams missed forever. Here, people crawl under shipping containers to get to work. Tell me — what kind of nation makes humans crawl?

And yet, I contradict myself. Because there is a second truth, one stitched into the soil we come from. This country is flawed, sometimes ugly, often cruel - but it is ours. Its language rests on our tongues like home. Its chaos plays to a rhythm our heartbeat somehow understands. A country is a border. But a watan — a homeland — is a feeling. It follows you, even when you try to outrun it.

In Lahore, ten thousand rupees still buys help at home, hot meals, and time to think. We grow our own wheat, rice, lentils, vegetables, fruit and cotton — this land feeds us even when the state does not. Festivals still light up the streets. Random kindness still exists. Strangers still pray for strangers. Yes, this is our era of decay — but has the world elsewhere become kinder? Isn't Europe burning too — from loneliness if not from fire? Isn't Globe wrestling with madness? Modi's India, Putin's Russia, Netanyahu's Israel — tell me, where exactly is civilisation safe?

So what do I tell you, my daughter? Stay there and survive — or return and belong?

What I feel is a lifelong struggle to understand it — to survive its contradictions without becoming bitter. To stay human in a place that keeps subtracting humanity from life. We choose cruelty even when we have the option of kindness. We cling to absolute judgment as if doubt were a sin. We think in finalities, never in possibilities. So here is my only real advice to you:

Don't choose permanence. Choose movement. If you return and it feels wrong — leave again. If you stay abroad and your heart aches — come home. No decision is final.

Live vividly. Think freely. Stay gentle, even when the world is not. Learn, unlearn, and begin again.

Today is your first birthday since you are not with us. While your mother smiled and your friends cheered, I quietly thanked God for one thing alone: that in a world collapsing between brutality and loneliness, you still carry light.

I am not sure if we will meet again because it is the start of smog season, and who knows who will survive it this year, coughing, too. But my dear daughter, stand at ease under the clear skies, look towards the sparkling stars and take deep breaths in refreshing air!

With Love

DAD