‘Hum in kay khilaaf 302 ka parcha katain gay’

While Azra was telling her story, a handsome young man in a smudged shalwar kameez and red Sindhi topi, approached her. Azra made room for him on the charpoy. “This is Fayyaz,” she told me. I offered to shake hands with him, but Fayyaz ignored the gesture and sat on the other side of the charpoy.

He looked upset. The old guardian lady brought a bottle of mineral water. Fayyaz drank some and then turned towards me to shake hands. I took the opportunity and obliged.

“Azra was telling me how the two of you escaped the floods and came here,” I said, trying to start a conversation.

“Why do you want to know? Are you the government?”

I told him my interest was purely journalistic and I wanted to tell people how families were destroyed in the floods, but nevertheless, how new families had come into existence.

Fayyaz did not react and stared at Azra, who was looking at him with a hopeful smile.

“We need your help!” Fayyaz suddenly burst out. “We are citizens of this country. We lost our families and our lives were put at risk because some politicians, who wanted to save their lands and crops, breached Tori Bund. They knew our village would be flooded and lives lost. But there was no warning, nothing. Aren’t we citizens of this country? Are lands and crops dearer than our lives?”

I lowered my head in shame as a few other survivors gathered around the charpoy waiting for my response. As a gesture seeking forgiveness I put my hand on Fayyaz’s knee and all I could utter at that moment was, “I am sorry... I am sorry on behalf of the politicians who breached Tori Bund. Maybe, that was God’s will.”

“God’s will?”

A bearded man in a lungi pushed his way forward through the crowd and yelled at me. “Tori Bund was breached just to cause devastation in Sindh, because this was a great opportunity for these politicians to get their hands on foreign aid. What God’s will? You know it.”

He started coughing and was pulled away from the crowd. One of his mates proffered a lit cigarette.

I was stunned at the assessment and assignment of guilt of a people who the politicians probably forgot once their vote was cast. Politicians who probably did not give them the credit they deserved.

Fayyaz waves his hands to the air as a message that the crowd should disperse. “I will talk to him... Let me talk,” he said.

“My brother, there was no need to breach Tori Bund. No need at all. My father is in the irrigation business and we know what’s really happening. There was indeed pressure on Sukkur Barrage and the rising floodwater in Sindhu posed a serious threat to Sukkur city as well. The solution was not to breach Tori Bund,” he explained.

Two options were available. “Divert the river water into the seven canals upstream from the barrage. This is why these canals were built, to work as safety valves. The second option, although not desirable, was to breach Ali Wahan Bund. It would have caused less devastation. But they breached Tori Bund.”

“So what is your plan? What can you do about it?” I asked Fayyaz.

“Our first priority is to get out of this place and then I am going to file a case in the Sindh High Court against these politicians,” he said.

“But this was a natural calamity, how are politicians responsible? And under what clause are you going to sue them?”

“Okay, this is a natural calamity. But breaching a bund despite knowing that it would endanger people’s lives is not natural... or is it? Hum in kay khilaaf 302 ka parcha katain gay (We will get them booked under Section 302).”

TO BE CONTINUED

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2010.