No minor loss: Blast deprives family of child breadwinner

Adnan Khan, only son in a family of seven sisters, worked at a motorcycle workshop after school, making Rs20-30 a day.

CHARSADDA:

He wasn’t just any child – at the age of 12, he was his family’s sole breadwinner, trying to make ends meet while also pursuing an education. Adnan Khan, the only son in a family of seven sisters living in Mitoo Kallay, Charsadda, worked at a motorcycle workshop after school, making Rs20-30 a day.

On Wednesday, he opted to skip school, where he attended the fourth grade, owing to a heavy workload at the repair shop. He was killed in a blast in Sardheri, Charsadda, along with 6 police officials. Thirteen others were injured in the remote-controlled bomb attack.

His father Riaz Khan, a painter who is currently jobless, told The Express Tribune that Adnan was a motivated student, allowed to pay only half his school fees – Rs120 instead of Rs240 – by his school’s principal. He would travel to work from the local private school after lunch on a bicycle borrowed from a relative.

Riaz said he didn’t aspire for his son to become a doctor or an engineer, but a motorcycle mechanic – he had wanted, he said, for his son to one day have the honorific title of ‘Ustad’.

“I was at work when he told me that he did not want to go to school that day,” Riaz said, “I guessed he was just making an excuse, but I permitted him to go to the workshop.” He said his son was preoccupied with school and his job, often unable to play with friends or his sisters. He said his son’s bicycle, decorated and cherished by the boy, had been collected by a bystander at the bazaar and the family would request its return.

Adnan’s cousin Majid said the loss had deeply grieved his family while Ustad Muhammad Shah, a motorcycle mechanic and Adnan’s teacher said his young student had great abilities and was a quick learner.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 23^rd, 2014.