Empathise, don’t just sympathise

For most people living the life I have lived, it is impossible to imagine anything out of our normal routine. We are born, we are looked after, we are fed, dressed, educated, and loved. Our friends have the same lives and the people we are surrounded by have the same lives. Everything is perfect. We laugh, go out, watch movies and dream for even bigger and better things. Until a calamity strikes the nation.

We talk about the incident, over and over again, watch it on the news, share our comments on social media and bring it to our dinner tables — then someone asks us about a new TV series, we get back to our normal routine. Whatever happens has no effect on our lives as its proximity is far. Not to mention in a country like this, a calamity is not something out of the ordinary. We are prone to bad news and have now stopped caring.

‘Up north’, or as we like to call it, thousands of families, not unlike our own, have left their homes, their neighbourhoods, their entire lives because of an offensive launched to clear the area from militants. Relatives and friends have been separated and they do not know when they will next see each other. They had to leave, knowing that their houses would not remain standing the next day — they grabbed what they could. Their present is as uncertain as the future.

While we plan our Iftar parties prior to the arrival of Ramazan, these people wonder how they will break their fast and whether they will still be moving from one camp to another, searching for a place to settle. There is a glaring difference between us and them — yet, it could easily have been us, sitting in those trucks with our belongings, without knowing where we are going and how we will get there. But it is not us, we are not suffering, yet we like to say that this is our war.

It is time we take responsibility and help our people from North Waziristan. They are a part of our country and have dreams, aspirations and families like we do. They need our help.  Whether we believe in the war or not, we need to believe in humanity.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2014.