Peshawar school attack: Coffin makers build caskets while wiping tears

Say customers came with requests for coffins of all sizes.

PESHAWAR: Mohammad Sohail and his 10 coworkers had their tools working overtime, always a sign of better business at a craftsman’s shop. However, instead of smiles on their faces, it was tears that welled up in their eyes as they completed 130 coffins for those killed in the Army Public School terrorist attack.

The 40-year-old and his team at the National Taboot House in Yakatoot Bazaar had the heart-wrenching task of making coffins of all sizes for the departed.

Owner Sohail tells The Express Tribune that the December 16 Army Public School terror attack was unprecedented in the history of the country. “Such a barbaric act has never been seen,” he says.

He has been running the establishment in Yakatoot Bazaar for the last 25 years, just two kilometres away from Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.

“A large number of people, including relatives of victims, social workers and hospital staff, gathered at the shop at the same time of the day, demanding coffins of all sizes,” Sohail recalls. He adds around 120 of the coffins were for small children as they made up the majority of victims.



“For the first time in the shop’s history, we sold 130 caskets in one day,” he says. “When terrorists struck in the past, we would prepare between 30 and 50,” Sohail says. Since his shop is near Lady Reading Hospital, providing coffins for the deceased is nothing new for the craftsman. “However, it has never been in such volume.” He recalls a time when the shop set up by his father was the only one making coffins in Yatakoot Bazaar, but increasing terror attacks gave birth to more establishments like his.

“The price of each casket is between Rs2,500 and Rs3,000.” He recalls most that came to his shop were devastated. “Every face that day was grief-stricken. There was only silence as they placed their orders for a coffin and quietly waited.”

The coffin maker himself was overcome with emotion as he completed his day’s work. “Whether it was a shopkeeper, government official, policeman or journalist, we all wept that day,” he says despondently. “It was the first time I cried providing coffins to my customers.”

Sohail says this was one of the four major terror attacks he remembers in the past five years. “This was the biggest and most barbaric assault.”

He said apart from coffins for children, grieving families needed smaller sized caskets as the bodies of the deceased were badly mutilated or not complete. The shop owner says an increase in their business is never a happy time as it is always associated with a terrorist attack.

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