A parent’s worst nightmare

Abid Raza Bangash searched for his son’s body for several hours at CMH and LRH.

PESHAWAR: For a parent, there is nothing more unnerving than having to search through scores of dead children in search of their own, but Abid Raza Bangash had no choice that fateful December 16.

An engineer at a non-governmental organisation, Abid was at his office on University Road when militants stormed Army Public School (APS) where his son Rafiq Raza Bangash studied in grade ten. The attack which left 150 people dead - most of them children - was later claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

According to Abid, his office was conducting interviews for a Unicef project, when he received an alert on his phone: ‘Firing at Army Public School, many injured, roads closed.’ He immediately left the office requesting a colleague to drop him to the school on his motorbike. “University road was completely closed off, there was no space to pass even for a bike rider so I began walking to APS,” Abid recalled.

Soon after, his younger son Murtajas, a sixth-grader at APS, called him and told him that he had been evacuated and was in Defence Park, so Abid rushed to him. Their driver also arrived and Abid told him and Murtajas to go look for Rafiq at Combined Military Hospital (CMH), while Abid headed to Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).



“It is not easy to search among the dead for the child you sent to school in the morning; I still did it. However, I could not find Rafiq,” Abid told The Express Tribune.

For several hours, the distraught father searched for his son at LRH while the others searched at CMH only to find his body there among the unidentified ones. Rafiq had forgotten to take his school identity card with him that ill-fated day and thus lay among the unclaimed bodies.

“My son was an outstanding student. He was a position holder in his school and a great sportsman,” said Abid.

According to him, Raza was close friends with Mubeen Shah Afridi and Yasin since an early age and all three friends died in the massacre. “They were always together, be it parties, sports activities or school. They were together in death too,” Abid added.

Seeing death up close

Recalling the events of that day, Rafiq’s younger brother Murtajas told The Express Tribune he was in class when the firing began suddenly. “We thought it was a drill but after a while it became clear that it was an actual attack,” he said.

According to Murtajas, their teacher locked the classroom door and told them to hide under benches. After intense firing for an over an hour, army men arrived and evacuated the students. “On the way out, I saw the bodies of a guard and a student who had been shot in the eye. I did not look back until I reached Defence Park,” he said.

However, Rafiq was in the auditorium and did not make it out alive. “I am not afraid of these people (Taliban) and will come back to school the day it is opened,” said the fearless boy.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2015.