How are Real-life Katniss Everdeens made: A look into Mahrung Baloch’s Life.
Who is Mahrung Baloch?
Lately you have probably seen clips of a woman with a Phashk (traditional attire for Baloch women) and chador marching against Baloch forced abductions and brutal killings. Fighting with a cracking voice while holding back tears. As I sit here penning this down, my body feels numb but a while ago it wasn’t numb, it was trembling. A while back, I was seething, as tears streamed down my face. Tears of sorrow. hopelessness and above all rage. Agonizing rage.
I happened to come across a clip of a woman telling Mahrung to first explain which agency she belongs to, as Mahrung stared at her in disbelief. Holding a comforter she was denied access to because of security threats. In winters. In Islamabad. With those hollow cheeks and cracked lips. The dark under eyes speaking for her what agency she belonged to. If there is any agency she works for, I’d call it the agency of mourning mothers. The agency of grief. The agency of justice she will never get. At least not in this world.
All Baloch girls growing up had a Mahrung inside them. A Mahrung who got suppressed and told she doesn’t understand this issue. Mahrung Baloch is a mirror to us. We look at her with a face that speaks for ourselves, well cared for, looked after. Our face tells what path we chose, the path of suppression and distraction. She looks back at us with that face that tells what path she chose: of suffering and suffering and suffering.
Mahrungs become Mahrungs when they see their thirteen year old brother being silenced for the rest of his life because he couldn’t stop his father from being abducted. He couldn’t stop it. Mahrungs become Mahrungs when their thirteen year old brothers go back to that wretched place to pick up their father’s fallen wristwatch from the ground as a memory. Mahrungs become Mahrungs when they see their little sisters fail to recognize their father and refuse to believe it’s him given the state he has returned in. Finally Mahrungs become Mahrungs when they get a phone call telling them an unidentified body as been found and they cry in prostration with their mother and sisters somehow hoping it’s not their father. This is how Mahrungs are made.
Yet you ask her what agency she works for? She’s a woman now but the spirit inside her has been the same since when she was just a girl. Her first protest consisting of a blocked road for a few hours. The protest she held after months of being locked up in her home because of grief. Haunted by the state of her father’s body. When she stepped out of that house finally, that was her undoing. Her end. Her beginning. The beginning of her end (as much as I hate to put my worst fears in words). Mothers from all over Balochistan come to her with pictures of their sons that have vanished into thin air, finally seeing a ray of hope in the face of Mahrung. They hug her and cry their hearts out as she holds them close and holds her tears back.
Who is Mahrung Baloch you ask? She’s hope. She’s our last wall standing. Our Katniss Everdeen. Our soldier. If there is a red line, it’s her. Mahrung Baloch is our red line.
They died, without their deaths, thousands of men.
Not me alone.
If you say so, I will neither tremble nor cry.
But let me ask you, how many will you silence?
Proclamations are thousands, not me alone.
(from Sheikh Ayaz’s poem, “Not me alone”)
Very well penned. Ah the horrors of this dystopian society we so proudly celebrate
Heartbreaking, thank you for talking about an issue we continue to ignore every day.