A small village nowhere..

He wakes up on his own. He doesn’t have a watch but they all wake up at the same time, 4.30 in the morning at the call of Muezzin. He washes his feet, hands and face with ice cold water, arranges his prayer mat neatly on the mud floor of his hut, and prays to the Almighty Allah.

He spends his day hunting wild animals for food and collecting dry wood for the hearth, not to forget collecting for the six months he and his fellow villagers spend huddled inside their huts during winters waiting for the warm rays of sun to pierce through the thick veil of ice and frost. He has just lost his daughter to Pneumonia, the most common child-killer here in the villages of North-Pakistan, settled in the lap of the World’s toughest mountain range – the Karakoram.

He does not have enough food, nothing grows here except for apples, apricots, wheat and if they’re lucky, potatoes. They plough the world’s smallest fields with their own hands and sometimes, goats. The rock-strewn peaks and sharp edged cliffs do not leave any scope for ground-water, much less any fertile land. The valleys are covered by apple orchards, pretty as they look. The village school is a flat ground the size of an ordinary kitchen-garden where children of all ages (mostly boys), line up each morning to sing the national anthem. Then, they sit on the ground in a circle and scratch at the ground with sticks, repeating the tables their teacher taught them last week. There is one teacher for three villages like this one. The school opens only during the summer months. It is impossible to sit on the cold earth and scratch at the two-foot thick hardened snow in the winters. Their pretty reddish-blond hair is actually caused by a disease called Kwashiorkar. Most of these children have loose teeth due to calcium deficiency.

The village is a group of mud-and-stone huts with a hearth in the centre where they light a fire by burning yak dung. The smoke burns the eyes and goes out through a small hole in the roof, cut out for that purpose. The village is connected to the world by a trolley. It is a vegetable crate which hangs over a rope and carries one person at a time, operated manually. You fold yourself into the crate, and then you pull the greasy cable with your hands, sliding the crate over a five-hundred metre deep gorge. If it broke, you’d fall. If you fell, you were dead.

There are no banks, no doctors, no lawyers, no government. But when you live here, first things first. Survival.

This is the current position of more than a hundred Pakistani villages, based in and around the Karakoram. There are a number of Indian villages that are based along the outskirts of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (POK) which share the same life as the village I described above. It makes me wonder. What about the government, Indian or Pakistani? What about education, independence, sovereignty? But why would they be concerned about these when they have so many other more important things occupying their minds. Food. Clothes. Fire. Warmth. Children. Death.

Humanity and Socialism seem so superficial when you see these Muslim men and women struggle everyday of their lives. What they need is, a bridge over the ravine that connects them to the World. Proper schools that give their children atleast a basic education so that they can step out into the World with their head held high; proper medical facilities so that they don’t get used to losing their sons and daughter who aren’t even born yet. Proper transport system, so that they don’t look stupid losing their lives crossing over a gorge, falling from a vegetable-crate.

Did you realise that this area is the most fought over piece of land in the history of mankind? Yet, it’s people are so neglected that it’s disgusting. What is more important- thousands of human lives, blood pumping through their veins, their eyes awaiting the fulfilment of promises made to them by the Sarkar, their hearts beating together defying the harsh altitude and forces of nature; or a few hundred kilometres of barren mountains? You decide.

If you want to know more, and if you care, please read “Three cups of Tea”, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

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