A bright sunny morning in August, a few schoolchildren quietly made their way to their schools. With the majority of schools closed in the city due to summer vacations, most of the neighbourhood was still asleep in their houses.
All her friends were on holidays but the private school where 10-year-old Zainab studied was, however, open.
After putting on her uniform, she got ready for school. She picked up her school bag and stepped on to the street.
Her fate lurked at the corner.
Suddenly, she heard a gunshot and a searing pain in one of her eyes. Then everything went blank.
Five days later, Zainab regained consciousness, only to be told she had lost one eye but was lucky enough to be alive.
A stray bullet had hit the 10-year old girl while she was on her way to school in Bihar Colony – a settlement in the suburbs of Karachi, where the majority of residents are migrants from the Indian state of Bihar, who had settled here after partition.
Located near the Kati Pahari – the notorious flashpoint of ethic violence and riots in the city, Bihar Colony is also vulnerable to the aftershocks of violent bouts and becomes a battleground whenever ethic riots grip the city. During the last wave of bloodshed in August, several people belonging to different communities in the neighbourhood were killed.
Lucky to survive among them was Zainab.
She had wanted to become a doctor after completing her studies, but after the incident, she changed her mind and wants to be an ophthalmologist – for treating children who lose their eyes during armed conflicts.
Zainab may never be able to get her eye back as her father is a daily-wage worker at a garment factory and unable to afford the expenses for an artificial eye for her only daughter. So she awaits divine help or a kind philanthropist to come to her help.
But Zainab is not the lone victim of violence in the city.
According to Abdul Waheed Khan, an Ashoka Fellow running a chain of schools in Qasba Colony and its surrounding areas, at least 15 schoolchildren were killed in the area during the August riots.
“I have the complete record of all the deceased children; their names, ages and the date of their killing,” the social entrepreneur said. Along with the photos of their dead bodies, he has saved all these details in his laptop.
Khan used to live in a small village in Swat, but when the Taliban started blowing up schools in the picturesque valley, he migrated to Karachi for educating his children in a better atmosphere. But despite moving far away from the violence-hit Swat valley, terrorism seems to have followed him to Karachi also.
“In recent years, hundreds of people have been killed in ethnic riots in the city and many of them were schoolchildren,” Khan said. “But the issue was never highlighted by the government authorities or in the media.”
He said that due to violence in the city, apart from routine businesses, schools also suffer but the mainstream political parties do not take such issues seriously.
Working on the same issue, Khan’s colleague Syed Latif has constituted peace committees of schoolchildren, who will preach for restoration of peace in the area.
“We have made these committees in 300 streets and the members will talk with elders to spare schools and students from violence,” Latif said. “We are sure that it will work and people will listen to the children.”
