Story of elderly woman’s heart-wrenching search for her missing son goes viral on Twitter

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A 70-year-old woman from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has been searching for her missing son for almost a decade. On August 30, she participated at a rally in Islamabad to mark the International Day of the Disappeared.

As pictures from the rally began to make rounds on social media, a twitter user named Swat Swag identified her participating in the rally.

 

The woman (right) holds a picture at a rally to mark the International Day of the Disappeared on August 30.

“Notice the old woman to the minister’s left in white holding the picture of her son posing by his taxi. I recognise her from a chance encounter. I want to tell you her story,” wrote Swat Swag.

He recalled how during a recent visit to the Peshawar Secretariat to meet a friend, he had had a chance encounter with an elderly woman who was seated in the waiting area, holding a plastic bag.

The two began conversing with the woman passing light-hearted comments and narrating stories from her life.

“She asks me where I’ve come from. I tell her, ‘all the way from Swat’. For some reason, she doesn’t like Swat & tells me Swatyan are useless liars. Now, I can be a bit of a **** sometimes but I’m not the kind of guy who would be impolite to an old woman,” recalled the narrator.

“I just married off my fourth daughter,” she told him.

“Son, I sent her off in just two dresses,” she adds.

She explained that her husband died and she had to raise all her kids on her own. “I only have to wed off the last one now,” she said in reference to her daughters.

At this point, the woman, who cannot speak Urdu or English, quickly stands up to greet the narrator’s friend who finally arrived at the place.

She kissed his cheeks and both his hands. “You remind me of my son every time I see you,” she said.
Intrigued, the narrator inquired about her son from his friend.
“Her son has been missing since 2009,” he answered.
“Was he a miscreant?” the narrator responded in English.

The official explained that he was just a taxi driver who had taken a passenger to Khyber Agency in 2009 and never returned. The militant group Lashkar-e-Islam, led by Mangal Bagh, was active in the area at the time.
“So is he alive?”
“No. He is dead.”
“Are you sure? Has his body been recovered?”

The official responded in the negative but added that the woman’s son is probably dead according to “reliable sources”.
“But does she know?”
The woman has been informed by others but she does not believe so, the official answered.
“She’s a mother after all.”

The woman took out Mithai  from the plastic bag for the official. The two had stayed in touch after he had helped her soon after her son went missing.
In his tweet, the narrator asks if the woman’s son was involved in illicit activities, but cautions against the judgement, adding he may have taken the risk to go to Khyber Agency simply to make some extra money.

The 70-year-old woman has been looking for her son for almost 10 years now, all on her own, visiting police stations, officials, NGOs, courts, civil society groups and even to visit Mangal Bagh to find her missing son.

According to Swat Swag, her lost son had just become a father before he disappeared.

On August 30, the old woman also participated at the rally where the Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari vowed to support the missing persons issue.

Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari on Thursday vowed that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government will support the missing persons’ issue.

“We will amend the law by including enforced disappearance as criminal offense in the criminal penal code,” she said while addressing a rally on the occasion of International Day of the Disappeared in Islamabad.

Mazari said that families of missing persons had to be informed if their relative died or was involved in terrorism or anti-state activities. She further suggested that a committee be formed that includes stakeholders such as family members of missing persons to manage the issue.

It is unknown where the woman is now.

You may read the narrator’s account here.

 

“To really feel it, I put myself in his son’s place and my own mother in her place. Difficult to express pain n agony I felt just imagining it, my eyes got wet. May God Grant her the much needed comfort,” one tweeted in response.

“Keep telling their stories before they die inside them. Show all of us how we have been maintaining a criminal silence over the missing persons and their families suspended between conviction and death. You are good at it,” wrote another user.

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