Rising from the Ashes of Her Unfulfilled Dreams
Nadia Zubair
The sound of the rotor blades pierced the stillness of the cool September night as the two helicopters carrying SSG commandos flew above the rugged hills of Harnai, Balochistan. There had been chatter that a convoy would be taking a Pakistan Army soldier abducted by the miscreants to a new location using a route near the town of Khost, Harnai. The choppers were flying low because they had to reconnoiter the route to ascertain the accuracy of the intelligence before the commandos could be dropped off to rescue their comrade. As soon as the choppers reached the location, shots started coming at them from the hills below. It was an ambush! It was not long before the night sky was lit up by a huge explosion. A bullet had made its way straight to the fuel tank of the chopper in front that was being flown by Maj Muneeb Afzal.
Maira Muneeb was lying in her bed scrolling on her phone. The clock on her phone showed fifteen minutes past midnight. Muneeb had said he would be back in an hour, at the most, because it was a simple mission. He had last texted her at 11:17 pm, so it was an hour. She called his number but it was off. Maybe a few more minutes.
It was 12:45 am now. She started feeling a little anxious. Just then the doorbell chimed, setting alarm bells ringing. Who could it be? Muneeb was supposed to let himself in like he always used to when he returned from his flights at odd hours. Maira rang up the NCB to go see who was at the door. Moments later, he told her that it was the CO’s wife. As she walked towards the door, her heart seemed to beat like a drum.
Why was she there so late? The CO’s wife had come bearing ominous news; Maj Muneeb’s heli had gone missing. Maira’s heart slowed down a little; this was not so bad, it was missing, it would be found! The worst she could allow herself to think was that Muneeb would be badly injured, but she would nurse him back to health. She started praying as hard as she could.
The clock kept ticking. Maira kept praying. It was 3:00 am. The CO’s wife was still with her. Maira’s phone rang; it was her mother-in-law. She asked Maira what was going on because she had also been told that Muneeb’s heli was missing. When Maira told her that she had the same information, she asked to be put through to the CO’s wife. The words that Maira’s ears heard next were those she had never wanted to hear – Muneeb’s heli had been hit, he had embraced shahadat. Those words fell like hammers on her head; she wanted to block it all out.
“After that everything is a haze. I remember things in bits and pieces. I don’t know how we got to Pindi. I can’t remember anything about the next three days. I received his body and I was also at the graveyard during his burial but I don’t remember any of it. When I went to the graveyard a few days later, I couldn’t remember being there before. I didn’t even remember going to the hospital because I had got sick,” recalls Maira.
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In one fell swoop all the dreams, every plan about the future that Maira and Maj Muneeb Afzal Shaheed had shared with each other over the past five years were forever lost. Maira’s loss has so many layers: a life not lived, a relationship that got violently cut off, her children left without a father.
“Muneeb was so full of life. In the five years with him I lived a lifetime. He was the perfect husband and father. I remember telling my sister that I felt that my life was perfect, like a fairytale. Muneeb never hurt me in any way, even in the slightest. We never argued. He used to tell me that I should live my life without thinking too much, because life’s short. There’s nothing that I wanted that he didn’t do for me. There are so many memories,” she remembers fondly.
“For someone who was so busy all the time, Muneeb was a very hands-on father. He wanted his sons to have the best childhood possible, and engage in all sorts of activities that would help them achieve success in their lives. He would even send me diet plans and articles about nutrition so they could grow up to be strong and healthy,” she added.
“Muneeb was different from ordinary people. I haven’t seen many men like him. I feel like people who’re chosen for the honor of shahadat are extraordinary. He was a high achiever in this world and he will be the same in the next. Whether it was his career or in our personal space, he had a very clear idea about the course of his life; he had everything planned out. Muneeb and I used to talk about the future in great detail. I now, wonder why he shared it all with me, if he was somehow preparing me for a life without him. But it surely means that I have a blueprint for the future,” she says.
The heartbreakingly young and delicate-looking Maira finds herself mired by challenges of life that she never thought she had to tackle on her own. She says, “The day a soldier embraces martyrdom, his Jehad ends but his family’s starts that day. The families of shuhada give silent sacrifices that stay hidden. People don’t know the kind of difficulties we face.
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Despite all the help that the Army provides, the void of a husband and father cannot be filled. My children will always have a gap in their personalities because they didn’t get to grow up with their father around. No one can love them like their father, no matter how much they try. My son now fears that I may also leave one day. When I’m depressed, my kids feel it and they fear that I may also leave them like Baba. Shazil wonders if his father left because he wasn’t always a good boy.
“Our sons, four-and-a-half-years old Shazil and two-and-a-half-years old Salaar, do not have the comprehension about the passing of their father. Salaar doesn’t really remember but Shazil has very sharp memory and sometimes he gets really upset that his father isn’t around. Initially, he would think that his father was physically present with him everywhere. I got him help so that he could accept that his father is not around anymore.
“I’m gradually trying to make them understand the concept of shahadat and the pride associated with it. We tell them that Baba was a superhero who saved Pakistan and in doing so he embraced shahadat and had to leave us.”
Coping with a loss like this is extremely difficult; it is no different for Maira: “It’s difficult for me. I really think that until you go through a situation yourself, you don’t know how it feels or how you can cope with it. Sometimes we think that we won’t be able to take a loss such as losing your loved ones. I remember a few months before his shahadat, Muneeb sent me a video of a shaheed’s widow, and I thought I would’ve died if I were in her place, how was she able to talk about it. Now, I marvel at how I’m alive, going through life from one day to the next. Each moment, each day feels difficult but I live.
“I lost two of my closest relations within a year – my mother and Muneeb. I think that if Mama had been alive, it would’ve been easier for me. She could’ve helped me with the children and also there are things that you can’t share even with your father. Heart-to-heart with your mother is so important in a situation like mine. I do have sisters but they’re so young. I feel like my grief is frozen inside me; I have not been able to take it out fully.
Had my mother been alive I would’ve told her and lightened my heart in front of her,” she says.You can see strength and courage etched all over her face even though her eyes get watery as she talks about her colossal grief:
“When I went back to pack up everything from our house in Quetta, those were the worst days of my life. To take apart everything that we had done together – his memories – was just so overwhelming. But I got through it. I used to think I would never be able to go back to that house but I spent one whole month there. I packed up everything and then unpacked it to set up the new residence without him. At times, it even hurts to breathe but look where I am today; I’m working, which was something I never dreamt I would do while Muneeb was alive. I do everything, even though I never knew I could.
“Sometimes when I’m down and tired, all of a sudden, I get the feeling that Allah has engulfed me in His embrace and I feel this strength flow through me. I believe that if Allah has put me in this situation, He will help me navigate it every step of the way. And just like the shaheed, his family are also chosen so He helps them even more. I pull myself together and tell myself that I’ve come this far and I will get through the rest as well. I have to, for my kids. My own life has taken the backseat. I just want to raise my kids the way their father had wanted,” she says.
Life as Maira knew it changed forever in the early hours of September 26, 2022. Almost a year on, through her trials and tribulations, Maira finds herself a transformed woman. The pain cuts deep still but there is so much she has to do to salvage the dreams that she and Maj Muneeb Afzal Shaheed had.
From the sheltered life in her father’s house and then in her husband’s, she has been catapulted into an existence that promises great burden of responsibilities that she has to carry alone. Did she ever foresee herself taking it on? The answer is an unequivocal ‘no’.
She says, “With Muneeb around, life was smooth sailing for me. But now I find myself taking care of everything. Sometimes, it hurts because it brings back memories. At times, even the biggest of things doesn’t hurt but there are times when the smallest of issues just hurts so much. This past year has transformed me into someone that I didn’t know I could be.
“People say time heals but it isn’t healing me. I feel more grief, loneliness and anxiousness about where life would take me. But not once have I regretted getting married to a man who was always ready to lay down his life for the country if need be. I would do it all over again; those magical five years with Muneeb and the pride of being a shaheed’s widow are not things that I would trade for anything else.
For me, it is huge. Muneeb would tell me that life is temporary and everyone has to leave but the honor with which he left and the honor that we feel by association is priceless. I want my sons to follow in his footsteps. We didn’t get to do most of the things that we planned together but I want to realize as many of those plans that I can on my own as I possibly would for Muneeb.”
Courtesy : https://www.hilal.gov.pk/her-article/detail /NzY1NQ==.html?fbclid=IwAR18mejlNiiti7TZS2z5xEoV_Bd7KlaQteUwWqqrAoMSRELSZcL5KMGOhrk
