An Hour at Datta Darbar

 Bushra Zulfiqar  Comments Off
Oct 052009
 

By Bushra Zulfiqar

As I entered the bustling city, high red minarets of Baadshahi Mosque instantly captivated my attention. This was Lahore, the heart of Pakistan on an early October afternoon. Scorching heat and humidity was still in and out of the air, thanks to the globally warmed and heated climate. As our car passed by the shrine of the famous Sufi saint Hazrat Datta Ganj Baksh, my young sisters excitedly exclaimed ‘look….Datta Darbar, let’s go to pay our respects’ and as impulsively as it was, we went. The driver had trouble parking the car in an otherwise wide, well constructed road as the sea of people, rickshaws, motorcycles, cars, buses and trucks was in high tides. The next struggle awaiting us before we could set foot into the Darbar was to hand over our pairs of shoes to the administration members and get our number card to be able to claim them on our way back. Thanks to one young fellow who spotted us and chanted ‘welcome to Datta Darbar baji, please come this way’ and nervous by the waves of heat and humans, we silently followed his instructed procedure and made our way inside the long white corridor leading to the area allocated for women. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 3:50 pm

Voice of the Pakistani Youth

 Bushra Zulfiqar  5 Responses »
Aug 072009
 

By: Bushra Zulfiqar

I was in Islamabad when I first heard the news of UK based Pakistani students being arrested by the British police on charges of terrorism. As the details came out, it was nine of them arrested in anti-terror raids from different parts of England and as the Prime Minister Brown termed were guilty of hatching a very big plot against the UK. Being myself a Pakistani studying in England, my first reaction was that of disbelief and shock to say the least. I was completely aware of the academic, financial and logistical struggle it involves to become a student in Britain. But then more than that the Pakistanis are an extra ordinary community in the Britain, have been so for decades now. Out of a sixty million population in UK, there are two million Muslims and about 900,000 of them are of Pakistani origin. Not just the British but the whole world can never become oblivious to their proud achievements and rich contributions in the fields of economics, law, medicine, sciences, history, culture, arts and research. But for these caught Pakistani students, they were not only kept in the illegal custody of the British authorities for thirteen days but were also physically and mentally tortured. They were not allowed to contact their families back home who quite understandably faced an immensely difficult period. And on one fine morning after thirteen days of interrogation and intelligence checks, these students were released by the embarrassed authorities as no charge could be proven against them.   Continue reading »

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