[IbnAbdullah]

Another coffin which was opened was identified as of ‘Ata Muhammad, his relatives also decided to open and see the box as to check what the condition is of their child. On the opening of the box, there was no son of theirs in the plastic bag but a human head a part of whose was gone, the head also had decayed, the face wasn’t identifiable, half of the arm which did tell about the hand and fingers but it’s condition was really bad. The 3rd piece in the box was a lump of flesh which wouldn’t tell from which part of the body that was. Everyone came to a silence on only 3 small pieces of the body coming out of the box. Then suddenly an old man started yelling loudly, ‘Ya Allah this matter is for you to deal with, you are seeing, I don’t want anything from anyone nor I have complaints but this matter is for you to deal with.’


The relatives of ‘Ata Muhammad also refused to own that, how on earth they could accept a half arm, a half head and a small piece of flesh to be ‘Ata Muhammad. They also buried the box back into the grave. Graves were opened in a row and some people carried away the boxes of their relatives.


By 4 o’ clock there was only one grave left to be opened and it was not know why it was opened. Then at 4 o’ clock the grave number 103 which was identified as Hafiz Shu’aib began to be opened by his relatives. The grave digger came after seeing the things had cooled down but instead of helping to open the grave he started digging another grave. Though his tools were held by the people. Hafiz Shu’aib was told to belong to Haveliaan. His father himself was helping to dig the grave while other relatives were asking him to stop but he said that he brought up his child with love and care how could he gave his affairs to others to take care. When the coffin box was taken out he said he would open and see that from inside. But because of the past bitter experiences government officials tried to stop him from that and said it wasn’t allowed to open the box but who would listen to them in such a terrible day. When the box was opened the body inside the plastic bag looked complete and intact. The father’s restlessness was worth seeing. Since the box was placed on the pile of earth it was tilted towards the feet and the feet were floating in blood. When the box moved it moved the blood too and it showed the blood was fresh. Thousands of honey bees inside the coffin box and outside the coffin joined with each other, in the shape of a ball, floating dead in blood. Shoaib’s father opened the coffin from the face and then removed the plastic from the whole body. I looked at carefully; the body was placed on the plastic sheet and then was wrapped. When the coffin or plastic sheet was removed then everybody thought it would give a smell because of the decay of the body and therefore a man was ready to perfume the body holding a body spray but the body didn’t give any smell. The father restlessly tried to lift the head of Hafiz Shoaib which was only bones at the face but the head was intact and hair was sticky with blood. Many days had passed since the body was buried but the blood was fresh, because the hands and clothes of Shoaib’s father looked red in blood and he again and again caressed the skeletal face of him and the cage of ribs, tried to lift and turn the body. Younger brother of Shoaib was holding the edge of the box weeping and saying something under his lips which wasn’t audible because of his crying although his tears were falling on the body and mixing with the blood in the box. His relatives were trying to move him away from there but he wasn’t listening. The body from navel to the head where there were more bones than the flesh, there were dead honey bees there as well. The body from navel to the feet although looked burnt, there was no skin there but flesh and fat was to be seen. The shalwar (trousers) looked perfectly fine and wet with blood. There was no bone to be seen from the navel to the feet. Probably to confirm the gender, his father untied the trousers string and pulled that but there was only flesh and fat there, no identification of any organ was possible. The father was trying to identify his son then a relative suspected their child wasn’t that old but his age was younger and height was shorter though the height of the body was around 6 feet. Then father as well said, Shoaib wasn’t wearing white clothes but black though the shalwar of the body was white and his hair was long which showed he had locks of hair. After a while talking about this they all decided that wasn’t the body of Hafiz Shoaib but of someone else. Then there started the search of the magistrate because the one holding the register said he wasn’t responsible for that but the magistrate. I asked him, ‘So the magistrate is not present at the scene?’
‘He is sir, right here, sitting in the car there, you can see it’s too hot here, that’s why he’s in the car.’

‘Sir, this is the place and the car’s far away from here, call him please and tell him the body here is of someone else.’
He already looked impressed by my camera, tape recorder and seeing me take photos of the body in the box, then the angry people had also scared him, he didn’t wait to run towards the car. I tried to have a conversation with Shoaib’s father.
‘Hafiz sahib, what’s your name, was he your son?’
‘Leave that please, Allah knows what my name is, and He knows whatever happened to me.’
‘So this boy who got martyred studied at Lal Masjid?’
‘Allah knows that all, leave my and Allah’s affairs alone, (pushing me away he starts touching and searching again in the box and one of his relatives tells me that he is not in his senses, we will tell you later, come to our village).
The magistrate appeared in his white cotton suit and waistcoat and Shoaib’s father tried to grab him with his neck with his hands red in blood and started shouting.

‘This is not my son, I recognize my son so well, on the day of judgment I and all of you will be before Allah’, the magistrate remained silent and then spoke, ‘Ok, if this is not yours then don’t take it, it’s said by the DNA testing officials, you don’t take it away, but I can’t do anything.’ He started going back to his car after saying that then I asked him, ‘What would happen next?’, he said, ‘See, as you know I didn’t carry out DNA testing rather there’s a whole team for that, now these people don’t accept that and refuse to recognize the body then what I can do. Now they say the hair is long then it can grow later too, anyhow I can’t do anything.’
I asked, ‘Ok, hair can grow after death but what about the height?’
Instead of replying he moved to his car and Hafiz Shoaib’s father lowering the coffin box back to the grave was saying:
‘Whoever you are, you are after all a shaheed (martyr), may Allah raise your status and forgive us that we troubled you.’


At night I was sitting in my room checking the pictures in the camera then I felt something strange. I saw the body in the coffin box carefully in the day but couldn’t realize in the hurry, but now when I zoomed his picture, his jaws were widely stretched, and there was some distance between the upper and lower teeth as if he were smiling.

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