12th June, 2008...

17:30: A phone call...
My swooning mother... news; her two nieces have drowned. She leaves for the hospital where they've taken my aunt's daughter.

18:25: there's someone at the door... I fetch the door. It’s my uncle. There’s also a white and red van behind him. He moves aside so I can see. Oh... it’s an ambulance. There are few policemen too. They are taking out a body from the back door. I’m praying that I wake up from this horrendous nightmare. Somebody’s asking me to move aside. I oblige. They are taking this stranger's body inside. My uncle says that’s my cousin... he's wrong. She can't be Wajeeha... I don’t remember Wajeeha being quiet for this long her entire life. Nah... she's not Wajeeha. I walk up to that stranger... If I had the power to swap hell for this moment, I would've readily chosen hell.

Wajeeha was my uncle’s daughter. She just turned 8, and came here, to Abbottabad, three days prior to her death, with her aunt to spend summer vacations with her best friend and cousin, Wania, my aunt's daughter. She was 6 days younger than Wajeeha. Since, the very first day they heard the word 'sister', they had been inseparable. Ironic... even death couldn't separate them.

There was a plot on the back of my aunt's house, which a telecom company had rented to build a network tower. The construction was ceased due to some clashes, but the workers had already dug the pit, and it was left as it was. The pit was approximately 22 feet wide and 36 feet deep, and due to heavy rainfall that week, it was filled with water. There were no precautionary boards or fencing around the pit and it was impossible to guess where its boundary was. On the day of their death, Wajeeha and Wania went outside to play. After 5 minutes my aunt went out to check on the girls. They weren't in the lawn. She looked in the street... no sign. She and my uncle went to the back side of their street just to check if they were there. No one was there too, but there was a shoe floating on the surface of water. My uncle dived in the water. Wania's body was first to be found. Wajeeha was too deep to be seen. They rushed Wania's body to the hospital while the policemen were searching for Wajeeha's. When the policemen finally found her body, she was dead. The doctors already declared Wania dead in the hospital.

I don't know what was more painful to watch... my grand father crying like a child... or my aunt sitting between her niece and her own daughter, praying if not both then either one of them to wake up... or my cousin jerking his only sister to wake up and fight with him... or my uncle sitting in the farthest corner, fighting back the tears in his eyes...

A whole year has passed now... but the wound is still raw. They say 'TIME IS THE BEST HEALER', I pray everyday what they say is true.