Do we still remember?

Written By: Mahad Tariq

"I woke up, I prayed, I was as excited as ever.

That this day would be the end, occurred to me never.

My mother and father waved me as I went past

For none of us knew it would be our last

My forehead was still warm from my mother's kiss

The very forehead the bullet failed to miss

Our school; our home, our safe haven where we played and grew

Would one day host a mast massacre no one knew

Peaceful we were sitting in our class

That's when the school echoed with the blast

The savage, the beast entered with his gun

We pleaded for sympathy but there was to none

They made sure that no target was missed

They failed to realize the youngest killed was only six

I screamed, I screeched , I made every sound

But help was indeed nowhere to be found

Perhaps it was all written in our fate

And help, when it came, came very late

We watched as our brave teacher got engulfed in fire

We watched proudly as each one of us slowly became a martyr

With time we forgot the fear and the excruciating pain

For remember martyrs never die, we always remain

We have left behind a legacy that you'll all remember

Try not to forget us every December."

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I had been thinking of writing about this for a very long time, but was afraid of how all the emotions that I had faced on that accursed day would rush back; how shocked I’d been when I reached home from my school to know that APS, Peshawar had been attacked by militants; how helpless I had felt, to watch the number of martyrs increase with every passing hour to finally reach an unprecedented number of students and staff killed in all of Pakistan’s history. How heartbreaking had it been, to see the whole media coverage; parents and family members rushing from one hospital to another in search of their loved ones, injured students in their blood stained uniforms being carried to the ambulances. How depressing it was, when the images of the scene emerged few hours later; the picture of the auditorium where the largest massacre took place, the blood stained shoes and uniforms, walls riddled with bullets, bodies of children lying atop of each other.

And how disheartening it was, to read the stories of the attack; of how brutally those children and teachers had been massacred.

Do we remember those 144 innocent lives that were mercilessly extinguished that day?
But do we still remember?

Do we remember those monsters that did not even spare a six year old girl Khaula for whom, it was her first day of school?

Do we remember the 13 year old Uzair who received 11 bullets to his body?

Do we remember the brave principal of the school Tahira Qazi, who chose to face the militants and die with her students instead of escaping the scene?

Do we remember the valiant teachers who refused to leave their students and fought until the last moment to get them to safety, only to be cruelly killed in the process?

Do we remember how after the attacks some anti-state figures refused to condemn the attacks?

Do we remember how the survivors later returned to that very same school, where they watched their friends die in?

One year into the incident and I often find questioning myself: where do we stand now? Have we forgotten everything? Have we silenced our call for revenge? Have we learned anything from it at all, or has it just become another occurrence which will be mourned every December and forgotten the other 11 months?

I am aware, as students, there is little we can do. We cannot completely console the grieving families. We cannot return their sons, fathers, sisters and mothers to them. We can do little in countering the terrorism in Pakistan. We cannot change the attitude of our careless leaders. But what little we can do in the aftermath of this tragedy is to remember these unfortunate souls, to remember their sacrifice, to remember the bravery they showed at the face of barbarity, to remember the survivors who are still struggling with moving forward, to remember our enemies and their sympathizers, to remember the sacrifices this country has made in moving towards peace and prosperity, remember to live our lives with a responsibility of serving our country to the best of its interests, remember to counter the extremist ideology, remember the dreams that the young martyrs had, remember that they were the bright future of this country, remember that we must carry their missions forth.

Remember the promise that we made to ourselves on that day;

Of never to forgive and never to forget.