Source: Dawn

Ahsan Mahboob stares at the sky. It is the colour of molten silver — dark and mournful. Out of the grey firmament drop flakes of white snow, light as leaves, ominous as bad tidings. In the predawn twilight of November, Quetta’s Alamdar Road looks like a frozen lake, shadows of half-naked Shia Hazara mourners etched across its length. Their hands rising in slow rhythmic moves, cutting through the dim morning air with an elegant swoosh and falling in a cadenced thump on their bare chests.

Mahboob would not be at the site if he had the option. On Quetta’s snowy nights, water freezes in pipes and icicles form on the deadened branches of juniper trees. But he has to be here to provide security to this annual Muharram procession that has been on the road for more than 12 hours. Clad in multiple layers of warm clothes, he paces up and down to keep himself warm. Every 10 minutes, the cold gets too much for him and he shuts himself in his police van parked nearby.

The mourners, meanwhile, continue their slow journey to the morning and the far end of the road where the procession will end at a graveyard. They seem oblivious to pain and cold, and their combined never-numbing impact. Mahboob has no idea what burns inside them — what rage, what frustrations, what revenge.

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