The land of Halloween

By RD Baluch

Do you like Halloween season?

Wooohooo!! that’s the word you hear often from people when asked this question. Happy and excited faces ready to go out and challenge each other with horror and fear. I see people across the world celebrating Halloween every year. They imagine the most creative and scary ideas to represent themselves in Halloween celebrations. Some people like to just go with the flow. It is perhaps as they say: “When in Rome why not dress like Romans.” Even though they have no idea what Halloween is and where the idea came from, but they portray themselves as moderate and modern in society. They seem more excited than those who really practice it for genuine reasons.

The Halloween has never impressed or excited me. However, since childhood, I had the courage and curiosity to stay awake until the middle of the night and watch horror movies. Sometimes the scenes were frightening as they scared the hell out of me. I still dared to watch the movie till the end. Sometimes I watched it alone and other times I would force my sister to sleep next to me so when I was scared, I would hold her hands tight and close my eyes.

Never ask someone who doesn’t like Halloween or horror, why they don’t like it? Maybe they have seen real Halloween and horrors.

I have never been a fan of horror and never celebrated Halloween nor I will. But I had the courage to watch horror movies because I knew movies are just movies and Halloween is just something nowadays peoples do for fun. I wanted to learn how to protect myself when it comes to real horror. Yes, you heard it right: I have seen real horrors.

Some people say Halloween is so much fun but for me it is stupid, because while people are busy with Halloween, making fake horrors to scare each other and enjoy their October nights, and show off their Halloween outfits and scary faces everywhere and taking snaps and sharing nonstop selfies all over the social media, out there in the world there is a place where Halloween is celebrated every single day. In every single house, and every single person old and young, men and women, children and infant are forced to experience it. Whether they like it or not.

They have to! They have no choice to live a peaceful life, every day is Halloween out there. Just for one night or even a week, it is fun. But imagine, you have to deal with it every day, does it frighten you?

I’m one of those people who are from the real Halloween spot of the earth. I have seen horrors in real. I lived my childhood there and that’s the main reason I do not fear watching Horror movies. Though it is upsetting and frustrating, I learn self-defence from these horror movies. Self-defence from real Halloween and real terror.

Let me describe one of the horrors which still haunts me and is the reason for my anxiety and depression sometimes.

I still see those scenes as real as today. One day I was walking home from school alone – I used to go to school alone because I was on a different shift than my siblings – singing the poems I learnt at school and was repeating it to memorise for the next class.  As I reached closer to the main street next to our home. I saw peoples running toward the street. Some were crying and some running away, for a moment I froze. I stood there without making any movement wondering what was going on? First thing crossed my mind was my family. I started to walk faster, my heartbeats started pushing against my rips. I just kept running.

I reached the street next to my house. There was a huge crowd and I saw this Machine which is used for building constructions, a crane or something. The Police, gunmen and people all gathered around that crane. I heard loud crying I didn’t know what was happening. As I pushed through the sea of people and got closer, the cries become clearer to me. It was the screams of our neighbour’s wife. I knew them very well. They used to come to our house every day. The woman was a good friend of my mother and auntie. I couldn’t see her face, but I recognised her voice and cries. Still not knowing what was going on, I kept crawling between people until I reached the line – the red line – where the military gunmen were standing and forcing people to stay away.

I saw our neighbour’s husband tied up and his face was covered with a grey piece of cloth. He was silent, and two men were holding him by his arms. A huge rope hanging from the crane was around his neck. That scene froze me to death. I could not even scream or cry. I couldn’t believe my eyes what I was watching.  I was there standing like a lifeless statue. Among the screams of people and loud voices, I heard the gunman asking him, “any last wish?”

He held his head high – face still covered – as if he was looking at the crowd. Then he looked toward the direction where his wife’s screams were coming from and he said loudly enough so that his mother, children and wife could hear him.

“Do not cry. I am not going to die.

Martyrs never die, they live forever.”

That was his last words and they tighten the rope around his neck.

The crane pulled him up and he was hanging in the sky.

People started to scream and tried to reach out the man. They thought maybe they could save him.

Alas!!! Trrrr trrr!!!

The voice of bullets echoed in the sky forcing people to stay back and for a second there was complete silence. I was standing there I couldn’t even move, for a second I wished it was all a bad dream. I felt like I will pass out I couldn’t hear anything, my ears started to ring, my heart still pushing outward trying to come out of my chest. In just a blink of an eye the man no more. He was dead.

After that I didn’t know what happened I just saw someone dragged me out of the crowd and took me home. I was in shock for a month. I didn’t even want to speak to anyone. I was only 12-year-old, and this was too much for me. It was my first encounter with the real horror which is still as fresh in my memory as yesterday. Before this, I heard a lot of stories of horror from my neighbours but to witness that in real has left devastating effects on me.

Not long after this incident, there was another shock which I will never forget in my entire life. We heard gunfire, the sound of screeching tyres followed by screams. FIRE, FIRE.

My family ran out to see what was happening. I also went out. It was the police and gunmen chasing some cars. They are firing live rounds directly at them which caused one car to catch fire. There were two boys stuck in the burning car shouting for help but the police did not help them, neither allowed anyone else save them. The rescue ambulance never showed up. This made me hate the entire universe.

The boys were gone. The car turned into a heap of ashes and burnt metals.

Their life didn’t even matter. They were not considered human beings. It was ok to let them die. The gunmen were just standing there and threatening others who tried to help.

This is not a dream. It is only the tip of the iceberg.  It is the lifetime routine for the people of that land. Perhaps, now they are accustomed to such scenes. If you compare my stories with other people who live there. Mine is nothing.

I have had a lucky escape from that land. The price of belonging to that landscape of the earth is death, the people of that land regularly get the bitter candy of death or abduction as a Halloween treat. The death and abduction are indiscriminate. No discrimination between men, women and children.

You celebrate Halloween for no reason, I won’t because I have seen the real horror and I lived in the land of real Halloween. Are you a fan of horror and Halloween? You should visit that spot of the earth where you can see real dead bodies dumped everywhere. That place where children grow up knowing how and when they are going to die. They either grow up totally assimilated in an alien culture and language or they risk being abducted, tortured and killed. The people of that land live with death. They are used to horror, blood and brutality. They have no choice of living a happy and peaceful life, they must get used to never-ending real Halloween imposed upon them by brutal regimes of Pakistan and Iran. That nation is called Baluch and the country Baluchistan. Have you ever heard of “Baluch and Baluchistan”? I doubt it.