In the quiet district of Chaghi (Balochistan), lived a family of four — a father (Ghulam Mohammad), a mother named Afroz, and their two sons: Adam, aged 15, and Dilwashdil, aged 21. Life was simple but filled with warmth, until the day everything changed.
Afroz, the heart of the home, was diagnosed with cancer — in its final stage. The news cracked upon the family’s world like a glass jar dropped on stone. In Chaghi, illness as cancer wasn’t uncommon, but this felt like death knocking early.
Desperate to save their mother, the two brothers tried everything — even selling their mother’s jewelry on the roadside, begging strangers for help and, above all, praying for a miracle. They were willing to do anything to keep her alive.
But one day, as they sat under the sun, selling what little they had left, men in uniform stormed their quiet space. They wore the clothing of the forces, but showed no warrants, no names. They took Dilwashdil without a word. He had been working for a local newspaper, writing pieces that spoke truth — maybe too much truth.
Ghulam Muhammad, their father, tried to intervene but was pushed back. He was no match for their power.
The house echoed with Afroz’s wails that night. She held her chest, her breath uneven, not from the cancer but from heartbreak. The family reached out to local leaders, and a call came in: “He’ll be back soon. We just want to warn him not to write like that again.”
They believed them.
But two days later, Dilwashdil’s body was found on the roadside, and labeled a “terrorist”. The headlines stripped him of his humanity, and his family of their son.
Afroz died soon after — not just from cancer, but from grief. Ghulam Muhammad and Adam were left shattered. They knocked on every door — police stations, press offices, courts. But justice does not knock back where silence is demanded.
Weeks later, the same men came again. This time, for the father.
They said the same words.
“He’ll be back.”
but he never was.
Fifteen years have passed. Adam is now thirty. No mother. No brother. No father. Only a few torn photographs, a faded smell of rosewater from his mother’s scarf, and memories that hurt more than they heal.
He still walks through the dusty streets of Chaghi, searching. Not for a miracle this time — but for the truth.
For a letter he never got to send.
For the voices that never returned.
For the family that never got justice.
