Pakistan Park Bombing

[Gwazi Magnum]

So we've had another terrorist attack lately, this time from the Taliban.

Though in this case I ran across someone who was affected by this personally and he gave permission to share this status on the matter as long his name isn't given away.

So I figured I should share it here, cause it does give perspective to such plights that your usual news reports just don't get across.

How do you cope with the fact that many people you grew up with are probably dead? Blown up in a suicide bomb blast. The trepidation is torture, the wait by the telephone pure agony. I grew up right next to the park they showered in blood and ash today. When Facebook activated the emergency 'Safety Check' feature today after the blast in Lahore, Pakistan, I forgot to breathe. My head started to spin. I had to sit down. My extended family is safe, but so many weren't as lucky. Dr. Abdul Rehman was 67, had forty years of experience teaching High-school Chemistry. He was my teacher. He's dead now.

Stuff like this makes you remember. You remember Miss Catherine weeping and telling her English class to pack up and make a orderly line towards the exit. Manhattan is burning, smoke rising over the Hudson, paper falling from the sky. The TVs showing planes hitting those towers again and again and again until it's burned into your memory forever.

You remember your middle school, again in Pakistan. You hear a big boom, and smell sulphur in the air. The deafening screams as crying weeping pre-teens run for the auditorium. A man on a bike loaded with explosives has just rammed into the front gate of your school. The guard, Mr. Muhammad, a single father, dead on impact, his seven children orphans. You sit behind a door crying. It's there where the emergency personal find you and take you to your blood-eyed mother.

You're on a bus, on rout to a major city to meet your grandparents. The bus stops and the driver tells the passengers that we're turning back. Somebody blew up the bridge crossing a couple of kilometers (miles) ahead. The ambulances rush past you as you make for home. You think about the cars and the people within who fell in the raging river, human life snuffed; dreams lost forever. Above else you think it could have been you. If the bus was faster, if you had taken an earlier bus - if - if - if.

I'm feeling melancholic right now. Didn't mean to unload on you guys but Graham Greene says 'writing is a form of therapy, it heals the soul'. That was the intention. To heal.

 

[Kagayours]

I had sort of ignored this thread for a while -- for no other reason than the fact that I didn't feel like it was worth my time when there was nothing for me to add.

But then I saw that not a single person had commented on this, and... that's kind of sad. >_> I've seen a lot of people bring up the whole "apparently people only care about terrorist attacks when they happen in North America or Europe" thing on sites like Tumblr, with people trying to spread awareness of attacks like these (which they say don't see nearly as much attention as the attacks that happened in Paris or Brussels). And, for a while, I found this indifference towards terrorism elsewhere in the world to be more-or-less unsurprising. Sad, sure, and not at all right, but still not completely shocking...

Seeing that this thread didn't receive a single comment, though, despite the fact that the Brussels thread received just as much attention as you'd expect... yeah, that kind of hit me. :/

It's sad how so much violence can be overlooked just because of where it happens in the world...

 

[Windsong]

I had sort of ignored this thread for a while -- for no other reason than the fact that I didn't feel like it was worth my time when there was nothing for me to add.

But then I saw that not a single person had commented on this, and... that's kind of sad. >_> I've seen a lot of people bring up the whole "apparently people only care about terrorist attacks when they happen in North America or Europe" thing on sites like Tumblr, with people trying to spread awareness of attacks like these (which they say don't see nearly as much attention as the attacks that happened in Paris or Brussels). And, for a while, I found this indifference towards terrorism elsewhere in the world to be more-or-less unsurprising. Sad, sure, and not at all right, but still not completely shocking...

Seeing that this thread didn't receive a single comment, though, despite the fact that the Brussels thread received just as much attention as you'd expect... yeah, that kind of hit me. :/

It's sad how so much violence can be overlooked just because of where it happens in the world...

Probably because this shit is normal news coming from over there.

Someone got beheaded, someone exploded, got shot, stabbed, thrown off a tower. Nothing new in that region.

Same thing applies to a place like Chicago. Violence is nothing new to the point it's 'read about bad thing, sigh and wish you hadn't, move on because it's the fifth one this week'.

We don't expect that kind of garbage in the west or Europe. Hence the attention.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

I had sort of ignored this thread for a while -- for no other reason than the fact that I didn't feel like it was worth my time when there was nothing for me to add.

But then I saw that not a single person had commented on this, and... that's kind of sad. >_> I've seen a lot of people bring up the whole "apparently people only care about terrorist attacks when they happen in North America or Europe" thing on sites like Tumblr, with people trying to spread awareness of attacks like these (which they say don't see nearly as much attention as the attacks that happened in Paris or Brussels). And, for a while, I found this indifference towards terrorism elsewhere in the world to be more-or-less unsurprising. Sad, sure, and not at all right, but still not completely shocking...

Seeing that this thread didn't receive a single comment, though, despite the fact that the Brussels thread received just as much attention as you'd expect... yeah, that kind of hit me. :/

It's sad how so much violence can be overlooked just because of where it happens in the world...

Personally speaking (and this might be blasphemy to both sides), I don't really blink at any of these situations.
At least not in a "Holy Shit! We're in danger!" way, cause statistically speaking the threat is still insanely minor and even then the targets are usually selective.

Buuuut, Sympathy to the individuals hurt is still pretty high.
And the fact there seems to be a lack of it based on geography is... worrying.
Like, I know exactly why it works that way. People either feel more sympathy to those closer and/or in a more relate able demographic, and they also get desensitized if it happens constantly there.
But still, it makes me worried to say the least. :/

 

[Dervish]

I had sort of ignored this thread for a while -- for no other reason than the fact that I didn't feel like it was worth my time when there was nothing for me to add.

But then I saw that not a single person had commented on this, and... that's kind of sad. >_> I've seen a lot of people bring up the whole "apparently people only care about terrorist attacks when they happen in North America or Europe" thing on sites like Tumblr, with people trying to spread awareness of attacks like these (which they say don't see nearly as much attention as the attacks that happened in Paris or Brussels). And, for a while, I found this indifference towards terrorism elsewhere in the world to be more-or-less unsurprising. Sad, sure, and not at all right, but still not completely shocking...

Seeing that this thread didn't receive a single comment, though, despite the fact that the Brussels thread received just as much attention as you'd expect... yeah, that kind of hit me. :/

It's sad how so much violence can be overlooked just because of where it happens in the world...

Honestly, my reactions to anything like this are about the same, regardless of where it happens. It's just depressing, and to be honest, this shit happens so often it's hard to to feel numb about it. What is there left to say that hasn't been said thousands of times before? The main reason I posted in the Brussels thread was because I know Sini and a few other people from Belgium.

I just find it interesting and painfully Eurocentric when sites like Facebook offer a flag filter for France and Belgium to show sympathy and solidarity, but somewhere like Turkey, Lebanon, Indonesia, or Pakistan? Nope.

They probably correctly assume, as others pointed out, if it's not in the Western world, we typically don't give much of a shit.