Dear children,

This is a letter that no one should have to write to the future of their country or their world. There is so much that I want to tell you about the world that lies ahead of you. All I can say about what you will be greeted with is, I am sorry.

As a child, I was told to never question our adults because they are more intelligent and understand the intricacies of the world better than me.

Source: PBS

I am sorry for not having questioned them when they were silent at the killings of thousands of my countrymen who had no fault but that of believing in the same God, whom they called by a different name. They were also silent when their country was being looted by dictators they did not elect and I am sorry for their silence. This is the very silence that you are paying for, by being massacred in your school which was supposed to be a safe place for you to grow, explore and learn about everything around you.

I’m sorry for our adults who gave us such a brutal world where everyone is selfish and life has less value than gold.

Source: The Independent

This is a world where it is a matter of pride to spend millions, nay, even billions on weddings and festivities, but it is a matter of great deliberation and skepticism if a hungry soul asks for a plate of food. This is the very attitude that you are paying for by dying of hunger while we drown out your cries for help by turning up the volume on our mehndi dance offs.

I’m sorry for not having changed the way our adults let their land be brutally plundered by savages who used faith to stuff their personal coffers. I am giving you a country where killing someone does not matter if you pay for their life and where such a horrible act is ordained into law. This is the very law that you are paying for by growing up in a world without a father while the chaudhry who killed him roams free.

I carried on with the silence that I was taught by my adults because it will save my life, they said. But silence does not help when they come for you.

Source: CNN

It is the loud shrieks that awaken the sleeping neighbors to run to your help when those men, with their faces covered, try to drag you to the fields and rob you of your innocence and leave you pregnant at 7 years old. It is shouting, not silence, that saves your life when those animals make videos to sell to fellow animals as they “make a man” our of you at the age of 11. I am sorry for not shrieking, shouting or crying for your help when 300 of you were scarred for life in Kasur and those that I elected to safeguard your rights became involved in safeguarding the rights of the animals who did that to you.

I am sorry, dear children

Source: Boston Globe

for you are born into a world where you cannot run wild in the streets without a worry, you cannot go out at night to create mischief and prank your neighbors without a care. I am sorry for your mothers have to worry every second you are out of their sight not because it is in a mother’s nature to worry but because she worries you will be taken away from her by “unidentified men” and be sold into child labor, slavery or prostitution. This worry is what you are paying for by not being allowed to let your laughter ring through my neighborhood.

There is so much more that I am sorry for, children, that I can keep on asking for forgiveness for a very long time. I don’t expect or want to be forgiven, I want you to question me, I want you to curse me, I want you to be angry with me. What I cannot see you anymore is be in pain, cry, be scared or hurt because I did nothing to make this world a safer place for you.

I hope when you grow up, if you grow up, you are able to leave a much better world for your children.

I am sorry.

-An ashamed Pakistani.