Anon Minati's video: A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Please watch: "Main Hosh Main Tha,Tau Phir Us Pay Mar Ga'ya Kaisay...!!! - Official Release - Metador Band" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9kTZE2rAG4 --~-- Pakistan is home to a large Shia community, second only to Iran but if you are born in the community, you sure have landed in the wrong place. I was born Shia in Pakistan in 1984 and a year later, the state decided to turn the informal violence against the Shia – ever present courtesy the exclusivist national ideology which is inherently anti-Shia – into an official slow genocide. My earliest memories of you-don’t-belong-here feeling are from early school days in a small semi-urban town near Lahore. Our house was located on this small street lined up by half a dozen Shia houses – all my extended family. Every morning when I left home with my daada to go to school, the wall opposite our door had a new wall chalking reading “Kaafir Kaafir Shia Kaafir”. I recall asking my daada what does it mean and he replied saying “Kush naee”. I never bothered erasing it, nor did any of my siblings or my cousins. Years passed, I changed school and a tonga replaced my daada but these wall chalking never stopped. Now that the tonga moved through different streets before taking me school, I noticed this was everywhere Shia lived in town. My question was still unanswered and this time around, I asked my chaacha. Again, he smiled and said “Kuch nahee” and then left without saying anything more. Sometime later he returned with a painter, then holding my finger took me to the courtyard and had him paint ‘Ya Ali Madad’ in massive black font on the façade of our house facing street. I could not understand why did he do that. I understood a different meaning of the word ‘sharing’ at school. I can recall those suffocating lunch breaks at school when we got together under the shadow of a tree in school grounds to ‘share’ lunch. I was welcomed to have a piece from other’s lunch but nobody ate mine. This happened on a regular basis and I finally decided to have my lunch alone, not leaving the classroom during the break. I found it difficult to comprehend to start with but later realised what it meant when a newcomer joined our class. Her name was Fatima, she joined after the Summer breaks and remained allusive during the breaks. One day when I was stuffing myself with my lunch, she walked towards me, leaned over my desk and asked, ‘Aap Shia ho?’ She mentioned my name to her father, because of my good results in class probably, and from my name he deciphered my sect. We shared our lunch that day and it was then I realised why nobody was interested in my lunch. Most kids and youth find exam days to be quite challenging but the most challenging and tough part of the year for me was Muharram. It was as if all my classmates changed into different people – the same class fellows who we had family terms with, spent half the day with me, learnt and played with me; with the start of Muharram thought as if I have come from another planet. I was the subject of curiosity, snooping and ridicule. Year after year I was asked the same questions all over again as if they suffer from a memory loss. The most popular questions were (i) What do you Shia do on Sham-e-Ghareeban after turning the lights off? (ii) Is it true that on Sham-e-Ghareeban you can choose any girl you like from the room? (iii) Is it true that you eat feces from Zuljaneh after Ashura as Tabaruk? (iv) How many chapters do you have in Quran? (v) Do you believe that Ali was destined to be Prophet but Gabriel made a mistake? I changed schools, cities and province but these questions didn’t stop coming. I moved to Pakhtunkhwa for a few years during school and was welcomed warmly. I was a new comer, a Punjabi and so naturally subject of curiosity. Nobody knew about my Shia identity and all worked well. Then, the time of the year came again. My class mates gathered during the lunch break and got busy in their usual discussions with inquisitiveness around Shia, Azadari, Muharram and the rituals associated. “Yaar inkay to to mazzay hain, jo dil kia select kar lain gay dasveen ko” said one of them, while the other replied, “main to mohallay ki Shia majlisson me jata hoon, bara mahool hota hay”. I broke my silence refuting all of that and one of them replied “tume kya pata, tum Shia ho?”. I kept silent and a deafening silence followed. None said anything, none felt embarrassed or gutted but I put myself in for trouble. The questions kept coming as a routine. I realised that quite normal people consider Shia as a cult who practice mass orgies, incest sex, open relationships and are conspirators against Islam and traitors to Pakistan.