Sakeena is a 17 years old girl in Sa'adat Hassan Manto's masterpiece short story "Khol Do" – Open!. She falls victim to communal riots on her way from Amritsar to Lahore and gets separated from her father and mother.
Sirajuddin, her father finds himself alone in the refugee camp of Mughalpura and cannot recall where he had seen her last time. He remembers, however, his wife dying with her guts out on the road to Pakistan.
When he can't find her for many days and is at the verge of total disappointment he finds eight gun carrying volunteers who vow to find his daughter. It turns out that they do find her but never bring her back to her father. They rape her for so long and so often that she loses all consciousness and they abandon her to die next to the rail tracks.
Her body is found by some good people and Sirajuddin sees them carrying it to the camp hospital not knowing this is his own daughter, Sakeena. Still he follows them hoping that she could be her.
When she is left on a gurney in a dark hospital room he approaches her to find out. At the same time a doctor walks into the room and turns the light on. Sirajuddin recognizes her from a black mole on her cheek. The doctor asks him who he was and he says he was dead girl's father.
Doctor while checking her pulse for any sign of life asks him to "open the window". Sakeena recognizes the now familiar words "Khol Do" so well that her hands unconsciously but limpidly move, untie and lower down her 'Shalwar'. Doctor is mortified with shame but Sirajuddin is happy to see her alive.
Now read the following news piece and think why it has conjured up Sakeena's image in my mind. Is there any resemblance in the characters on the political scene of Pakistan and the ones in this eternally poignant short story, or it is just me?
Six out of 10 Pakistanis favor army rule while people in other South Asian countries overwhelmingly support democracy.
