Every day, I watch the Tagus River flow steadily past my window in Lisbon, its waters a constant, silent procession toward the vast, unknown Atlantic. It has become my daily ritual, a moment for introspection. And in its reflective surface, I see the ghost of another river, the one I left behind, and the person I was before it all shattered.
Last year, the Islamabad Massacre broke me.
I need to say it plainly. I, the hopeless believer in change, the advocate who sang patriot songs with a fist in the air, the woman who thought ten years of activism, of protests, tear gas, and forced dispersals had inured me to anything. I was wrong.
Witnessing that horror firsthand, seeing brute force unleashed on peaceful protestors, hearing the crack that wasn’t a sound effect but a life being altered. It snapped the last, delicate fiber of hope I was clinging to for my own life.
That hope was a specific, precious thing. It was the belief that things would, eventually, get better in Pakistan. It was the faith that the will of the people would reign supreme. It was the dream that my children would fight bigger, better battles than I ever did. It was the conviction that they would always love Pakistan and cherish knowing it as home, just as I had.
In the aftermath, one question echoed in the silence, a question every parent fears: Will I be able to keep them safe while still raising them to be honest, vocal, and morally correct?
I knew I could manage the latter. I could teach them integrity and ethics. But I went numb on the first part. I could no longer guarantee their safety. And in that failure of assurance, I felt my own safety evaporate. Being a woman who thinks, a woman who is not afraid to give voice to her thoughts, and belonging to a minority. It was a dangerous combination. A price on my head I hadn’t agreed to, but was expected to pay.
So, I made a choice. I swallowed my pride, the pride of a fighter who never wanted to retreat. I packed our lives into four small suitcases. I jumped ship.
Now, I am an immigrant. A nobody. Just another face in the crowd on the streets of Lisbon. The fight I loved is a world away. The identity I built over a lifetime feels like a relic.
But my kids are safe.
It is a transaction that costs me a piece of my soul every single day. The price is astronomical. It is the weight of my history, my patriotism, my unfinished battles.
But do I have regrets?
Look at my children. See the freedom in their step, the unburdened lightness in their laughter, the simple, profound safety of existing without a target on their backs.
For their potential? For their right to a future where their voice is a gift, not a liability?
Not a single one.
The Tagus keeps flowing to the Atlantic, reminding me that some currents are too strong to fight. Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is not to stand and be broken, but to carry your broken pieces to safer ground, and slowly, painstakingly, begin to build a new mosaic from what remains.
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