Suicide Bombings Lead To Mayhem In Pakistan

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

In Pakistan, as we've said targets for suicide attacks have been wide ranging - from an aeronautical manufacturing complex to an all girls school. We wanted to know how people are reacting to all this, how it's affecting their lives. So, we called a number of people who lived in Lahore, that's the second largest city in Pakistan after the capital of Karachi. It's often called the cultural heart of Pakistan.

We called a number of students and professionals and others for their perspective on how these attacks are affecting them. We found the phone lines of widely varying quality and we finally reached Meena Hussain(ph). She's a school teacher at an all girls school who's currently on leave, taking care of a newborn baby girl. Meena, thank you so much for joining us and congratulations on the new baby.

Ms. MEENA HUSSAIN: Thank you.

MARTIN: So, tell me, how have you heard about these attacks? Have they been widely publicized, are they very much in the news?

Ms. HUSSAIN: Oh, absolutely. Here we have a lot of news channels going on now, so there's a bit of wide range to choose from because it's (unintelligible) in Lahore, for example. And, you know, you have families, friends and loved ones. So even if you're not near a telly, someone will text or call and see if you're okay.

MARTIN: As I mentioned, you were teaching at a girls school until…

Ms. HUSSAIN: Yes.

MARTIN: …the baby came and your baby is a little girl. Did you feel any special, like, what's the word I'm looking for - any kind of special anxiety when you realized that a girls school had been one of the targets?

Ms. HUSSAIN: It's not about whether it was a girls school or a boys school. The thing is that it was a school and there are students there. For me personally, as a teacher and writer and a literature person, I feel that a school or a university campus is some place where that's the only place you can be really, truly free, in your mind or to speak out and to have opinions. And I think the symbolism of putting a bomb in the school is what bothers me the most, which is everyday freedom. It's not somebody up north in Waziristan being bombed, or shooting people or blowing things up. It's right here in your backyard - it's in, you know, the city that's a four hour drive away.

MARTIN: How do you think this affecting your neighbors, your friends? And you know, obviously this is very, it's very frightening because it seems so - on the one hand, you're saying on the one hand, when they're attacking military installations, you can say okay, these are combatants, but now, this is civilians, it's children, it's teachers. How do you think it's affecting your friends and your neighbors, and just to do the degree that you can give a sense of what are people saying?

Ms. HUSSAIN: It's a mixed bag. We come with some Islamic baggage, in the sense that we believe that once people do, that you die when you're supposed to, when you're destined to. So that's a sense that, you know, if we're going to die when we have to, it doesn't matter whether you stay home or you go out shopping, or you go to school. You know, your time will come when it does. I think that now people are getting angry, because there was still some sympathy for the Taliban, and you know, the fact that, you know, maybe not all of them are so bad; or that, you know, the government should take care of this problem themselves and not necessarily seek help from an outside party. But now, everyone is angrier. If the Masouds are behind it, then they're really not (unintelligible), any scrap of legitimacy they had is gone now.

MARTIN: Well Mina Hussain, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Ms. HUSSAIN: Not at all. Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: And congratulations again on the new baby.

Ms. HUSSAIN: Thank you very much.

MARTIN: Mina Hussain is a schoolteacher, and she's currently on maternity leave, taking care of her new daughter. She joined us by phone from Lahore.

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