Silent Screams
By Azra Nisar
The words that popped up in our minds when, and if, we take notice of the name Zainab is “Silent Scream”. You all may have been expecting “Harassment” instead of these words, but don’t be amused because silent scream is the native exact name for the trend, before it formally came to be known as “harassment”.
They screamed and yelled aloud but the frequency of their loud voices couldn’t reach our ears. Yes, our ears, which, otherwise, can easily catch even the ‘weakest signals’ of our neighbor’s gossips and unhealthy conversations that keep on revolving in our heads.
Amusingly, we are the ones who block the voices of suffering minds and bodies selectively by placing our finger on their mouths, or our own ears.
Let’s do an activity now. Can you get a page from somewhere nearby and divide it into two halves by drawing a fine line. List the kinds of kindness or goodness in one side and name types of harassment on the other.
Which side is filled?
Isn’t it really heart wrenching that we have allowed the roots of the evil to get the strength over the radiant flowers of goodness. Certainly, we direly need to banish the muscular family tree of harassment since it is giving birth to seeds of cry, yelling, scream, embarrassment, isolation and even suicide.
Foremost strategy could be, rather should be, to raise the flag of awareness in our home’s boundaries. Teach your kids, siblings, and relatives how to encounter a stranger, and how to set a fine line of personal space. If you are not acquainted with ample information about it, find it from Google and its kid YouTube. Parents should build a bridge of trust with their children so that they could share everything with them in the hour of need. Kindly, never put your finger on their mouth when they talk about daunting harassment. It could compel them to close themselves in a dark cave room, it could harm the blooming flowers of their healthy mind garden, or it could even get them closer to the forbidden pill of suicide.
This is my appeal from the young mature students to conduct awareness sessions on the respective type of cancer than talking about career. Since, I believe that harassment is more vital than career. How on earth a person can even think of his career door if he is mentally and physically fragile.
Dear readers let’s start to erase this dangerous poisonous plant before it spreads and prevails, let’s fight for those who have gone through it, and let’s SAY NO TO HARASSMENT.
The contributor is a student at the University of Central Asia.
