Dear Pakistan, On This Independence Day, I Wish You Were Truly Free

But you aren’t!

Image by ibrandify on Freepik — Edited by the author on Canva

So I was walking. Alone. As I often do. The streets change every time I leave — new cracks in the pavement. Different faces behind shuttered windows. The air is thick with something unsaid. Something I can’t shake off. Always, there’s a heaviness. A history that lingers like smoke. Swirling around. Refusing to dissipate. I try to outrun it, but it follows me, always!

Seventy-seven years ago, we claimed the sky. Stood together under the green and white banner of crescent and star. But today, oh beloved land, I wonder why freedom seems like a distant star. You were born from struggles. From the fight against chains that bound you. Night after night. Do you know you are still in chains? But now, they are no longer foreign-made. They wrap around your soul. In the shadows they invade.

Your soil is rich. So rich with the blood of the brave. Yet your heart bleeds. Bleeds. Still enslaved. The voices once sang your praise are now silenced. Buried in unmarked graves. Your children. Oh, your children, dear Pakistan. They flee — from the homes they love, across the sea. Not to seek new lands, new skies, or new dreams. But to escape the nightmare freedom seems.

I was just hoping. Hoping that maybe today would feel different. That the air…