Bearing the brunt of old age and earning a living for the family

PESHAWAR: Sitting in the City’s lone jewellery bazaar - Andar Shehar - an old man does not know his age but is very well aware of the weight he was carrying on his fragile back.

The old man, who was wearing no shoes on his cracked feet, did not disclose his name but said he was carrying weight on his back and doing other daily wage jobs in the crowded Peepal Mandi bazaar since his childhood. He was taking rest in main jewellery bazaar near the historic Mohabat Khan Mosque while on his way to a nearby house inside the City.

I don’t know how much old I am but this is 80 kilogram bag of wheat flour I am carrying on my back,” he told this scribe in a low voice. The 80-kg wheat flour was tied to his back with a rope, usually used by porters in Peshawar city.

Wearing a white cap covered with dust, rugged waste coat and having no shoes on his wounded feet, the grey-bearded man said that he had a small family with two daughters and a wife and had been living in the City since his childhood.

“I am working with these naikan (employers) for the last 20 years and carrying wheat flour bags from house to house in the nearby locality,” the old man said, who is doing labour work in a small flour mills in the interior city.

“I hate beggary and May Allah save me and my family from this curse,” the old man replied when asked that he was also receiving money from the passers-by. He said that the whole bazaar, shopkeepers and local people knew him for decades as a daily wager and a labourer and that was the reason sometimes the people gave him zakat and alms, which he did not refuse.

A tea-seller and nearby shopkeepers endorsed the claim of old man and said that ‘Baba’ had spent all his life in working and carrying weight on his back in the nearby Peepal Mandi bazaar and Chowk Yadgar.

“I have been selling tea here in this bazaar for the last 35 years and I have known him since then,” the tea-seller Rahim Gul told this scribe. “This is my fate and I am quite happy with it as it was Allah’s will to have born me in a poor family and still carrying weight at old age,” he said.