DATELINE: When Silence Speaks…

Listen to your children’s silence as carefully as you listen to their words.

Khursheed Ahmad Akhoon

The mountains of Jammu and Kashmir know how to keep their silence. They have witnessed grief for generations, absorbing the pain of those who live among them without ever asking them to explain it. Perhaps that is why, in these hills, people too learn to suffer quietly.

This is a story of two brothers – Waseem (name changed) and Faheem (name changed) – who grew up in the shadow of those mountains, in a modest household where money was scarce but ambition was not.

Their father, Nadeem (name changed), was a clerk in the Education Department. He had little wealth, but he possessed something he valued more: dignity. His pen was his instrument, and honesty was his identity.

Their mother, Nadia (name changed), came from a family where caste and community often mattered more than individual choice. When she married Nadeem, she crossed boundaries her family considered sacred. The price was heavy. There was social boycott. Relationships were severed. For much of her life, she lived with the consequences of that decision.

Yet she never complained.

She had a home. She had a husband. And, above all, she had a purpose.

Waseem and Faheem had almost identical faces and the same hopeful eyes. Their parents dreamed the same dreams for both of them.

Nadeem and Nadia devoted their lives to their children’s education. Their income was barely enough to meet the household’s needs, while the cost of education continued to rise. Eventually, Nadeem went to a bank and took a loan.

The loan was sanctioned, but it came with interest.

Land was sold. Nadia’s jewellery was gradually given up. Debt became a permanent presence in the household. Yet neither parent allowed the burden to extinguish their children’s ambitions.

Faheem left home for higher education. Waseem, too, grew up determined to become an engineer.

Years later, the two young men returned with degrees in their hands. Their parents looked at them with the quiet pride of people who believed that their sacrifices had finally borne fruit.

They thought their lives were about to change.

They were wrong.

There were few jobs.

There were applications, examinations and interviews. There were long journeys to offices and endless waits for replies. For young graduates like Waseem and Faheem, education had opened the door to hope, but the world beyond that door offered little opportunity.

Faheem kept trying. He went from office to office, sat for examinations and appeared for interviews. In the beginning, he rejected the voices that attempted to lure frustrated young men into extremism in the name of religion, honour and identity.

But unemployment has a way of eroding confidence. Repeated rejection can turn disappointment into humiliation, and humiliation can eventually become anger.

Slowly, Faheem began to change.

The very voices he had once rejected started sounding different.

He eventually fell into the hands of hostile elements and, one day, picked up a gun.

A few months later, the family received the news that no parent should ever have to hear.

Faheem had been killed in an encounter.

Waseem closed his eyes. For the first time, he felt as though the walls of his home were collapsing around him.

There was no dramatic outburst. No great scene.

There was only silence.

Nadia withdrew into herself. Nadeem seemed to grow old in a single night.

And something inside Waseem broke—a wound so deep that nobody around him could hear its sound.

He continued searching for work. He travelled from one city to another, from one office to another, carrying his degree and his hopes.

Everywhere, he heard the same words:

“We will let you know.”

They never did.

The debt continued to grow. Conversations at home became shorter. Silence occupied more and more space.

Waseem began learning how to hide his pain.

Outside the house, he found friends who were themselves carrying failures, frustrations and broken dreams. At first, they simply sat together and talked. They spoke about unemployment, debt and everything that had gone wrong.

Then, one day, someone offered Waseem a cigarette.

He refused.

Then he hesitated.

“Just once,” he told himself.

The smoke entered his lungs, and for a brief moment, the pain seemed quieter.

That moment was enough.

Soon, cigarettes were no longer enough. Alcohol followed, but that too failed to silence what was happening inside him.

Then someone offered him something else.

“It’s medicine, not addiction,” he was told.

Waseem believed him.

He did not understand that addiction rarely announces itself when it enters a life. It often arrives disguised as relief.

Before long, pills, chitta—a powdered intoxicant taken through the nose—and eventually injections became part of Waseem’s life.

When he tried to stop, his body rebelled. His hands trembled. He sweated. His breathing became heavy. The more he wanted to escape the addiction, the more fiercely his body demanded it.

He would promise himself:

“Tonight will be the last time.”

But there is rarely a last time in the vocabulary of addiction.

There were nights when Waseem sat with his head against the wall, listening to his mother’s breathing in the next room. He knew what he had become. He hated himself for it.

He thought about treatment. He thought about leaving home. He wanted to escape the life he had created.

But each time, addiction pulled him back.

His resistance increased.

His dose increased.

His money disappeared.

Eventually, desperation took him somewhere he had never imagined he would go.

One day, he stood before his mother’s old box—the same box that had once held her jewellery. The jewellery was gone now. Only memories remained.

He opened it.

His hands trembled.

His conscience protested.

But the craving was louder.

He took the money.

He knew it was theft. He knew exactly what he was doing.

And in that moment, he fell further in his own eyes.

Shame isolated him even more, and isolation pushed him deeper into addiction.

Then came the morning that ended everything.

Nadia went to wake her son.

Waseem did not respond.

She tried again.

He never woke up.

Death had quietly taken him.

The room was silent.

On the wall were two reminders of dreams that had once seemed so full of promise:

Faheem’s degree.

Waseem’s degree.

Two sons.

Two degrees.

Two tragedies.

One had been taken by a gun.

The other by a silent poison.

But Waseem’s story is not only about one young man. It is about the circumstances that can slowly push a person towards the edge—the despair of unemployment, the burden of debt, the loneliness that follows loss, the absence of meaningful support, and the ease with which addiction can enter a vulnerable life.

It is also a reminder that behind many young people who appear distant, angry or indifferent, there may be a struggle that nobody has noticed.

For parents, the message is simple: listen to your children’s silences as carefully as you listen to their words.

For young people, there is another message: what appears to be an escape today can become a prison tomorrow.

And for society, perhaps the most important message is this: a person trapped in addiction should not be seen only through the lens of blame. Addiction can require treatment, rehabilitation, patience and human support.

If someone has already disappeared into that darkness, the story does not have to end there.

The doors of return are not necessarily closed.

Sometimes, all a person needs is someone willing to reach out, and the courage to take one step back.

Because behind every addiction is a human story.

And behind every degree on a wall may be a dream that once belonged to someone who believed the future would be different.

(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE)