April 12, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
“My entire family — my parents, wife and sister could’ve been wiped out in one split second. It’s such a scary thought, I haven’t allowed it to sink in as yet. We’re all in a state of shock here. My sister was hysterical. She’s the first among us to realize that the bomb was meant to be for her brother. And though the local regime is going all-out to make the rest of our stay comfortable — the governor and the IG came personally to visit — we’d have obviously liked to fly back home to Mumbai right away. But there’re no connecting flights. So we’ll just have to leave on schedule tomorrow.”
It was meant to be the biggest live performance ever with a crowd of 7-8,000 people at the Defence Club in Karachi, so I guess the fanatics couldn’t have chosen better. At 10.15 in the night we were driving to the venue in a bus when the car in front of us blew up just 10 feet away. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My family and singer Soumya Raoh who accompanied us, all rushed out of the bus thinking it could blow up in our face any moment. Zindagi mein pehli baar maut itne kareeb se dekha hai. We could all be gone. Our home in Mumbai would’ve remained locked forever.”
“Who would want to come here to perform at the cost of one’s life? It’s truly sad. In India we’ve extended a red-carpet welcome to artistes like Adnan Sami, Azmat Ali…just yesterday there was an announcement of a Bollywood film with a Pakistani actor. Would I ever want to come back to Pakistan? Right now I just want to return home safe with my family.” [Sify] Update: Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami suspected
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