HE saw the two kids every morning, shepherding goats and sheep. They went past the house in the valley where he was detained. One day, he asked the children why they didn’t go to school.
“We used to,” answered one of the boys. “But the schools have been closed since the fighting.”
“Do you still have your books?” he asked them. The kids nodded. “Why don’t you come over with your books and I will teach you.”
They turned up the next day but wanted to leave after ten minutes. “What?” he exclaimed. “You aren’t even finished with your first subject yet.”
Soon, others joined in. The number of children swelled to 32 over the next 10 months. And then it was time to leave, to be moved to another location.
They used to call him Ustad Jee, a title not far off the mark for Ajmal Khan, the academic who spent years in captivity in the mountains of Waziristan, only just to have returned.
Prof Ajmal Khan, vice chancellor of the Islamia College University, was kidnapped by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2010. This August, he returned home after four years.
“When I’d say it is chhutti, they would hop up and run,” he says. “They were like kids in any government school. Except that they had no facilities.”
Lost and found
The house in the Professors’ Colony behind the University of Peshawar had an air of quiet despondency when I visited it four years ago. That was September 2010, the month Ajmal Khan was kidnapped. I had turned up without an appointment; my phone calls had gone unanswered.
