Zamana means "Times" in Urdu.
Charles Dickens was kinda right, y'know? These are the best of times...and these are the worst of times.

On the upside, we have WiFi, Nutella, Indoor Plumbing, YouTube (AFTER A BAN OF FIVE YEARS YO! #Party), Oreo ice creams, smartphones, Chai Wala's Pizza Parathas (Only one-upped by Mexican Parathas), etc. to be thankful for...

On the downside; human life is worth pennies now. There is a deeply permeated aura of insecurity that shouldn't ever be felt inside homes, schools, hospitals...

Going to University everyday seems like a gamble now. 'What if we're next?' Is a question that I repeatedly ask myself. Several schools in Karachi are shutting down regularly, due to security threats. It got worse after the Bacha Khan University massacre in Peshawar, a few days ago.

It was the same after APS tragedy in 2014.

I remember, a couple of days after APS tragedy (16th December, 2014), I almost had a full blown panic attack. We were hanging around the football ground, and one of our uniformed, armed campus security guards walked past us. He just turned to stare at us for a while. Nothing remotely threatening, just a momentary, curious five second stare. My girlfriends aren't ugly (they are all gorgeous actually! LOL)...so it wasn't all that strange for a guy to stare. Yet, I had a mostly internal mini freakout, fixated on his rifle. 

I actually, mentally braced myself for gunfire. No kidding.

All he had to do, was reach for the gun strapped to his waist...isn't that what happened at APS? The terrorists snuck inside the school, wearing guards' uniforms, and opened fire. Initially, the kids thought that the guards were conducting some impromptu security drill...The horror. 130 schoolchildren breathed their last that day. 

Well. Nothing happened of course. Alhamdolilah.

But the point is that I wouldn't have been surprised if it had. 

This year, the terrorists upgraded. They went for a University instead of a school. 21 people killed. Including PhD holders, Undergrads, Grads etc. Maybe in other countries it might not be a big deal to lose a few college students, but for Pakistan, anyone who reaches a University level education represents less than 1% of the entire population. A PhD student represents less than 0.00001%. These evil people sure know where to strike where it hurts. 

You know what's worse that the casualties?

Fear. 

It creeps in. 

And learning to laugh it off is the only way to deal with it. 

In one of my elective courses, my friend K was sitting in front of me, while the teacher discussed a security email circulated by the registrar of the University. The email included a list of steps we are supposed to follow in the event of a security breach. They include completely asinine rules such as; 

"Lock the doors and crouch under desks until security clears you to exit the classroom. Also find a 'Buddy' during the crisis, and immediately email the Registrar who your buddy is, and that you're both alive and all that shizz..."

Uh, yeah. I'll do that. Take the time out to painstakingly draft an email to the registrar, while I'm in danger of being Killed by raving lunatics. -_-

Anyhoo...we were all creeped out by the discussion, and my friend was like, "Damn, Now I know there's a reason why smart people sit in the back rows. I'm sitting in front of the door, and If someone comes in right now, I'll be the first to die."

And we laughed over it. Because the alternative is just too depressing. 

Then K told me a strange story. 

In one of her Arabic classes, this older looking dude came in kinda late. She thought he might be a TA or something, but it turned out that he was a student. He wore a dark jacket over his shalwar kameez, and skull cap over his head. He had a full beard. 

He kept staring at K. (Again, kinda rude, but excusable because she is adorable.)

Then he started humming. 

The kids around him got weirded out when they realized that he was doing Tilawat (recitation) of the Holy Quran. He was doing it in the middle of the class, while staring at a pretty girl. 

Creepfest alright. 

My friend Tinkerbell thought he was doing it to distract himself from her prettiness. (LOL) 

The guys in the class had other theories. They were (in hushed tones) expecting him to pop like a balloon. 

"I kept anticipating it. That he'd open his jacket, shout 'ALLAHUAKBAR!', and then...you know...POP!" One of them snickered after class. 

Like I said. Zamana. WTF?

Maybe if this were a secular, mostly Non-Muslim country, it might have been okay, but in a largely Muslim populated country, no person should be suspected of hiding AK-47's in his pants, just because he happened to be reciting the Quran during class. 

At the very least, he shouldn't inspire genuine fear by his (admittedly a but weird) but mostly harmless behavior. 

If he were humming a Justin Bieber song, nobody would find him offensive, or threatening. (Although nothing could be more threatening to the auditory senses. The Beeb's songs are like Influenza. You're stuck with them through association. They REFUSE to exit the brain and by then it's too late to say that I'm sorry, and that I'm missing more than just your b--YOU GET MY POINT!?)

Widespread Terrorism has actually made us insensitive to the horror of it. 

How has terrorism changed your life? (I'm expecting interesting stories from Muslims living in secular countries!)