SETTING CAPTIVES FREE, Islamabad, Pakistan (Sep 06)

The rank smell made approaching the area almost unbearable, and was clearly an effective deterrent to keep away nosy coppers. The rubbish clogging up the canal provided effective camouflage and only if you look closely (probably by clicking on the picture an enlarging the picture) can you see the huddled figures buying and selling narcotics. The idea that human organisms could even approach the bridge let alone hide in that mass or rotting refuse just nauseated me. The entire expedition to this particular drug spot made me feel ill, but the idea that this was the life that these people were captive in terrorised me. The time we spent with ICAN (Islamabad Christians Against Narcotics) had impressed on us that these addicts had much more than an addiction to overcome. Between the pressures of poverty and the vulnerability, of slum life and Christian culture in the very centre of explosively charged political atmosphere they had enough to deal with. When drug lords, pimps, corrupt police men and the other undercurrents of the underworld add to these, the escapism of another high is probably all too easy. The spouses of addicts (generally wives) too are locked into these shackles of unbearable survival eased only by a fear of death. Since the state approach to addiction seem to be a penalty of capital punishment or life imprisonment there is no redemptive hope other than these struggling small outposts of Christian clinics (possibly 3, 4 in the entire country housing not more than 20 patients at a time). The number of addicts and relapsed addicts on the other hand seem to be overwhelming. Female addiction doesn’t even seem to be a concept that anti narcotics services can begin to grapple with given the prisons of culture and penalty. Again I was filled with an impotent rage and pain that gnawed within the repetitious nausea; even though I was a mere tourist to this spectacle and in a few weeks would be safe in my comfortable and pastel world, the momentary perception assaulted my bubble of wellbeing. If we were called to feed the hungry, to give shelter to the homeless, to set captives free and bring light to those in darkness and in the shadow of death, here indeed was a place. A place that telling people of a loving father and a redemptive God would be a pointless exercise; where the semantics of Hope & Grace would be outside their experience, unless… unless some one gave meaning to those semantics. Seeing the ICAN commitment to do just that filled me with a new hope. There will always be places like under that bridge around the world barricading out the very air of freedom and Hope. And their will always, I hope… be enough people charged to set them free.

http://webarchive.cms-uk.org/exodus/action.htm