O Goddess of Beauty, What Have You Done?

They had come from Punjab with dreams in their eyes, hopes in their hearts, and a longing to escape the heat and noise of daily life. Swat, the valley of rivers and mountains, promised peace. To them, it was nothing less than a glimpse of heaven on Earth — cool streams, whispering winds, lush green slopes, and time together as a family. The children laughed in the shade of the trees, the elders breathed in the crisp mountain air. There were plans for barbecues, bonfires, and photos against the scenic backdrop.

But nature had written a cruel twist into this idyllic script.

Suddenly, without warning, the sky darkened. The winds grew heavier. The heavens opened, and the rain began — not as a gentle drizzle, but a merciless downpour. In the blink of an eye, the gentle river transformed into a roaring beast. The ground shook, the waters surged, and everything in its path was swept away.

The same water that gives life… became a messenger of death.

No one could have known that the laughter of the mountains was only a prelude to mourning. The picnic turned into a nightmare. In that single cruel moment, eighteen lives — children, parents, siblings — were lost. Eighteen candles blown out. Eighteen dreams buried under rocks and trees, or still missing beneath the cold waters of the Swat River.

A mother clutched one son in her arms, held another by the hand — and all three were swallowed by the flood. No cries were heard, no rescue arrived. The valley that once echoed with joy now stood in heavy silence.

All that remained afterward were fragments.

A child’s dress — her Eid outfit — clung to a broken branch.
A little boy’s shoe — worn, small, and soaked — lay half-buried in the mud.
Photographs that were meant to be cheerful memories of summer holidays now frame faces on condolence posts across social media.

The children who came to admire the mountains now sleep beneath them.

They were brought to see the skies, the streams, the stones. Instead, they became stories in the news, names on lists of the dead. Their selfies, once full of light and laughter, are now grainy images accompanied by teardrops and tributes.

One grieving mother, exhausted from crying out for help that never came, as she began to sink beneath the waves, murmured in anguish:
"Rul te gaye aan, par changay te saan!"
“We may have been destroyed, but we were not bad people!”

O Swat!
O Valley of Beauty!
O Goddess of the North — what have you done?

You, who welcomed travelers with your arms wide open, have now become a painting of death.
You, who were proud to be the land of hospitality, have let the mothers of Punjab find their graves in your soil.
You, who housed the kindness of the Pashtun heart, turned cold in the face of your guests’ suffering.

And yet, where were the voices of power?
Where were the hands of the authorities?
Where were the systems that were meant to protect?
They woke up only after the valley had turned into a cemetery. Only when bodies were pulled from under stones, or still tangled in tree branches. Only when parents were searching with empty hands for the remains of their little ones.

Three government officers suspended. Press statements made. Promises repeated. But will any of this bring those lives back?

What of the future they were promised — “Naya Pakistan,” a new dawn?

Was this that new morning?
This blood-stained sunrise, this night-worn day?
Was this the light they were waiting for?
As the poet said:
“Yeh daagh daagh ujala, yeh shab-gazeeda sahar,
Woh intezar tha jiska, yeh woh sahar to nahi!”
(This tainted light, this darkened dawn—this was not the morning we were waiting for!)

Let us not forget.
Let their names not vanish into statistics.
Let their stories not dissolve like foam in the river.

Because behind each lost life was a dream, a heartbeat, a voice that once laughed, a hand that once held tight to someone they loved. Let this not just be another headline. Let this be a call for real change — for systems that protect, for safety measures that work, for accountability that arrives before tragedy, not after.

O Swat, your beauty is undeniable.
But beauty, without mercy, becomes monstrous.