'Sonoghor -a paradise lost' letter

         We are thankful to the Almighty Allah for saving the precious lives but our hearts mourn the destruction of the most beautiful, charming, romantic, historical and oldest village of Chitral , and the first abode of our ancestors, its settlers.

        It is said that Shah Rizai Wali (Zindah peer) Sirang I and Yeghshi, the great grand fathers of Sadat-e-Mastuj, Sirange-Zondras and Yagshias, respectively, were the first to develop this village from a deserted barren. A legendry story tells that there lived a monster that would eat people trying to settle there. Thus the area could not be developed. Zindah Pir, the saint confined the monster and paved the way for the settlers. It might be the mass of ice, which broke and devastated the area and the saint would have stopped it by his blessings (Dua)...

        The soil of Sonoghur contains the bones of our fore fathers, their memories, their footprints of more than half a millennium. The lofty and gigantic mulberry and walnut trees had not only been source of delicious fruit and cool shade in summers but also been reminding us the hardy hands who planted them. The cruel glacier, which added to the beauty of the village, has resorted to turn it in to ruins. If the glacier flood continues to rush down, all the beauty of the lush green orchards and lawns spreading around the ice-cold clear springs and the chats of the carefree Sonoghurites sprawling under the shadows of the sky-high trees would vanish as if it were a dream.

       Ziarat Khan Zerak(1888-1974), the famous poet of Chitral was a crazy lover of his birthplace, Sonoghur. Major part of his poems and songs he composed, are in admiration of his beloved, his village. He called it “Jannat Sonoghur” (Sonoghur the paradise). His soul would have been badly shocked and grieved to see Sonoghur sinking under blackish mud and debris. The catastrophe is equally saddening for the locals as well as for all the related people who have ever been to Sonoghur. We share these hard moments with all the villagers and pray to Allah, the Almighty to save what has been left, Ameen ya Rubbul Alameen.

Sher Wali Khan Aseer,

Abbotabad