Sweet Songs of Sorrow

Review by Jawad Ali
Photos by Shamyl Khuhro

"Terror's Children" is Sharmeen Obaid's delightful offering to world peace and understanding. I urge you to see it if you can. There are moments of brilliance scattered all over this film. A group of little girls slap makeup on a friend and make her the bride in a make belief wedding. Then they march down the street in a colorful procession. One skinny five year old girl bursts out into a jiggling dance, proving once again that women the world over were born to boogie.

These must be some very rare moments of joy, in some of the world’s most tragic refugee camps. Sharmeen displays an equally rare ability to capture such moments with great tenderness and beauty. She shares this gift with some of the greatest artists of our times. In some small way, her moments of joy are like Bob Marley’s songs of freedom. These songs tell stories of politics, sociology and third world suffering, and they do so with such joyous melodies of hope and beauty.

Sharmeen uses her charm and beauty to establish bonds of warmth and love with all the children in the film. She shares smiles with all the little ones and addresses them with politeness and warmth. She even schools these children in games of hop-scotch and carom board like a loving big sister. How much more Muslim Wakeup! can one get.

The best moments in the film are the ones that she shares with the kid from the “bad” madresa. Sharmeen is trying to make the point that the kids from this school are being brought up to hate. All pundits of conventional wisdom are on her side on this one. The little boy explains such positions as the role of women and fighting colonial invaders. His views are in line with the most traditional views amongst Muslims, and other traditional societies like Hassidic Jews. He may have some misguided notions, but he exudes nothing but love and respect in Sharmeen’s delightful company.

The film sets out to tell the much-needed story of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Sharmeen is a young Pakistani grad student at Stanford, and she focuses on children from refugee camps in and around her hometown of Karachi.

Karachi is Pakistan’s large port city in the South, far away from the Afghanistan border, but not too far from the troubles of the Afghan people. The story shifts to two very different religious schools (maderesas) that cater to refugee children. The good one is curiously located in Clifton, home of Karachi’s palaces and yachts. Sharmeen does not show, or dwell on, this curious detail. The children in this school eat wholesome meals, study math and English, play soccer, and have beach outings. Computers are on their way.

The other school is poor, and is located on a desolate patch of desert. Kids here do little else but memorize the Quran and get brainwashed.

Her tone is low key. There are no deep theories here about world events, or heavy discussion of causes and solutions. The production style is MTV-inspired, short attention span theatre. There are lots of slick shots to lead in and out of commercial breaks.

In this spirit I too will leave out my discussion of such heavy stuff like Western stereotypes and the demonization of Islamic schools for another article. In either case, there is lots of thought provoking material here, and Sharmeen does a splendid job of presenting it.

The film will be broadcast on the Discovery Times Channel on Tuesday, March 25 at 9 PM (both Eastern and Pacific).