A Childhood That Cooks Before It Dreams

Asem Mustafa Awan

Multan: The fire is small, controlled, almost careful, as if even the flames understand their limits.

In front of a thatched shelter stitched together from reeds and resolve, a young girl crouches over a pot, stirring what will become the family’s next meal. Around her, life rests in fragments: a charpai holding tired bodies, a few utensils, a roof that promises shade but not certainty. The ground beneath is not quite home, but it is where the day must begin and end.

She is in her early teens, perhaps younger than she appears. Yet there is no hesitation in her movements. She knows what is expected—how to cook, how to wait, how to provide in the only way she can. Childhood here does not unfold; it compresses. It folds into responsibility long before it has the chance to wander.

Inside the shelter, siblings linger in quiet stillness. There is no visible urgency, only a rhythm shaped by repetition. Outside, the world moves on, structured, documented, accounted for. Here, existence is less certain.

There are no formal records of lives like these, no reliable count of how many move from place to place, carrying their homes on their backs and their histories in silence.

Generations have lived this way, not by choice but by continuity. Movement is not freedom; it is necessity. To stay too long invites removal. To move too often erases belonging. In between lies a fragile balance, sustained by endurance rather than support.

The girl does not look up. The task demands attention. Fire must be managed, food must be prepared, and time does not pause for reflection. Her world is immediate, practical, unforgiving in its simplicity.

What stands out is not just her responsibility, but its acceptance. There is no visible protest, no outward question. Only the quiet assumption that this is how things are meant to be.

Somewhere beyond this frame, systems exist, policies drafted, protections envisioned, frameworks discussed. Yet here, their presence feels distant, almost abstract. The gap between design and delivery is not measured in distance, but in lives lived without intersection.

The meal will be ready soon. It will be shared, consumed, and followed by another cycle of the same.

And in that continuity, a childhood passes, unrecorded, uninterrupted, unseen.

Photo Credit: APP

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