Graveyards of Mobility
Asem Mustafa Awan
Islamabad: Beneath open skies and indifferent trees, they lie in rows — motorcycles upon motorcycles, rust settling where livelihoods once stood upright.
This is not a scrapyard by design. It is a holding space, a silent accumulation of stalled lives. Each machine here once moved a person to work, to school, to survival. Now, they wait. And in that waiting, something far more valuable than metal is being lost.
These are not luxury assets. For many, a motorcycle is the first step out of immobility — a fragile bridge between effort and earning. It carries workers across cities, delivers bread to households, connects children to classrooms.
When it is taken away, the loss is not temporary. It echoes through days of missed wages, opportunities deferred, and dignity quietly strained.
Read More: https://thepenpk.com/islamabads-green-dream-faces-a-harsh-reality/
The reasons vary — documentation gaps, verification drives, procedural holds. On paper, each case may have a justification. But here, in this field of stillness, the cumulative effect tells another story.
There is no visible urgency to resolve, no clear pathway for return, no system that matches the scale of what has been taken. Time passes, and metal decays. So do the chances of recovery.
What makes this harder to ignore is not just the presence of these machines, but their permanence. Exposure to weather is not an accident; it is a condition that continues unchecked. Rain corrodes, sun cracks, and neglect completes what enforcement began. The asset depreciates long before any resolution arrives, if it arrives at all.
For those who once owned them, the burden does not pause. Life continues, but with reduced means. Alternatives are costlier, slower, sometimes impossible. A tool of livelihood becomes a symbol of absence — of access denied not by circumstance alone, but by delay.
Read More: https://thepenpk.com/leaks-flow-while-homes-run-dry/
There is, of course, a need for order, for verification, for lawful process. But process without proportion begins to feel distant from purpose. When recovery is harder than compliance, and return is slower than loss, questions naturally arise — not of intent, but of balance.
This image does not argue. It presents. It shows what happens when systems hold on longer than they should, and release later than they must. It reflects a gap between enforcement and resolution, where ordinary people bear the longest wait.
These motorcycles may be parked, but the issue they represent is very much in motion. And until that motion finds direction, the rows will only grow — not just as a record of action taken, but as a reminder of outcomes still pending.
Photo Credit: APP
Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.
