By Kashif Mateen Ansari

Copyright brecorder

Every few years, Pakistan gets tested. Not in boardrooms, not in speeches but in blood, smoke, and fire. And each time, just when the cynics write its obituary, someone like Major Adnan Aslam steps into the frame and reminds us why this nation is still alive.

This wasn’t a Hollywood script. No background score. No slow-motion hero shots. Just an ordinary morning in Bannu until the gates of the Frontier Constabulary Lines exploded under a terrorist assault. The kind of moment that makes or breaks nations.

He didn’t have to be there as he was on leave. But Pakistanis don’t exactly run on HR policies and leave rosters. Their fuel is duty, and their DNA doesn’t allow them to look away when others bleed.

In that chaos, Major Adnan Aslam did something at once ordinary and impossible: he ran forward. No orders barked, no time to weigh odds, no thought of “should I?” just movement. That one sprint would etch his name into Pakistan’s story of sacrifice.

In the dust and the fire, he saw a comrade down, bleeding, exposed. That is the moment that tells you what someone is made of. Most freeze. Some pray. Adnan sprinted. He crouched over his fellow soldier and became the shield. Flesh and bone against bullets. Not because he wanted glory. Because another man’s life needed buying, and his own was the only currency left.

Later, he would fall. Critically wounded, he fought on but succumbed in CMH Rawalpindi. His funeral, held at Chaklala Garrison, saw rows upon rows of VIPs and ordinary citizens standing still long enough to acknowledge that courage like this is not a statistic. It’s the spine of a country.

Why does this matter? Because every so often, Pakistan is asked a blunt question: are you finished? Look at your economy, your politics, your governance, surely, you’re done. And every time, an answer comes not from a press conference, but from an act like this. One-man steps forward when no one could blame him for staying back, and suddenly Pakistan’s obituary has to wait. That’s why Pakistanis are built differently. Because in their DNA sits a refusal to give up when giving up would be logical.

It’s not just soldiers. It’s the nurse taping a torch to her hand in a blackout, so the needle finds the vein. It’s the farmer wading through floods to deliver grain. It’s the teacher holding class in a veranda after an earthquake. We don’t have the luxury of perfection. But we have this stubborn habit of showing up. And showing up, in the end, is what keeps a nation alive.

Major Adnan’s choice was not theory. It was not debate. It was action in the most unforgiving of moments. In that choice lives the paradox of Pakistan: a country that trips over its own shoelaces every day yet still produces light when the darkness is deepest.

I know the sceptics. They’ll tell you this country is a mess and they’re right, in many ways. Prices soar, promises collapse, and too often the powerful are unaccountable. But hold that thought next to another: in the very same week you curse petrol rates, a young officer gives his life for someone else. Both truths live side by side. One should fuel your anger; the other should fuel your hope. Together, they are the only way forward.

What makes us different is not that we don’t feel fear. We do. What makes us different is that faith, duty, and love still outrun that fear. When a mother whispers dua over her son’s head before he leaves for the front, she knows exactly what she is risking and still says Alhamdulillah. When a soldier crouches over a comrade with bullets whistling, he knows exactly what’s coming and still says Bismillah. Faith here isn’t a bumper sticker. It’s the alloy that turns ordinary people into steel.

The geography matters too. Bannu isn’t a postcard. It’s a frontier town that has carried too many battles, too much strain. And yet, every time the map threatens to wrinkle beyond repair, someone like Adnan sketches it back with sacrifice. That’s how Pakistan survives: not because it is easy, but because enough of us refuse to let it unravel.

At his funeral, you could see the country’s contradictions in one glance; Leaders saluting, a grieving family. Soldiers shoulder to shoulder, jaws clenched and somewhere in the back, ordinary Pakistanis who may never meet the people in power but know exactly what binds this soil together. It isn’t policy. It’s sacrifice. It’s the decision to step forward.

We must be clear: remembering Major Adnan cannot end at tears. Mourning is a day; memory is a duty. To honour him means living differently. Shield someone not with speeches, but with your presence. Keep a promise when it would be easier not to. Strengthen one corner of this fragile house instead of chiselling at it. That is the everyday version of his choice.

So, why are Pakistanis built differently? It is because we are a paradox in motion. We are tender and tough at the same time. Poor and generous; exhausted and unyielding, our language carries the softest words in the hardest lives. Our faith tells us that what is written will not miss us, so we go forward anyway. And sometimes, forward is exactly where the danger is. That is the blueprint, whether in a flood, an earthquake, or a gunfight in Bannu.

The world will move on quickly. The news cycle has already moved. But this is where we must pause. Major Adnan’s name isn’t a headline to scroll past. It’s a mirror. Stand before it long enough, and it will ask you: when your hour comes, will you step forward?

Adnan answered with his life. The least we can do is answer with how we live ours stitch by stitch, choice by choice, until Pakistan becomes what it is meant to be: tough enough to withstand anything, soft enough to comfort everyone. That is the country he believed in. That is the country we owe him.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025