PakNationalists Forum And Pakistan National Council Of Arts Jointly Launch A Book And A Seminar
PakNationalists Forum is honored to release on 11 June 2011 this book, titled, in its English translation, ‘The Last Ten Days: The Words Of A Pakistani Soldier’. It is an inspiring story of a thoughtful and yet determined soldier, possibly one of the youngest of Pakistan Army to die fighting terror resulting from the occupation of Afghanistan.
It’s a diary of the last ten days of a soldier who is convinced he will die in the mission that brought him to the border of Afghanistan, where he wrote this diary. So convinced he was of his death, and so eager he was to bump a few dozen anti-Pakistan terrorists coming from the Afghan side, that he even predicted his own death on the last page of the diary, a few hours before terrorists took him down. But he did not go easy. He gave them a hard time. He took 22 bullets, all to his chest. He falls but his small unit succeeds in recapturing an important mountain pass that has been under the control of terrorists for eight years, right on the Afghan border in Mohmand Agency of the Pakistani tribal region.
Lieutenant Faiz Sultan was 22 when he died. He was the eldest of his siblings. His younger sister was so proud of him she told him to volunteer for this mission. The officer who telephoned his father to break the news of his martyrdom was stunned when a calm man on the other end said confidently, ‘Bury him there if the bullets hit his back. Send him to me if the bullets are in his chest.’ The commander conveyed this to the Chief of Army Staff.
Gen. Ashfaq Kayani was so touched that he personally called the father to condole.
This book is elegant, small and brief. It will wet your eyes and give you an anti-demoralization boost that our nation so much needs during these days. We at PakNationalists Forum intentionally produced this book in a small size sot that it can fit in your pocket or bag. When several of our volunteers read the first draft, they thought this is an excellent way of uplifting the morale of our people in these tough times that the Pakistani nation is going through.
How did we at PakNationalists Forum discovered this book?
When we launched our online work in 2007 in the middle of the worst bouts of anti-Pakistanism mainly in the US media, Faiz Sultan quietly joined our online membership drive and joined our work as our volunteers churned out reports and articles countering the propaganda against Pakistan and offered blunt counterarguments that almost no one else, except maybe a lone Dr. Shireen Mazari, raised in the mainstream Pakistani media. Faiz immersed himself in this work. One day he disappeared. Two months later, his younger brother emailed us breaking the news: Faiz was a soldier in the Army and he died fighting for the country.
There are many soldiers like Faiz who wrote diaries liks Faiz did. Being so young, and listening to what he used to tell his younger brother and three sisters, we have no doubt in our minds that this is a young man that embodies the resilinece, passion, strength and patriotism of most Pakistanis. He is a Pakistani nationalist par excellence.
Many precious diaries have been written by our heroes. Here on this page you can see a picture of the burned diary of another hero, Captain Ali Ahmed. The diary was burned during heavy fighting as its author embraced martyrdom. So this is the first time that a full diary is published recording the last ten days of a smart, passionate and intelligent young Pakistani officer as he led his small unit into victory but died as he went back to recover a fallen fellow soldier.
On 30 April 2011, Chief of the Army Staff awarded the Star of Bravery, or Sitara-e-Basalat, on Lt. Faiz Sultan. His parents, brother and three sisters received it in an elegant ceremony. The book is launched on 11 June 2011, marking the second anniversary of his martyrdom.
We embrace Faiz Sultan as he embraced the soil of our land in his death. In his death he is a living testament that Pakistan’s younger generation will not let this nation go down.
