Dawn.com: MINGORA, March, 17: Two policemen were killed and five others were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself in police barracks in Mingora on Monday.

DPO Waqif Khan told Dawn that a young man posing as a recruit and holding a police uniform entered the barracks at Mingora Police Line. He went straight to the wireless room and blew himself up.

Timeline of those killed and injured in 2008 by bomb blasts alone. I was counting from March upwards to February 17th till I reached 156, and then lost count. Mixed up numbers. Then started up again, missed them again. Such are cold, brutal statistics. You lose count. Then go back to your normal lives.

I will try counting them again, one by one.

To be honest, I can't, these days (not that I was ever able to), put anything in perspective. You turn on the news and there is a blast, somewhere. There is shock, then numbness. Watching the news, you can't wonder who did it, you can't hope for answers. Who? Why? How? No, No, No. You can't know. You just sit entrenched in a circle of indefiniteness. A vagueness, everything unclear, shrouded in thick greyey clouds. You can't see. You grope, feel blindly. Nopes, nothing.

Fear, creeps in too. Bomb blasts happen. You lament, grieve. But when they happen close to you, very close, then there is fear too. My mother passes the Mall every day, and ever since it became a hub for bomb blasts, I fear. I really do fear. There was fear when the FIA building was struck. Perhaps, its then, that I come close, or partially even begin to understand the torture of families suffering. When they lose the people they love. Have them missing. For no reason.

Perhaps there is hope in the recently elected Parliament. They are corrupt, yes. But perhaps Benazir Bhutto's assassination has changed something. Perhaps they have abandoned their nepotistic, dishonest ways? Don't feel like hoping too much for that. There is, though, a cause of celebration in the fact that both PPP and the PML-N have agreed to re-instate the judges. A fair and just judiciary is not in their interest, at least not the interests they have chased for years. Don't know how far they are going to go with this.

But if there is nothing else, then at least there are the lawyers. God bless them. Never stopping. The only hope Pakistan has had for years.

Here is a revealing piece on Pakistan's disappeared, in the Guardian by Declan Walsh, thanks to FAST Rising where I found it.

Fehmida Mirza is set to become the first woman National Assembly speaker. Her husband is Zardari's friend and some are leveling charges of nepotism.

Anyway

Gotta go