Swat Experience 2011: my pics are gone!!!!

I have been going through the photos I took in Swat (summer 2011 trip), and I realize I still haven't discussed so much of what I'd promised my readers I would! [[Wait, WAIT!!! I've lost most of my pictures!! They were somehow deleted from my hard drive, and I even installed Pandora Recovery in a futile effort to recover them, but I've been successful in recovering only a few! It's SO heartbreaking because I took thousands of pics of virtually everything and anything that came my way--including the first bowl I drank water in, cow dung, our chickens and other animals, a mother wiping the nose of her baby son with her chador/chadar/sazar/hijab, something called "nazar panra" that my aunts had to do on me when I got sick  there because they were worried that someone must have given their niece the evil eye, a little "dolai" that my uncles and grandpa made for me when I was ill because they didn't want the flies and other bugs to bother me ... and other random but totally awesome things like this! The only pics that are left are the ones I've already posted on this blog and the ones I've posted on Youtube. Fortunately, all of the videos I made there are still on my PC. Just not the pics. You've no idea how frustrating and horrible it feels, okay!!!!

Ahhhh!!! They're gone now, dunya!! ALL GONE!!!! Lemme just saw a few more things and then I'll go cry a few buckets of tears and then some more.

So I wanted to tell y'all that I was supposed to have written on my experience in Swat. People keep asking me, and I keep having to repeat the same things... though I often find myself unsure about how exactly I felt there. I'll explain that in another post ('cause I just got depressed all over again remembering that I've lost all my pictures). But I really do need to write all those thoughts before I forget them all. There's a lott good and a lotta bad, and I need to remind myself of both every once in a while.

Among the topics I need to write on are:

•  the Taliban stories that my cousins told me (imagine: they'd go to school daily, seeing beheaded humans hanging to the poles near their schools, prisons, etc.... I cringe thinking about what this means for these kids' future! They have to be the strongest people I know to have survived it all)
• the pardah/purdah system in Swat, girls and skin-color problems (this is unfortunately common all over South Asian and much of the Middle East, but I've a few stories and personal experiences I'd like to share with my blog readers)
• personal relationships among the people of Swat (fear not: I won't disclose any information that shouldn't be disclosed! Just wanna give a general idea to my readers about how people interact with each other there, both positively and negatively)
• the class/caste system in Swat
• how customs have changed in the last 10-12 years
• my general observations and conclusions about the society there

And since I'm a bit nostalgic this summer, I'll also share some memories of Swat! Na, wait - I've shared most of my Swat memories in another post: Part I; Part II. But there's still a lotta things I forgot to include in those memories that I feel like I need to write on, so.

All right. See y'all soon with these topics. And please, PRETTY PLEASE pray for a miracle for me to get my pictures back!!! I don't care if you don't believe in miracles normally; believe in them now! I will cry! I Will Cry So Hard If I Don't Get Those Pictures Back!!! SAVE MEEEEEEEEE!!!

~ the Qrratu