{"id":373,"date":"2026-08-31T11:30:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/?p=373"},"modified":"2026-08-31T11:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:37:31","slug":"gulabon-ke-gajre-garland-of-roses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/2026\/08\/31\/gulabon-ke-gajre-garland-of-roses\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulabon ke gajre: Garland of Roses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this blog, Tahera, a young girl from Afghanistan, takes us through the crowded streets of Quetta. She highlights the lives of children<\/em> who should be in school but instead must work to survive. She describes, for example, a girl selling gajras (flower garlands). Tahera\u2019s blog is a powerful reminder of the impact conflict and displacement have on the rights of children, whose lives often seem invisible. <\/em>Dr Erika Jim\u00e9nez responds<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walk past the crowded streets of Quetta, noises of the late evenings start, the air thick with smoke from cooking pakoras, samosas, rolls, and bolani by the side of a bakery. A boy crouches by a stall, counting notes of 10 rupees with hands blackened from the coal in his small bucket. I, who usually doesn\u2019t, can smell the spices in the air, turmeric, chili, a hint of sweat. Wait, there is more: I can feel exhaustion, vulnerability, anxiety, almost frustration. Till here everything is clear, but what I fail to understand is whether these feelings are from within or without? Inside or out? \u2026 Or perhaps both. I can’t understand, which is more exhausting, even frustrating, so much so that I want to sit down. On the road. In the crowd. I want to stop walking. On the road. In the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A girl carries a not very long stick of fresh flowers\u2019 bracelets (called gajras) under the fairy lights of the shops. Her sandals are worn out, the edges curling, and I notice how the petals of rose brush against her fingers. She glances at me and smiles, I can’t help but notice her eyes, light hazel with a fire burning inside, like a candle, almost like the ones people lit in the mosques. I want to take another glimpse of her eyes to see if I see the fire again, but she’s already gone. Maybe long enough that she disappeared as if she weren’t standing here at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bell I associate with learning rings only in my memory for a long time now. It was a long, long time ago, at least in my head, the first time that I heard the bell ring. I think about those kids, who should be in school, who should eat proper food, who should have a happy life, but there they were: working in order to survive, out of school because they are refugees, having bigger problems than solving a puzzle, thinking about money for a meal. My thoughts are with all the children in any part of the world facing inequalities and bigger tensions, refugees, immigrants, those who left, even lost a part of them somewhere else, with girls, young and old, facing discrimination and a hard time for their gender, and overall, for anyone who feels like the other, for the excluded, the periphery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We say education is a right, yet some children are taught by the brutal world instead of a kind teacher. And we, the ones who pass by them, do we really see them- even if we are one of them- or do we simply see what we are comfortable seeing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I step aside, feeling a strange mix of frustration, memories, and helplessness. I ask myself: \u201cHow long can the world pretend their childhoods are invisible? And what do we do with the knowledge that they are not?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My heart feels heavy, I feel like I am burning, within, I remember the fire in that girl\u2019s beautiful hazel eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noises still on, cars pass by, sellers shouting their products, and I realise if there’s one thing, one damn thing I know for sure, it’s that we should keep the fire of fight for equality and education alive, that we shouldn’t let any wind blow that candle, that we should continue talking about these, caring about these, let’s do it, and let’s do it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this blog, Tahera, a young girl from Afghanistan, takes us through the crowded streets of Quetta. She highlights the lives of children who should be in school but instead must work to survive. She describes, for example, a girl selling gajras (flower garlands). Tahera\u2019s blog is a powerful reminder of the impact conflict and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2456,"featured_media":377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-children-and-conflict","category-education","czr-hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/86\/2026\/08\/Garland-of-Roses.avif","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}