Carnage visited Chah Munawar Shah in August, 2008. Word spread across the village that local Shia leader Basit Ali needed blood following an attack. As residents rushed to a hospital, a suicide bomber struck.

Over 30 were killed in the bloodletting. Among them were 21 of a family. Behesht-e-Zahra, a separate enclosure in a village graveyard houses their remains.

"Not a single family has been spared," village elder Ansar Zaidi told The Express Tribune. My younger brother was killed in the 2008 bombing. My son, injured in the attack, remained in hospital for several months.

Inayat Ali Shah, a retired DSP, said one of his sons was gunned down by militants. Another was killed in an anti-terrorist operation, he said. Shah said his wife, incapacitated after the killing of her sons, passed a year later. "I am paralysed myself. I have one more son but it is not easy to see one's children being killed in the name of religion," he added. Shah said two of his nephews had also been killed by militants.