Our Story

When Ramala Hubb’Allah first walked into the very North of Pakistan, she as if walked into another dimension of myth and story. Seen as potential savior by some and spy by others, she was at once accused of being a spy and a t3rrorist, arrested by a deleterious police officer (who was demoted on her subsequent complaint) for refusing to “marry” him, and offered a sketchy “protection-marriage”+ social work + business deal by her guide, an offer she accepted under the circumstances, moved by the prospect of social work as she had dreamed for years, but she also failed her promise and mission as promptly on account of deeply fragile health and instability of mind at high-altitude. She, however, managed to carry out many stories especially about botanical offerings, which later became a very complex herbal business offering.

What unpacked later was a chaotic and long-unflushed strata of complex histories choking the memory lanes of a tired, remote community starved for attention, benevolence and resources; a community that had seen the comings and goings of empires and emperors, but the fate of which had not shifted significantly by any metric.

What she expected in some noble dreaming corners of her mind, as most charmed travelers do, she did not find. And yet, she says she saw the potentials and imprints for the same. What she saw was a fallen civilization sitting and proliferating weed-like in a flashpoint region where fortunes can both rise and plummet with the slightest of attention and decisions. She has seen an influx of capital that she says seems to bring prosperity but perhaps brings erosion of stories, narratives and histories.

This is deeply tragic, in her view. The extended region, she says, believes representation and voice. Capture of cultural stories. Proliferation of the same.

The immediate region where she experienced a chaos of events, the extended region both needed, she says:

✓ to reflect themselves in their own mirror

✓ for various mountain regions to speak to each other

✓ for the mountain regions to have bidirectional relations and representation with the rest of the country

✓ for there to be founded a center of peace and prosperity that connects this region to the rest of the world in the years to come.

Starting with books and knowledge, she says, is it.

BOOKS are the origin of a new world and life. Amen.

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Stay tuned for updates.