Zaara Hameed

I leaned against the counter of my mini-supermarket in Rupal, Pakistan, a small village nestled at the foot of Nanga Parbat. The store buzzed with the sounds of tourists and mountaineers, their excited energy filling the narrow aisles. Business was good—these were the days when shelves emptied quickly, and the till filled with crumpled rupees and foreign bills.

Outside, I saw my son talking to a group of climbers. At twenty-three, he had his father’s sharp features, but his face still carried the youthfulness of someone not yet hardened by life. As a porter, he had already taken part in several expeditions, but I knew that in this world, he was still considered second class. The incident on K2 last year was never far from my mind. A porter had fallen, and the climbers had left him behind, stepping over his body as they descended. It was scandalous, widely reported, but to us here in Rupal, it was a painful reminder of the risks my son faced.

“Ammi, we’ll leave early tomorrow,” he said as he came inside to grab a few last-minute items. I nodded, trying to mask the worry tightening my throat. I trusted him—he knew these mountains better than most who came here. But I couldn’t ignore the unease that gnawed at me. What if he fell victim to the same fate as the porter on K2? Would these mountaineers, so focused on their goal, help him, or would they leave him behind?

At forty-two, I had learned to live with the tension between pride and fear. The climbers brought good money to our village, money that was essential for our livelihood. But they also brought a sense of unease, a reminder that to many of them, my son was just another piece of equipment, not a person with a mother waiting anxiously for his return.

As I handed a packet of biscuits to a customer, I tried to push the thoughts aside. There was still much to prepare before tomorrow, and the shop was busy. But as I watched my son walk out the door, his back straight and determined, that uneasy feeling lingered—a quiet reminder that in this growing world of adventure tourism, we were all climbing our own mountains.