DIR LOWER: Dilawar Khan is a student of first grade at the Government Primary School Khungi in Lower Dir, a remote district in the northwestern Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Every morning, he comes to school with his school bag, attends lessons, speaks to his teachers and peers and goes home to finish his homework like the rest of his classmates. Except there is one difference. Khan is 65-years-old, more than six decades older than most of his peers.
Unable to study during his youth due to poverty and a lack of schools in his home district, Khan, a father of five and granddad to seven, now hopes to make up for lost time.
“During the time of our father, there was a lot of poverty,” he told Arab News. “My friends would study but due to poverty, I was left out [of school].”
Khan, who has spent his life working as a daily wage laborer, a mason and at a fruit market, said he was inspired to enroll in school when he started preaching Islam as part of a proselytizing group.
“A person got angry with the Ameer [leader of the group] who was illiterate and had to do the preaching but couldn’t do it properly as he couldn’t read,” the elderly man said. “Due to that story, I got really upset.”
He resolved that when he returned to his hometown, he would enroll in school. And he did, around 18 months ago. Now he daily attends the Khungi public school where his classmates and teachers all refer to him as ‘baba,’ or father, out of respect.
“Baba has been coming for the past 17-18 months,” said teacher Sultan Muhammad, adding that Khan had started out by learning basic writing and reading as well as numbers and alphabets.
“He is so happy here and says, ‘Time doesn’t come back in hand, I would have learnt a lot if time could be reversed. Now, I have wasted the opportunity’.”
Khan expressed sadness that none of his five children had an education.
“I enrolled my children in school but they were not interested,” he said. “I told them it was their choice but I took them to school because I was uneducated myself.”
But now Khan encourages his classmates they must complete their education:
“I have told them [the children] to learn a lesson from my example and not waste their time and to study hard.”
