Muhammad Anas Yasir
Every wave has a name. Ten thousand dollars for a bet. That is what a life costs in the narrow streets of Gujrat, where dreams are traded like property and whispered promises of Europe circulate like family gossip. Here, the word Dunki is not a tragedy, it’s a trend. It has become a strange fashion, an aspiration. In tea stalls, barber shops, and on rooftops where cousins gather to talk about a future too small for their hunger, Dunki glows like an escape word. It started with stories of someone’s cousin reaching Italy, someone’s neighbor finding work in Greece, someone’s uncle sending money from Spain. The tales drifted through the air like perfume, intoxicating and unreal. Soon, leaving wasn’t a shame; staying was.
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Agents appeared like street prophets. They spoke in numbers and routes: ten thousand dollars through Iran and Turkey, twelve for a safer boat, seven if you didn’t mind dying on the way. Men sold land, borrowed from cousins, pawned their sisters’ jewelry, and promised to repay once they reached. In Gujrat, Dunki lagana became a status symbol. The whispers said: “Through Iran, to Turkey, then the sea.” The whispers never said “grave.” Families watched these men leave, not with defiance, but with a strange pride. Photos from Europe circulated on WhatsApp of men standing before old buildings, smiling with tired eyes. They said they were happy, and their mothers wanted to believe them. But every phone call carried the weight of fear. Every silence meant the sea had swallowed another name.
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When the boat tragedy near Greece broke the news that hundreds of Pakistanis were gone, the air in Gujrat froze. The names came in slow, uncertain waves: from Kharian, from Jalalpur Jattan, from Sialkot. Mothers held their phones as if holding a pulse. Some were confirmed, some stayed missing, but the truth was known — the sea keeps its dead. Still, the departures didn’t stop. Within weeks, new agents appeared with new promises. The same families that had mourned now dreamed again. Because Dunki is no longer about migration — it’s about dignity. It’s the rebellion of those tired of being trapped in a country where effort leads nowhere.
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Critics call them reckless, but recklessness is easy to name from dry land. For those who leave, the risk is not greater than the life they leave behind. How do you measure danger when despair is already killing you? For many, Dunki is not adventure — it’s breath. A young man in Gujrat once said, “If I stay, I’ll die slow; if I go, maybe I’ll die fast.” That is the equation our youth carry — not ambition, but exhaustion. And so they climb aboard overcrowded boats with hearts full of borrowed hope.
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Those who survive rarely speak of what they endured. Europe is not what they imagined, but no one wants to hear that truth back home. In Gujrat, illusions are more valuable than evidence. Each success story — real or edited — fuels the next journey. The Dunki trade thrives on this silence. For every man who dies nameless at sea, another sells his home to follow the same path. And for every lost life, a family constructs a myth of survival — because it is easier to lie than to grieve.
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Every year, new faces vanish. Some die in deserts, others in detention centers, some in nameless waters where there are no graves, only coordinates. Yet, when another group leaves, the village gathers again with laughter, with prayers, pretending the risk is routine. Mothers raise Qurans over their sons’ heads. Fathers look away. Sisters whisper goodbyes that taste like forever. We tell ourselves they are brave, but beneath the courage lies desperation. The agents keep counting. The boats keep sailing. The waves keep naming the lost.
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Every wave has a name — some belong to men from Jalalpur Jattan, others from Kharian, some from Sialkot or Mandi Bahauddin. Their names echo in our streets like unburied ghosts. And when night falls and another group departs, we don’t stop them anymore. We only whisper, “May this wave be kind.” Because in Gujrat, we’ve learned the cruel arithmetic of migration: ten thousand dollars for a dream, a life for a chance, a wave for a name. And every wave, still, has one.
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