Yasir Wazir, the lion 2003 Yasir Wazir ran a variety store in Abidabad, Karachi where he sold paan and cigarettes, among other small consumable goods. Later, he started his own business of trading cassettes, videos, and other entertainment wares, selling these in different parts of Karachi and sometimes travelling as far as Balochistan for business. As part of his trade, Yasir also bought and sold such merchandise from Peshawar, quite a common practice as much is imported and exported between Pakistan and Afghanistan through the black market. Yasir, therefore, travelled frequently for work, and according to his family did not maintain a particularly set schedule. He would leave Karachi for other parts of the country whenever business required, and was usually away for about a week at a time. When Yasir left on a trip to Peshawar that year, however, he never returned. First, the family thought that perhaps he had gone from Peshawar to Swat, where the family hailed from, so they did not worry. After a month, and still no word, they called relatives in Swat and discovered that Yasir was not there. They speculated Yasir was in Chaman, Balochistan. One of JPP’s sources, however, indicated Yasir had been abducted from Spin Boldak on the Afghanistan side of the Pak-Afghan border.44 2005 Yasir’s family would have to wait for another two years to hear from him. They received a letter from him through the ICRC, saying that he was in Bagram. Four years after Yasir went missing, his father died from “sugar”, a local term used for diabetes, and because of the stress and depression following his son’s prolonged absence. Yasir had been extremely close to his father. The family’s telephone conversations with Yasir only began after his father’s death. He would always ask about his father, but no one told him what had happened, as they did not want to upset him. Yasir, however, knew that something was wrong: he relayed having had a dream about his father’s death, and then asked the family if it was true. They did not deny it. 2010 When the ICRC representative asked Yasir’s family if they had any messages for him, they immediately replied “tell him not to fight”. When the representative heard this he appeared surprised and asked how they could possibly know about this behaviour. They laughed, explaining they knew their brother well. Yasir’s family described how he would get angry easily — this was his temperament since childhood. They recalled how Yasir had been withdrawn from the second grade because of getting into fights with his teachers and peers. While in Bagram, such behaviour meant that Yasir was unable to meet with ICRC representatives as planned. His family relayed a story to JPP investigators, told to them by an  Madiha Tahir writes beautifully about the confusion that arises, worth quoting at length, for a picture of how porous borders are a reality of life across Pakistan and Afghanistan in the frontier regions: 44 You could spend years trying to get the lay of the land and then trip up on a border hamlet whose pronunciation was even in doubt. His name was Mir Azad Khan, and on the tape, around the fifteen-minute mark, you can hear me repeating the place-name after him: “La ̄r..” But some weeks later when I met a man who knew the village because he had roots in the land nearby, he said that it was called Luar.a ̄. (Me: “You said the place was called La ̄r.a ̄?” Man: “Yes, Luar.a ̄.” Me: “Luar.a ̄?” Man: “Luar.a ̄.”) It means “at the height” or “at the top.” I knew that Mir Azad’s Laarh was a village in district Barmal in Afghanistan, so I wondered if this man was confusing that Barmal with this Bir- mal, a district in South Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. Tahir, Madiha. “The Ground Was Always in Play,” Public Culture. 29:1. Duke University Press. 2016. 36