Latest news with #Saboor
New Straits Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New Straits Times
Afghan civil servants face bleak Eid after salaries delayed
ABDUL Saboor usually treats his children to new clothes for the Eid al-Adha holiday but like many Afghan public sector workers, he is scraping by this year awaiting a delayed salary. The Taliban government has faced recurring difficulties paying civil servants since returning to power in 2021, leaving families grappling with financial uncertainty in one of the world's poorest countries. "We bought only cookies and dried fruits for Eid," said Saboor, which he said would be shared with visiting friends. One of the biggest holidays in the Muslim calendar, Eid al-Adha – which begins on Saturday – is celebrated with the sacrifice of an animal shared among family, neighbours and the needy to honour Ibrahim's, or Abraham's, willingness to sacrifice his son, before God offered a sheep instead. The 45-year-old, who works for the Parwan provincial government's rural development department, was relieved to cash in two months' salary last week, but he put the money directly into paying off debts to shops he'd been relying on for credit. "We couldn't go to some shopkeepers, we were embarrassed," he told AFP. Afghanistan has faced major economic challenges since 2021 and is experiencing one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations. "Delays in the payment of wages and salaries point to persistent liquidity constraints and broader challenges in ensuring timely government expenditures," the World Bank said in an April report. Despite signs of recovery, the economic outlook remains "uncertain", the Bank said, with "growing fiscal pressures", a widening trade deficit and entrenched poverty. Public sector workers faced a similar struggle in March, receiving some delayed pay ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. The finance ministry said this week it was in the process of paying all civil servants two months' worth of unpaid salaries, without explaining the delay or saying if future wages would be paid on time. Since the start of June, "almost all of the departments have received their salaries" for two months, spokesman Ahmad Wali Haqmal told AFP on Tuesday. The Taliban government has not made its recent budgets public – but experts say security spending has been prioritised at the expense of other departments. On Wednesday morning, a central Kabul bank was packed with government employees shouting for their turn to collect salaries before the Eid holiday. In Kandahar city, government-paid workers also lined up to collect their money, some voicing only gratitude for getting paid. Hayatullah, a 21-year-old teacher in the Taliban heartland province, said he only received one-month's salary. "We will try to make ends meet," he said, refusing to give his full name for fear of reprisal. "But we can't afford the Eid expenses." Last year, the government slashed salaries of women staff who were forced to stay home since the Taliban seized power and prevented them from working in mixed offices. Jobs have been cut from other departments in recent months, though government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in April said reducing staff was a "normal" process aimed at improving efficiency. Mohammad, who works for a government office in Ghor and did not want to give his real name for fear of reprisal, said he had already spent his salary paying back loans to shopkeepers and had nothing left for Eid celebrations. "We received the salaries for two months very late and we have faced a lot of problems during this period," he said. "Eid is coming and when there is no money, it is really worrying – there are the children's expectations, family's expectations and Eid day expenses," said the 40-year-old who is the only breadwinner for 10 people. "My family has to wait."
Scroll.in
22-05-2025
- Health
- Scroll.in
Memoir: Writer Andaleeb Wajid on losing her husband and mother-in-law to Covid-19 in the same week
It had all started with a swab up our nostrils. When my eldest, Saboor, developed a fever at the end of April, I told myself it couldn't be COVID. I was convinced he was going to be fine, but still, being cautious, I quarantined him in his room and reduced his contact with others. I told everyone it was probably a regular fever. But on the second day or so, I gave him some noodles to eat and he took it from me, then bent his head and sniffed the plate. He looked up at me. 'I can't smell anything,' he said. The thud I felt inside was so huge that it eclipsed everything else in that moment. I told Mansoor frantically that maybe Saboor had COVID. Mansoor dismissed my concerns saying there was no way he could have got the infection but I couldn't take such a laissez-faire attitude. I booked a home test and someone came home to take the swab for the COVID test. Our worst fears were confirmed in some hours. He had tested positive. I was beside myself with worry. As a baby, he'd already been in the NICU for fifteen days because his lungs weren't working when he was born. I focused on getting him better and making sure he was taking the medicines. This was during Ramzan, when the second wave was already raging around us. Then, as I felt the first telltale signs of a fever, and all kinds of exhaustion seeping into me, I couldn't believe this was happening. I got myself and the rest of the family tested. My mother-in-law and I both tested positive. I decided to have her quarantine with me in my room. I posted a jokey tweet saying that she constantly complained about everything in my room, right from the way I'd arranged the bed, to asking me questions about why the maid didn't clean the bathroom any better. I was even wary of opening my wardrobes within her sight because she would take one look at the mess and give me yet another lecture about keeping everything in order. Or she would offer to arrange my closet herself. Her wardrobe, after all, was nothing short of a work of art. Sarees arranged in neat rows, folded just right, petticoats on one shelf, blouses on another. Me? I didn't know which dupatta went with which salwar. I took her good-natured ribbing in my stride and told her that she was free to do up my wardrobes once she got well. The severity of the situation hadn't sunk into her. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night to see her emerging from the bathroom to make wuzu because she wanted to read the Quran. I told her that it was the middle of the night and she could do it the following morning. That's one thing everyone expects about quarantine but no one really knows until they're facing it – sitting in your room day in and day out gets old very soon. Thankfully, I had my laptop with me, but I found myself disinterested in doing anything. I didn't have the energy for it. When Mansoor developed a fever, I insisted he test himself and Azhaan again. When his results showed up as positive, I sent Azhaan away so all of us could walk around the house, since we were all infected. But it did little to ease the worry. We were all too exhausted, coughing constantly, and the loss of the sense of smell was making me feel strange and inept. On the advice from a relative who was a doctor, we decided to get our chest CT scans done. The CT scan would give us a better idea about the state of our lungs which were affected the most in the Delta variant of COVID that we all had. Mansoor drove us to the scanning centre one by one. The numbers that had stayed with me for so long elude me completely now, except that I remembered my score was the highest at 12 while Mansoor's and my mother-in-law's was 5 or so. A high score meant that the disease was more severe. This worried me, but with the foolish optimism of someone who constantly postpones worrying, I decided it was fine. The main thing was that both of them had lower scores, and given their health history, it was important that they be better sooner than me. When would this nightmare end, I thought. We all had to get better so we could look back on this period with a shudder and move on with our lives. This was not Mansoor's first stay in a hospital. In 2015, I was working as a marketing head at a software company, a job that let me work from home and I had to go into office twice a week. It was a Thursday, and it was exactly a week since my birthday. I was at work when Saboor called me and said that Abbu wasn't looking too good. He was complaining of chest pains and he was sweating excessively. Instinctively, I knew something was wrong. For years, I'd been telling Mansoor to take better care of his health but it was a joke in the family that he loved nothing more than good food. By the time I reached home from office, he'd been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Thankfully, the doctors were able to treat him in time and he underwent an angioplasty. It had been a close call but the doctors were efficient and they got everything under control. I was surrounded by family and extended family who showed up and stayed close, offering support. Their presence alone helped me stay strong and not break down while I was in the hospital. When I returned home after his angioplasty, with my mother-in-law and the kids, while he remained in the ICU, I started crying while praying the Isha namaz. I was angry with Mansoor but at the same time grateful that he'd been spared. I was trying to hold onto the strength that came to me from being my mother's daughter. I was in my thirties, my kids were small, and our situation wasn't too different from what my family's had been when my father passed away. I told myself that I was different. I wasn't my mother. I didn't know why I thought that I was better than her. Education and worldliness give one a false sense of security and I felt I was better equipped to handle anything. When Mansoor returned from the hospital, he was a changed man. He stopped eating oily, fried food, switched to a healthier diet and lost much of the weight he'd been lugging around for years. I remember him checking himself out in the mirror, pleased that he could fit into the shirts he'd always buy in sizes that were smaller, saying they would motivate him to lose weight. Turned out, having a heart attack was the best motivation ever. Sadly, the motivation didn't last for too long. He went back to his old eating habits and started piling on the kilos like before, despite my continued efforts to make him stay on the course. The hospital visit in 2015 and the hospital visits in 2021 could have well been situated in two different universes. In 2015, no one had even dreamt of the word 'pandemic' and although worried people hung around outside ICUs, the situation was drastically different during the second wave. Everyone knows, everyone remembers what it was like then. And yet, each experience is different from the others. No one would know what it felt like for me to walk into the hospital, my face covered with a face shield, under which there were two masks. That's not right. I'm sure many people would have experienced this too.
Express Tribune
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Mashal Khan doesn't believe in one-sided love
During an appearance on Mazaq Raat, Mashal Khan mused over one-sided love. She began by sharing that she feels one-sided love is not true love. "It doesn't make any sense. True love is something that's built over time. One-way is infatuation," she said. Mashal believes that poets are to be blamed for why people attribute love to suffering. "They promote this idea that love exists to bring you pain, that until you're in a hospital bed, your love isn't real," she said. "But true love elevates you. When two people are good for each other, they help each other grow in life, not hurt each other in the space they occupy. What is the point of fighting and perishing when you're supposed to be stronger against the world?" Despite her views, the Suno Chanda actor revealed that she was infatuated with someone back in school. Discussing this anonymous person, she said, "From what I know, he didn't become a very good person in life. He's like those individuals who don't hurt people consciously but are so careless with their actions that they crush others along the way." Mashal was previously in a romantic relationship with Ali Ansari, who is now married to Saboor Ali. At the time of the couple's engagement, she called out the gossip-mongers who tried to sour the two's big moment by dragging Mashal into it. "It is so sad that a moment which is supposed to be of so much happiness for a couple has been turned into idle gossip," Mashal wrote in an Instagram Story in May 2021. "It has come to my knowledge that several attempts are being made to pull me into Ali Ansari and Saboor Ali's engagement announcement." The actor went on to congratulate the couple and added, "Let's not try to ruin someone's moment, shall we?" Last month, Saboor and Ali were blessed with a daughter. Announcing the happy news on Instagram, Saboor wrote, "Our tiny miracle, our biggest blessing. The sight of the smallest of hands leaving the biggest of impact is unbelievable. Welcome, Serena Ali, to the world. The magic awaits you." The heartfelt note was attached to a black-and-white carousel of Saboor in the hospital bed and Ali standing by her side as they held their little one up. The post also featured the newborn baby's tiny feet and hands enveloped in her parents' hands.
Express Tribune
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Saboor Ali's daughter has Sajal Ali's eyes
In a wholesome Instagram carousel shared on Friday, Sajal Ali posed with her actor-sister Saboor Ali and the latter's baby, Serena. The actors sported chic casualwear as they hid the baby's face from the camera's view. While showering the little one with the abundant love of a khala, the Yaqeen Ka Safar actor pointed out a key resemblance between the two. "She got my eyes!" Sajal wrote in the caption. First-time parents Saboor and actor-husband Ali Ansari were blessed with a daughter in March. Announcing the happy news on Instagram, Saboor wrote, "Our tiny miracle, our biggest blessing. The sight of the smallest of hands leaving the biggest of impact is unbelievable. Welcome, Serena Ali, to the world. The magic awaits you." The heartfelt note was attached to a black-and-white carousel of Saboor in the hospital bed and Ali standing by her side as they held their little one up. The post also featured the newborn baby's tiny feet and hands enveloped in her parents' hands. Peers and fans congratulated the couple on the arrival of their little girl. Among them was Serena's star aunt, who wrote, "Welcome to the world little princess! We love you more than words can say." Fans, on the other hand, expressed pleasant surprise at the news. "What a big surprise to your fans! Masha Allah, congratulations! May Allah keep her safe and bring her good luck," a user wrote. Fans' sentiments stemmed from the fact that Saboor and Ali made no official announcement of the pregnancy prior to the post, though a clip from the godh bharai ceremony did circulate on social media in January. Speculation heightened after Saboor posted photos from her birthday celebration, wearing a polka dot dress, which had fans wondering if she was in maternity clothes.
Express Tribune
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Sajal Ali posts photos with niece, says 'she got my eyes'
Sajal Ali just lit up her Instagram account with the cutest family moment—and fans can't stop swooning. The actor posted photos with her niece, the daughter of her sister Saboor Ali, and cheekily wrote in the caption: "She got my eyes." Honestly, the resemblance might be kind of uncanny. As expected, the post didn't go unnoticed. Maya Ali dropped in with some love, and the comments section quickly turned into a fan fest, overflowing with heart emojis and sweet compliments. It's rare to see such wholesome content in a scroll full of filters and edits—but Sajal's soft auntie vibes clearly hit a nerve in the best way. Last month, Saboor Ali and Ali Ansari were blessed with a daughter. Announcing the happy news on Instagram, Saboor wrote, "Our tiny miracle, our biggest blessing. The sight of the smallest of hands leaving the biggest of impact is unbelievable. Welcome Serena Ali to the world. The magic awaits you." The heartfelt note was attached to a black-and-white carousel of Saboor in the hospital bed and Ali standing by her side as they held their little one up. The post also featured the newborn baby's tiny feet and hands enveloped in her parents' hands. Peers and fans congratulated the couple on the arrival of their little girl. "Masha Allah, Masha Allah. Many, many congratulations! Wishing your little princess a lifetime of love and happiness," wrote Maya Ali, while Ali Rehman said, "Congratulations, guys! Wonderful news. May Allah fill your lives with joy." Meanwhile, Serena's star aunt - Sajal Ali - wrote, "Welcome to the world little princess! We love you more than words can say." Fans, on the other hand, expressed pleasant surprise at the news. "What a big surprise to your fans! Masha Allah, congratulations! May Allah keep her safe and bring her good luck," a user wrote. Fans' sentiments stem from the fact that Saboor and Ali made no official announcement of the pregnancy prior to the post, though a clip from the godh bharai ceremony did circulate on social media in January. Speculation heightened after Saboor posted photos from her birthday celebration.
