Four return to hugs, three to coffins

For five-and-a-half months, the sound of a ringing phone was enough to freeze a household - hope and dread arriving in the same few seconds. Wives waited for husbands swallowed by captivity, children grew up listening for fathers' voices that never came, and parents learned the cruel arithmetic of waiting: every passing day brought their loved ones no closer, yet made the fear of never seeing them again harder to bear. In those homes, silence was no longer silence; it was the space between one phone call and the next, between the prayer that they would come home and the fear that they would not. Now, after almost half a year that felt like an eternity to their agonised families, four of the Pakistani sailors of MV Honour 25 are finally coming home. But their return carries the cruel weight of those who will not walk through the door. While four injured sailors are expected to reach Karachi on Sunday, the families of three others are preparing to receive their bodies - a homecoming marked by both relief and grief. The four survivors, Yasir Khan, Aqeel Khan, Amin bin Shams and Usman Ghani, are returning after receiving initial medical treatment in Addis Ababa. For Ayesha, the wait was made even harder by a child born after his father had already left. Her son, Rahim, was just two weeks old when sailor Amin departed aboard the ship. The boy spent his earliest months without knowing his father's arms. "Whenever we think about how we spent those months, we get goosebumps. Every time the phone rang, we feared it would bring bad news," Ayesha told The Express Tribune. Yasir Khan, who suffered a bullet wound to his leg, is among those coming back alive. His wife, Mahwish, said ten families had endured the ordeal together, holding on to the hope that all their loved ones would eventually return alive. "We never imagined that seven families would be reunited with their loved ones alive, while three families would receive their bodies," she said. For her two sons, the ordeal had a visible cost. Mahwish said smiles disappeared from their faces after their father was taken hostage. "Bashar, in particular, remained withdrawn and quiet most of the time. Now, the smiles have returned to the children's faces." Five people were killed during the security forces' operation aboard the Honour 25. Four were Pakistanis, including Second Officer Kashif Umar, boiler operator Rafiullah and Third Officer Mahmood Ansari. Mahmood Ansari's son, Izhar, was making arrangements for his father's grave when contacted by The Express Tribune. He said the family had yet to receive definitive information about when his father's body would be brought back to Pakistan. A family member of one of the injured sailors told The Express Tribune that the four were expected to land in Karachi on Sunday after departing Addis Ababa aboard Ethiopian Airlines flight ET694. However, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a post on X on Friday that the four sailors were scheduled to arrive in Karachi on Saturday. Meanwhile, the bodies of the three deceased Pakistani crew members remain in Addis Ababa amid documentation-related hurdles. Efforts are underway to bring them back alongside the four injured sailors. For the families, however, the long-awaited homecoming will not be one single moment of relief. For some, it will mean fathers finally returning to their children. For others, it will mean preparing a grave for someone who never made it home alive.