Emergency appeal:Saving a Pakistani Family Broken by illness and debt

Dear Generous Donors and Kind Hearts,

I am an 18-year-old writing to you in absolute desperation from Manan Wala, a small city in the Shah kot district of Nankana Sahib, Pakistan. I am laying out the complete, painful truth of my family of five: my parents in their forties, my 17-year-old brother, my 9-year-old sister, and myself.

We were once a stable, independent middle-class family. But six years ago, a close friend swore a sacred oath in the name of Allah and begged my father for a loan of 600,000 PKR (6 lac). My father trusted him and gave him our life savings and advanced salary commitments. That man took the money and vanished forever.

To clear the sudden workplace liabilities left behind by that betrayal, my father had to sell our basic household assets, lost his job, and our landlord threw us onto the streets. We had to move to a new area just to survive. Since that traumatic day, my parents fell into a dark, deep depression, secretly overusing daily painkillers just to cope with the severe physical toll of chronic stress.

To keep us afloat, my mother and I began teaching at a school. Eventually, my father found a manager job at a petrol pump for a promised 50,000 PKR salary, though the owner cut it to 40,000 PKR because he knew we were desperate. Over the years, skyrocketing inflation forced us to borrow from multiple sources just for basic food, utility bills, and my siblings' school fees, accumulating 8 to 9 lac in combined survival debt.

Two months ago, our world completely collapsed. The petrol pump owner—an incredibly wealthy and influential man—deceived my father into signing a blank check under the corrupt rule that "all profits belong to the owner, and all losses belong to the manager." He falsely blamed my father for an imaginary 8 lac deficit, took away his job, and threatened him using the blank check. To escape immediate ruin, my father was forced to take out desperate loans from fintech companies. The local authorities and police have sided entirely with the wealthy owner, leaving us with zero legal recourse.

I have never once seen a single tear in my father’s eyes. Now, he is at home suffering from a severe fever, completely crushed by depression, and I have to listen to him cry madly in the dark of the night, utterly broken.

My mother is completely exhausted. She suffers from constant headaches and severe body pain, but even with a burning fever, she forces herself to go out and teach because we have no choice. This year, with my aunt's help, I managed to start university to try and build a future for us. But now, I don't even have the money to buy text books or pay for the daily transport to get there. Even the internet package I am using to write this plea was paid for by my Uncle.

Meanwhile, our house rent is past due, and the lenders we borrowed from to survive are standing at our door every single day demanding their money. We are trapped inside our own home, completely helpless.

My 17-year-old brother suffers from severe chronic asthma from birth and cannot do heavy labor, and my sister is only 9. The entire weight of this family rests on my mother and me, but our small teaching incomes cannot stop us from starving or being evicted.

 We urgently need financial aid to:

1. Pay our overdue house rent to prevent my sick parents and siblings from being thrown onto the street again.

2. Pay off the immediate, aggressive lenders at our door and the fintech loans to protect my father.

3. Secure a fund for my parents' medical care and my brother's urgent asthma medications.

4. Cover basic university transport and books so I do not have to drop out.

Note: Out of deep respect, privacy, and religious dignity, I cannot post my family's faces online. I have uploaded medicine packets as proof of our location. Please look past the lack of photos and believe our pain.

Please help us survive this storm. Even the smallest donation or a simple share of this link could literally save my family from absolute destruction.