|
Burnt
faces, lost identities
Saadia Khalid
Islamabad:Najma, a 27-year-old woman,
joined the league of the unfortunate ones from the war-torn area of
Swat, when she was burnt badly as a result of a bomb striking her
home, turning everything to ashes.
Migrating from Swat along with her
family, she now resides in a camp near Pirwadhai, portraying another
kind of misery being faced by the people, residing in those areas.
Among the many pains faced by the displaced people of Swat, one is
the treatment of the burn victims of the latest Swat operation.
Describing her painful experience,
she said she used to hear the sounds of shelling and blasts in her
area due to the conflict but had never thought it could happen to
her in her own home. “I was busy in my kitchen when this unfortunate
incident occurred and changed my life altogether,” she said trying
hard to control her emotions. “Alas! After the dust settled, I was
unable to recognise my face,” she said with her voice chocking.
A mother of two, the thought of her
children gave Najma courage to return back to life. “The most
painful moment was when my kids were unable to recognise me,” she
said adding that it was hard to make her children believe that she
was their mother but they gradually accepted her new face. “Now
everyone including myself has grown used to of my existing face,”
she said.
She said she received treatment from
Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) due to which her
wounds have completely healed. “The treatment helped prevent me from
infections,” she said.
But the misery doesn’t end there. She
lost her eyelids in the blast, the most heart wrenching fact of her
ordeal that has left her unable to sleep without taking
tranquillisers. “I can’t sleep until the tranquilliser is injected
into my body,” she said. Being an internally displaced woman, it is
hard for Najma to continue her treatment besides taking the
tranquilliser. “The doctor in the locality charges Rs30 for an
injection and it is getting hard for me to afford it while living
here,” she said.
According to Najma, it has become a
routine matter in her area of people losing their faces and other
limbs due to the ongoing bombing and shelling. “There are dozens of
burnt cases as a result of the fighting, who do not have the
resources for proper treatment,” she said. Najma said there are many
cases like her but the government and media never highlights them.
“Who could be more deserving than us, who have lost our faces as
well as our identities in this war,” she said.
She was of the view that although the
Swat operation was inevitable, yet the government should have taken
concrete measures to facilitate the migrants. “They must have
calculated as to how many people would flee from the troubled area
and throng to different parts of the country as a result of this
operation,” she said.
She said in order to get their
original faces back, the government could at least pay the expenses
of their treatment if it can’t pay for the surgeries they badly need
to go through in these tough times.
The News: Thursday,
May 21, 2009 |
