Grandson follows in Edhi’s footsteps

KARACHI: One year ago, standing outside the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), amid a crowd of sad faces, a visibly sorrowful Faisal Edhi, clad in a black shalwar qameez, had dispirited the people by announcing: “Abu [Abdul Sattar Edhi] is no more.”

It was inaccurate to say that Edhi died at the age of 88: Faisal would learn later after seeing his son Saad, who turned 19 this June 20, wearing the same Karakul that the late philanthropist wore.

The boy has a similar restless soul and is performing responsibly to help everyone who needed it.

Saad was born an Edhi, but it seems Edhi’s spirit shone in him after July 2005 when Bilal, Edhi’s grandson born of his eldest daughter Kubra – and the first and most loved child in the immediate family – died.



Edhi was rescuing victims of a train accident, which occurred on July 13, 2005 in Gothki when he was informed that Bilal had died. He was asked if he would want to see his mortal remains for the last time. But Edhi preferred rescuing people, instead of mourning the death of just one person – Even one whom he perhaps loved the most.

“I was seven-year-old when my grandfather took me with him on a mission to rescue the victims of the deadly earthquake in northern areas of the country in October 2005,” Saad said, who just appeared in the intermediate exams

Saad, who planned to enrol in a business school, recalled: “After that event, my grandfather took me with him on every rescue mission he mounted.

This June, Saad completed a mission that Edhi couldn’t accomplish nearly 12 or 13 years ago: By setting up an Edhi Foundation volunteer station in Parachinar. This was his first mission during his career as a volunteer that he undertook.

“On the second day of this Eid, I was returning from the Edhi Village when my father called me up and asked me to board the first possible flight to Peshawar,” he recalled. “I managed to book a seat in an airplane scheduled to depart just two hours later. I headed straight to Kharadar, picked up my clothes, and immediately left (for airport).”

In Peshawar, Edhi Foundation’s zonal head had already made necessary arrangements and they journeyed on to Parachinar.

Saad recalled that at one time, his grandfather also tried to send a rescue mission for the people of the Kurram Agency but the security agencies did not allow him to pass through because of an ongoing armed conflict.



Over the past year, Edhi Foundation set up three more morgue facilities in Multan, Lahore and Quetta. Earlier, there was just one morgue at Sohrab Goth in Karachi. The city now has two more such facilities.

“We have also added 130 larger ambulances to our fleet. My father’s plan is to add at least 300 more such vehicles. We are trying to revive our air ambulance service. We intend to operate from Karachi and Lahore,” Saad says.

Like Saad, Faisal also misses Edhi’s physical presence but is determined to take forward his father’s mission. “Everything is designed so perfectly that we find ourselves working just like we did before,” the caretaker of Edhi Foundation explains.

Faisal, who is fond of wearing the same clothes and pair of slippers – a hallmark of Edhi – shares the credit of continuing and expansion of Edhi Foundation projects with his mother, Bilquis, his sisters, the team of volunteers and all the people who believed that the good never dies.