Isolation colours the lives of the lepers of Manghopir

Life for patients in Lepers’ Colony is no ride in the park

KARACHI: A small music player blasts songs at full volume as six people form a circle under a tree on a sunny summer day. “Yeh Persian music hay [This is Persian music],” one of them says in a weak, aged voice, as he smiles gently.

The men in the group span two generations but all share the same smile. One of the three fair skinned, skinny men evokes a moment of surprise when he opens his mouth and starts conversing in broken Urdu. His eyes are covered by black sunglasses and he is clad in a round-necked shirt, white trousers and green Crocs.

But the men have something else in common too; pale scarred faces, pressed noses and untold stories of living in painful isolation. They are all residents of the lepers’ colony, located on the outskirts of Karachi.

"No one likes to come here. No one likes us because we are leprosy patients," Noorul Islam, a Bangladeshi patient who lives in the colony, tells The Express Tribune. "This place is like our mother and our father. This is our home," he quickly adds in his broken Urdu.



This is probably the first lepers' colony where outcast patients started settling in huts outside the city limits. It is located in Manghopir, the hilly outskirts of the metropolis.

The hospital was was initially set-up by philanthropists in 1886 and named Heera Nand Leprosy Hospital. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

The colony consists of single-storey houses, the small structures built haphazardly with cement blocks, within the bushy and thorny premises of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation Leprosy Hospital.

With the establishment of the hospital, which was initially set up in a hut in 1892, the disorganised huts started turning into an urban settlement, one that most patients will never want to leave.

Between 250 and 300 patients’ families live in the colony, according to data compiled by the Patients' Welfare Association a few years ago.

A family man

Noorul Islam is the president of the association. A bachelor’s degree holder, he arrived in Karachi in the mid-1980s to find a job. He never returned to Dhaka.





"I got married here," reminisces the elderly man. He has a dark complexion, wears a traditional white cap and sports a small Bangladeshi-style beard. "I have seven children mashallah. Three daughters and four sons," he says proudly.

Islam has seven children, four daughters and three sons - all of whom are of school-going age. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/ EXPRESS

His house - an old structure with two rooms and an open veranda behind the hospital's building - is surrounded by thorny bushes and wild grass.

Behind the men still enjoying the Persian music are two parked ambulances. They mark the hospital’s entrance.

Most patients who have been treated at this hospital are foreigners - Iranians, Afghans and Bangladeshis. At present, there are 100 patients at the hospital, with separate wards for male and female patients. But hundreds have been treated since its establishment.

Far from home

Akleema, a female patient of Iranian origin, offers prayers on a mat spread on the floor next to her bed. She then narrates her ordeal.

"I came here from Pashin for treatment," she says, speaking of her hometown in Iran which borders Balochistan. "Ever since I have been living at the hospital," she adds, speaking as if in a trance, almost as if decades of repeating the same story keep every minute’s details alive in her memories.

Covered in a black shawl, her face, still bearing a fair complexion, looks old. Once beautiful, her nose is now flattened across her cheeks.

Leprosy patients suffer social stigma for their disease. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Next to a cupboard lay a pair of crutches and black boots, designed specifically for her. Her feet, visible in socks from under the large veil, have lost their toes.



Akeelma was one of the patients treated by German missionary Dr Ruth Pfau herself.

"This disease is still not over," the 55-year-old says, narrating her four decade-long struggle to beat leprosy. "It has weakened my nerves and softened my bones," she says hopelessly, her voice heavy with disappointment.

Like most diseases, the symptoms of leprosy start emerging suddenly and affect the human body very fast. It hits the nervous system and then attacks the bones.



Life comes to a halt

Raza Chacha never thought that his life, once so in tune to the hectic ebb and flow of Karachi’s roads, would ever come to a sudden halt.

"I'm master driver of the W-11 coach," he says proudly. He drove a mini-bus on the famous W-11 route once upon a time. "Go to Allah Wali Chowrangi and ask any driver about Chacha. Everyone called me Chacha driver," he says excitedly. Chacha was born in Bombay but grew up in Pakistan.

Lying on a bed with a dirty white bedspread amid a foul odour from a nearby dust-bin, Chacha resembles a skeleton, reminiscing about the days when he was alive.

He claims to still remember the horrors of Partition. "I have seen the trains that you will never see. I saw the trains bleeding [with dead bodies]," he says when asked about his age.



He is more interested in the state of affairs in the country than his own story. One reason for this could be that he misses his life - his family, friends and colleagues, thinking about which makes him reopen old wounds. To allay his sorrows, Chacha has made friends with the birds.

Many patients lost livelihoods after the signs of leprosy started to become apparent.PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

With two damaged fingers on each hand, he tears apart a fresh naan into small pieces, dipping them in large bowl full of sauce from the day's lunch of mutton curry donated by a charity.

Alone and unable to move, he uses a wheelchair to move around. "First, I'll feed the birds, then I'll eat myself," he explains. His one eye was damaged while fighting another wretched disease -cancer.

Food for thought

The day’s lunch is nothing less than a feast. The smell of mutton curry and fresh, smoking hot naan fills the air in the wards, driving away the stench of refuse.

Thanks to two charities - the Alamgir Welfare Trust and Saylani Welfare Trust - that provide raw and cooked meals for lunch and dinner on alternate days, the patients are well fed.

"Ao amma," the volunteers call to female patients, gesturing them to come forward and fill their bowls with curry and pick up a packet of naan.



The staffers say the state of cleanliness in this hospital is better than at other public health facilities. This claim is apparent. In the hauntingly silent wards, the patients sit quietly in their beds. The floor and tiled walls are neat and clean. Each ward has a large LED television screen suspended from the wall.

Most patients have been living at the hospital for decades.

Pardesi mareez

In the dark ward, aging patients sit in their beds, struggling to eat lunch. The food smells delicious but eating with a hand with missing fingers is difficult. Nonetheless, they struggle to fill their stomachs.

Food at the hospital is provided by two welfare organisations. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Among the grey hair and wrinkles is a head with hair as dark as night. Ali Dad is significantly younger than his ward-mates and stands out immediately. His dark, silky hair flows about his head, covering most of his forehead. His complexion is fair and one of his eyes is damaged. He spent most of his life building roads in Iran as a contractor but is now doomed to spend the rest of his life in a hospital in Karachi.

"I have been living here for the last 10 years," he says in broken Urdu, indicating not only his struggle against leprosy but also the struggle to learn a foreign language.

After undergoing a treatment course for two years, multidrug resistant therapy, he went to visit his family in Iran. "Jazam ka mareez bohat pardesi mareez he [A leprosy patient is the most alien patient]," he says, explaining that most patients get fed-up of living at the hospital during the course of the treatment. But he returned to the hospital soon after fighting with his family in Iran.

When asked why he wants to live apart from them, he complained about society’s negative perception and bias against leprosy patients. "Sab kehta he, 'yeh kori he, yeh kori he' [Everyone says 'he is a leper, he is a leper']," he replies sadly.

Like most diseases, the symptoms of leprosy start emerging suddenly and affect the human body very fast. It hits the nervous system and then attacks the bones. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Dad says he is happy to live away from his family, as he has become close to other patients. He has made friends here. He went to Iran in 2010 and said he would never go back again.

Messenger from Bangladesh

Abdul Majeed lies in a bed covered by a green mosquito net. Sporting a white beard minus a moustache, the dark complexioned man looks weak and frail.



Born in Bangladesh in 1951, he came to Karachi for duty as a ‘messenger' in the then telegraph department (now Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited) in 1979.

Since leprosy patients lose strength in their bodies and limbs, they just end up sitting idle. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

"Ten days after I arrived, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi."

Destitute and afraid, Majeed settled in huts in Landhi when the signs of leprosy first started emerging 36 years ago.

"In Bangladesh's [subtropical] climate the symptoms of leprosy do not appear. One day, I was playing football near my shanty when one of my feet went numb," he recalls.

Asked if he is married, Majeed became emotional. "How could I get married? I was alone and I had to live with a disease. In our socially conservative Bihari community people hate leprosy," he says, explaining how the disease devastated his life.

That is one of the reasons why he often shies away from mixing with other patients. Next to the pillow lie a pack of cards that Majeed says he plays with to entertain himself.

"I am very lonely, I am pleased when I am alone and quiet," says the man when asked why he is always alone. He says he has mastered playing various card games alone. Rummy, fledge, manpati, dodipir and 29 are some of the games he plays.

After having lunch Majeed plans to go for a walk to meet his friends who are as lonely as him.



He prepares food by dipping pieces of naan into the sauce of the mutton curry. "The flesh is for the cats and the bones are for the dogs," he explains. Every afternoon he feeds the stray cats and dogs in the area.

Many patients at the centre are foreigners and cannot return to their home countries. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

The 66-year-old bachelor says the life of the animals looks better than that of the leprosy patients.

"No one cares about the patient of this disease. In Pakistan especially leprosy patients are hated. Just like the Bangladeshi Biharis and Hindus in India hate them as well," he says.

"For example, if you are a leprosy patient and travelling in a train in India, other passengers will take you out of the train and drag you out to the platform," he narrates stories he has heard about the taboos associated with the disease in the region.

"A dog's life is better. Nobody cares what the patients are doing or why they are doing it," he concludes, packing up the lunch for his animal friends that await him outside.