Alien amongst humans? Karak dwarf aims to walk tall

Shahabur Rehman beats off competition from ‘normal’ people to get into Chinese talent programme

PESHAWAR: For Shahabur Rehman, being born a dwarf was never a problem. It was who he was and he accepted it. What got to him, though, was the fact how everyone around him insisted on treating him as someone imperfect who could not compete with all the ‘normal people’ and made fun of him.

It fueled his desire to find a way to “cure” his condition. This desire pushed him to beat off competition from ‘normal’ people and secured a spot in a ‘Talent Support Programme’ which will see him travel to China to complete his doctorate in philosophy (PhD) in genetics.

Hailing from the Tarkha Khoi Village in the Karak district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Rehman feels that he has now got his due and feels proud of his achievement.

In Rehman’s seven-member family, three of his brothers and a sister are normal while three others, including him, are dwarves. Moreover, there are 160 dwarves in Karak alone and thousands spread across the province.

However, he has not let his differently-formed body to hold him back and he has pursued all normal pursuits from activism to education to even rising as the captain of the dwarf Zalmi cricket team, captaining them to a number of trophies.



Challenges

Being dwarf in the Pashtun community is hard to perceive, Rehman says, noting that everyone from fellow students to community members and even your elders treat you as an alien.

“Irrespective of if you interact with someone educated or uneducated, their style of conversation is full of sarcasm and mockery of our bodies as if we chose this,” Rehman said, explaining that dwarfism is not a disease, rather it is a genetic disorder or pathological condition but has, unfortunately, became social quagmire for them.

Rehman said that social revilement is so prevalent that many partake without even noticing what impact it can have on a dwarf.

“Lack of social education and awareness amongst elders and even family members meant they do not sense what they say impacts you, they always treat you as a child which hurts a lot,” Rehman cried adding that apart from always insulting them, dwarfs are always physically agitated through slaps and other forms in social gatherings.

If you try and resist, they even humiliate you in front of everyone, he added

As if general social marginalization was not enough, Rehman said that it was tough for them to love anyone since they almost always face rejection.

Despite that, some were happily spending their lives after marrying outside their families or the district.

Solving dwarfism

While thousands of researches are conducted on various diseases, Rehman stated that no company has undertaken research on dwarfism.

Rehman claimed that available genetic research shows that dwarfism is the result of metabolic and hormonal disorders such as growth hormone deficiency. The most common type of dwarfism, skeletal dysplasia, is genetic in nature.

But there are various other reasons for dwarfism as well including inter-family marriages between cousins or even close tribes, Rehman said, who holds a masters in philosophy in genetics.

He also found out that the genetic tree of Khattak Nama which shows that a number of dwarfs in K-P are from Karak, followed by Mansehra and Dir.

Historically, the Khattak’s in Karak have inherited their genes from the family of Khushal Khan Khattak. Moreover, genetic sciences show that diseases are inherited due to inter-family marriages hence they should be shunned.

This is thus a subject that he aims to tackle further in his PhD and post-doctoral research as he aims to become a genetic scientist.

But what he cannot solve is the social attitude towards people like him.

“I request all is to help dwarfs as they are sharper mentally than their normal human fellows, and they can attain the limelight in any field, but need physiological supports of their respective community,” Rehman pleaded.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2018.