One of thousands: Kurram Agency - a place where dreams exist to be shattered

The trials and tribulations of a bomb victim through the eyes of a fellow victim.

PESHAWAR:

Young Irfanullah Jan would walk to school every day with a dream: one day he would become a doctor. He wanted to give something back to the people he loved so much. Unfortunately, for the last three months, Jan’s dream has become much simpler. He just wants to walk again.

Jan, barely 12, lives in Saddaa, an area of Kurram Agency that has been ravaged by sectarian violence.

In July this year, Jan was in Awami Market with his uncle when a remote-controlled bomb went off nearby. The blast killed two people and injured a dozen. Among them was Jan, whose legs had to be amputated to save his life.

“Irfan and I had gone to a friend’s house and we just stopped for a minute at a shop while going back home,” Jan’s uncle, Ahmed Jan Siddiqi, told The Express Tribune.

Siddiqi, a reporter for Daily Express based in Sadda, was also wounded in the blast. Tending to his own wounds was the easy part. Now, he is running from pillar to post, knocking at the doors of anyone who will listen, in the hope of getting his nephew artificial legs.

When the blast occurred, Jan was rushed to a government hospital, from where he was taken to another hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), where doctors amputated his both legs due to the severity of his injuries.

Since then, Jan has been on a wheelchair and has been unable to attend school. Jan used to attend Welcome Public School in Sadda, where he was consistently near the top of his class, Siddiqi said. “Even now, whenever he goes to doctors, the first thing he asks them is when he will be able to go back to school,” the uncle said.

When he thinks about the day that cost him his legs, Jan asks his family what crime he had committed to be punished in such a cruel manner. “We have no answer to his question,” Siddiqi said.

Jan regularly expresses his detest for the bombings and violence that he sees unravel before him. He wants answers to questions the no one can provide. “Why can’t the government stop these attacks? Why must the lives and futures of innocent children be destroyed?”

Siddiqi said, “Words can’t describe the way his parents feel. In the blink of an eye, their son was left crippled.”

Siddiqi added that the government had yet to pay compensation money to his family. “The money will not bring his legs back, but after going through so many tribulations, the family should at least be compensated as victims of terrorism.”

The real tragedy is that Jan’s story is not at all unique. Thousands of innocent people have fallen victim to the armed violence in the north-west of the country, and thousands of other stories are waiting to be heard. But until it is safe enough to venture inside the volatile tribal belt, these stories, and many of the storytellers, seem likely to fade into oblivion.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2011.