Survivors thank 17-year-old hero

GILGIT: Kalsoom and Komal’s parents say it was divine intervention that sent Abrar Ahmed Ghazi to rescue their young daughters from drowning in the Gilgit River three years ago.

In September 2007, six-year-old Komal and her younger sister, three-year-old Kalsoom, fell into the fast-flowing river from a bridge that was suspended about 200 feet above the water.

The girls had happened to be on the narrow Konodas Bridge when two cars collided on the narrow passageway.

The drivers of the cars got out of their vehicles and started arguing with each other, and the two girls were somehow pushed over the bridge in the ensuing fray.

Abrar Ahmed Ghazi was only 17 years old on that fateful day, and immediately jumped into the river to save the two girls. He towed them to safety at great risk to his own life.

Recently Ghazi was awarded the Tamgah-e-Imtiaz by President Asif Ali Zardari as a reward for his act of bravery. Pakistan International Airlines also offered him a job.

“I only remember that someone pushed me and I fell from the bridge,” said Komal, who is now a sixth-grader at a private school in Gilgit.

“When I gained consciousness I was on a hospital bed,” she told The Express Tribune.

Originally hailing from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Kalsoom and Komal’s parents are settled in Gilgit. “If Ghazi hadn’t put his own life in danger, my daughters would not be alive today,” said the girls’ mother.

She said that she couldn’t find the words to thank Ghazi for rescuing her daughters.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2010.