Hurting, not healing

KARACHI: During spurts of violence, the dead are remembered and the injured usually forgotten — even though they suffer more, some even scarred forever.

Their suffering and anguish was apparent by the different faces of the injured people admitted to government hospitals, many of whom were children. One could see that they were hurting. Some were crying because they could not bear the pain.

“I will not be able to survive. I request you to please let me go home,” says 45-year-old Shahid, admitted to surgical ward-3 of the Jinnah hospital.

He has multiple wounds on different parts of his body. “I had already lost my left leg in a road accident five years ago. I was shot in my right leg twice. I think the doctors will amputate my other leg too,” he says with tears in his eyes. “How will I survive like this?”

Shahid hails from Punjab and is a street vendor in Natha Khan. He was shot by unidentified men on a motorcycle on Monday, the day when MQM MPA Raza Haider was assassinated.

In front of Shahid’s bed, Abdul Aziz had been admitted in critical condition on Monday evening. He had sustained bullet injuries near Lines Area while he was travelling on the roof of a minibus. But on Thursday, another young man was lying on his bed. He died Wednesday night.

According to the paramedical staff, he was the only bread winner of his family.

Mujahid, 25, a rickshaw driver was shot near Teen Hatti. Edhi volunteers took him to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, but the hospital administration sent him to Jinnah.

“When we came here, there was no bed available and the administration kept him on a stretcher for one whole day,” complains Mujahid’s brother. “A bed has now been provided to us after two men died,” he says.

Sixteen-year-old Kulsoom is also a survivor. She was shot during the violence. But Kulsoom was not worried about her injuries - she was just informed that her father had succumbed to his bullet injuries.

Kulsoom, her sister and father were sitting outside their servant quarter in a Gulistan-e-Jauhar bungalow when four people started firing on them. “Abba (father) shouted, telling us to go inside. My sister ran inside, but abba and I were shot,” she says, in a quivering voice.

Awais, 18, is admitted to the Orthopaedic Ward-1 of the Civil hospital. According to his father, Yaqoob, they both were on their way home from the factory, where they work, when armed men started firing at them at Abidabad, Baldia. “I remained safe, but the bullet hit my son and has fractured his leg,” he says.

According to the medico-legal section of different hospitals, around 85 people have been killed and 130 injured in the ongoing violence in the city.

Dr Hamid Ali Parhiyar, a police surgeon, says that from August 2 to 3 around 50 bodies and 89 injured were taken to Jinnah, Abbasi and Civil hospitals.

People who are helping the injured are also being targeted. “When three of our volunteers reached the Qasba Mor, unidentified men forced them out of the ambulance at gunpoint, took them to a remote area and beat them up badly,” says an Edhi staff member. Surprisingly, one of the volunteers was released because he was wearing a shalwar kameez.

The others were freed after four hours. “Now we only send those razakars to the area who wear shalwar kameez and have asked them strictly not to wear trousers and shirts.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 6^th, 2010.