Where I stand: Ansar Abbas lost his arms but not his spirit

The 30-year-old works at a local news agency and is critical of militancy in his writings.

“I don’t like to be labelled as disabled or a victim,” says 30-year-old Syed Ansar Abbas who lost both his arms in a suicide attack in DI Khan in 2008.

One of the many victims of terrorism that has plagued Pakistan for the past decade, Abbas has chosen to not let his disability define who he is and how he lives his life.

Currently working as a news editor with a local news agency, he completed his Masters in Mass Communication from Gomal University in 2006 and began a career as a journalist with a national daily. “I was passionate about writing since my childhood; my father was my inspiration, and hence I chose to be a journalist,”
he recalls.

Hailing from DI Khan, Abbas is the son of lawyer Syed Muzaffar Shah. He is the youngest among his ten siblings and belongs to a respected family.

As fate would have it, Abbas’s life changed forever, five years ago.  On August 19, 2008, he came to know about a target killing incident in the city. He reached the hospital along with other reporters where he learnt the victim belonged to his family. Soon, many of his family members and others gathered at the hospital. A crowd of around 200 people were at the hospital when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 32 people. Fifty people were injured in the incident, Abbas was one of them.

Around 20 of his relatives and friends died on that tragic day.

“I guess I was in my senses after the blast, or maybe I wasn’t, but I saw my severed arm lying in front of me,” he says remembering the incident.  Both his legs were also fractured in the blast. Abbas was sent to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Hospital in Islamabad for treatment, where he was operated upon almost 50 times in six months. He recovered physically with the passage of time but lost his arms.

He says his limbs were replaced with artificial ones which he couldn’t’ even move – such is the sorry state of prosthesis in Pakistan.

Yet, Abbas did not lose hope.  “What had happened could not be undone, it was time to move forward, to live my own life.”

He restarted his career in journalism with a renewed vigour. Though it took him almost two years to fully recover, he started using the computer while sitting on a wheelchair at home. This is how he learned to use his toes as his fingers and mastered the skill of typing with his feet.

Abbas began using social media and connecting with people from different parts of the world. He wrote blogs and articles narrating various incidents of terrorism in his home town, criticising militancy and addressing terrorism-related issues.

Last year, he completed another Masters degree in Political Science. “The internet gave me a new lease to life. I was not used to the internet earlier, but after the incident, it has opened new gateways to the world for me. Now I read news, write and edit articles to keep myself busy,” he explains.

Abbas is also keen on working for social welfare. He, along with other people of his area, organises sports and other events for the welfare of DI Khan. He is also helping an organisation working for disabled individuals, the same one that once helped him.

Talking about the rise in sectarian killings, Abbas believes there were no sectarian killings among Sunnis and Shias in DI Khan in the past. He insists sectarian harmony among the local people still exists. “Right after the suicide bombing incident, the first person to donate blood to me did not even belong to my sect,” he says.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2013.