Former town nazim lives on through his granddaughter

Ahmed Parekh wanted her to carry on his fight for justice and road safety.

KARACHI: When I am gone, you must take my place, former town nazim Ahmed Qasim Parekh would say to his granddaughter. And now, the eldest child of his son says he lives on through her.

Twenty-one-year-old Khadija Parekh, a medical student at Dow University of Health Sciences, did not cry when her father Aamir died. But when her grandfather died, she knew she was alone.

Khadija was only 12 when Aamir died on August 4, 2006, but she cannot forget his scream on the phone when a 30-tonne container fell on him that day. The crane that came to Jam Sadiq Road to remove the container was an hour late, only to drop the container on him again and finally take away his life. Ahmed had rushed to the accident site to see his son’s crushed body be taken away in an ambulance. Eight years later, Khadija saw him break down in an ambulance remembering his son.

Even after two open-heart surgeries, a hipbone surgery and the loss of 75 per cent of his sight, Ahmed remained strong in his fight for road safety. “’I lost my son and I can afford to fight the case in the courts, but what about those who die on the road every year?’” Khadija recalls him saying. “He wanted systematic change and justice, not only for my father but for the thousands who have lost their lives in road tragedies in Pakistan.”

A chemical engineer from Mumbai who made ends meet as a chemistry tutor after coming to Pakistan in 1963, Ahmed dedicated his life and all his resources to his search for justice for Aamir.

The matter still lies in the courts, and the family has still not received any compensation, despite Ahmed’s several attempts and the Sindh High Court’s order for Rs200 million in damages.

What Ahmed wanted from Khadija was for her to be the voice of those who have been silenced. “One minute you are on the road, and the next thing you know, you’ve been hit by a bullet or a bus,” she said.

Khadija says that Aamir had always been a cheerful person, but he hated hospitals because her brother Abdullah was born with holes in his heart. He could not even bring himself to be there for Abdullah’s surgeries. “It was my grandfather who took Abdullah to London when his kidneys failed, begging Dr Adib Rizvi to take him as a patient,” she remembers.

“Dada came to me at my father’s soyem, telling me that although he had died, I now had another father,” says Khadija, adding that Ahmed had never let her feel Aamir’s absence after that. “He made me dream and he made my dreams come true.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2014.