Scarred children vow never to play outside

Blast survivors unable to see their survival in a positive light, believe the incident has crippled their future.

KARACHI: I will never play outside my house again, murmurs 10-year-old Nabi from his bed at Jinnah hospital. He was one of the many children injured in Thursday’s bomb blast. Beside him, 14-year-old Hashim is just too scared to talk.

“How will my children ever forget this?” asked Nabi’s mother.

“Nothing is left” was the story of almost every patient at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre who was injured in the bomb blast near PIDC on Thursday. Although alive, the blast survivors were unable to see their survival in a positive light as they believed that Thursday’s incident had crippled their future.

A 45-year-old widow, Shehzadi Bibi, who lived in the area that was affected the most in the blast, said that she used to work as a maid to feed her five children. The only help she received was from her son who worked at a dhaba or tea shop. As firing erupted outside her house Thursday night, she told her children - who were playing outside - to come inside.

“Little did I know that I will not be able to get shelter in my own house,” she said, bleakly adding that the roof collapsed in the explosion, injuring her sister, niece as well as her children.

“We have no clothes, no shoes, nothing to eat and no roof to live under,” she said. This depressing thought was followed by a number of realisations for Shehzadi Bibi, who wondered how her family would be able to celebrate Eid in the face of this disaster.

Atiya Shafiq, a resident of Madina Colony, said that although she had seen bomb blasts on the television, she had never even imagined one to take place in her backyard. “Everything was destroyed right in front of our eyes. All our friends, the entire neighbourhood,” she cried, saying that she could not imagine why anyone would want to attack her neighbourhood, which was always “peaceful and tranquil”.

Atiya said that her future has been left unprotected after the attack in which her family was injured and which destroyed her home. According to Atiya’s brother-in-law, around 75 per cent of Madina Colony’s population was directly affected in the blast.

Twenty-seven-year-old Farhana was watching television when she heard the blast. “After that, I did not hear, feel or see anything,” she said. The blast was the last thing Farhana remembered before she passed out. When she woke up, she was in JPMC’s emergency ward and her left leg was badly wounded.

Farhana’s brother-in-law, Ahmed Zafar, said that their house was right in front of the CID building. As a result, it was completely destroyed. However, Ahmed said that he has yet to find the courage to tell his family that they have nowhere to go once they leave the hospital.

Meanwhile, some people found hope in being lucky enough to be alive. Fifty-year-old Jamal, who was at the hospital with his sister, said that half of his house had been affected. “We still have three rooms to live in and we will build the rest again,” he said.

Sidra, a pre-medical student, received a head injury while her sister had to get stitches for the wound below her ear when the roof of their house collapsed. “I am alive and I can study,” she said, adding that the only way to counter terrorism is through education.

While rescue efforts were under way, FIRs and criminal records of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) police could be seen under the debris of the law-enforcement agency’s office building that was attcked by terrorists a day earlier.

Another body was also found from under the rubble on Friday. The police and rescue workers took the body of Rehmat, a private employee of the CID, to a hospital. The building’s wreckage rang with sounds of the ambulance again. The residents of Civil Lines area, whose houses were destroyed, were standing helplessly in front of them. They complained that every government official, including the chief minister and the home minister, went directly to the CID office but no one visited the people.

“Our houses have been destroyed and many people have been critically injured, but no government official has come to inquire about us,” said Maryam, a housewife who was sitting on the remains of her house located in front of the CID office.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2010.