From 2005 Earthquake book by Fatima Bhutto

I Want To Be A Doctor


Afira Zara Naz was the reason we started this book. The daughter of Sardar Zulfiqar & Naheed Akhtar. Afira was a student at the Kashmir Public Science School in Muzaffarabad. When I met her I found her to be this fearless little girl who was sitting up in bed with her mother beside her. She answered all our queries articulately & confidently. We didn't quite catch her name initially & she promptly took out a pen & paper & wrote it down for us. Afira wanted to talk about what had happened to her. She had lost a finger, & it was as if this loss & the trauma of the earthquake took away any shyness she may have had & forced her to become brave. It was my mother, Ghinwa, who said to Afira after hearing her speak that it was very important that she write about her experiences, so that others can begin to fathom the extent of the physical & emotional devastation caused by the earthquake. Before my mother had finished speaking Afira had started writing. Here is her story....


"On the eighth of October when the earthquake took place, I was in school. It was during our first period that the earthquake started. All the children started to run outside. I was the last one to get out. My teacher, Miss Shamsa Khalil, & I were running outside when a wall fell on us. We were on the second floor & everyone on the floors below was also trying to leave, but the wall fell on us before we could run any further & we lost consciousness. When I became a little conscious, I looked up & could see children's legs sticking out through the rubble. The whole building had fallen down. With great difficulty, I managed to get out from under all the rubble while the wall was still crumbling. A lot of people from the town had came looking for their children. I saw parents lifting their children out of the rubble, trying to save their lives.

A teacher, Sir Basharat, lifted me up & gave me to some other person. That man took me to the hospital but, as we reached the hospital, we found that it had been destroyed too. There were a lot of bodies of our fellow classmates & other students around. There were so many injured people who were being transported to the hospital-but there was no longer any hospital.

The hospital's doctor, Dr Liaquat, brought some bandages from the medical store & started treating the superficial injuries that people had. He also put a bandage on my hand but it was a very bad wound. My finger was almost separated from my hand, & it looked like it had gone through a mince-meat machine. My bleeding did not stop & I had to be taken back to the hospital where they stitched up my finger; but the doctor told us that I should be taken to the hospital at Kotli or Pindi because they could not fix my wounds properly in our town. So my father dtruggled to arrange a car &, though he managed to find one, it was of little comfort because the main bridge had been destroyed. Because of the landslides all the main roads were closed so we had to take the unpaved katcha roads to Hajira. From there we got into another car & finally reached the Pakistan Institue of Medical Science(PIMS) Hospital where they took good care of my wound & me. The doctors there were very good. They were affectionate towards everybody. It was there that I discovered how much people love Pakistani Kashmiris. Volunteers from schools & colleges, boys & girls, were giving blood, consoling, & entertaining the children.

My treatment took almost a week & then they sent us to The Society of Advancement of Community Health, Education, & Training(SACHET) Earthquake Relief Hospital in Banigala. Here too I've been getting very good traetment. The doctors here are very good. They have given us a lot of encouragement & support-dil se-straight from the heart. I thank these doctors. They treat us with love. Dr Irum, Dr Noreen, Dr Habib, & Brother Jacob are all working on my hand together to fix it, but they had to amputate my little finger. Thankfully, they didn't have to cut my other fingers. The surgery done by Dr Irum was very good for me but my hand is still painful. Because of the pain I can't move my fingers or exercise-it makes me feel so helpless. I just don't know what to do. I am trying to move all my fingers so that I can go home. I also think that, perhaps if I get plastic surgery done on my finger, everthing will be all right again. I would be so grateful if that could be arranged. Then I can progress much faster & in a better way. In the future I would like to be a doctor so I can serve other human beings. God, please give me the motivation & fervour that you have given to these other Pakistani brothers & sisters of mine.

Back home, our katcha house has been destroyed. In our town all the good houses have cracks but are still standing. Our was only a simple house, though, & now it's gone. There were eleven people in our family but eight or nine of them have died & the rest are wounded. God, please keep all tragedies & miseries away from us, Ameen. The roads in my town have been destroyed. Our shops are gone & even our photostat machine has been damaged. I cannot shake the memory of the earthquake from my mind. Whenever I think about it, my head spins. Even now I remember every moment.....I cannot forget it...."


Afira Zara Naz, the patient with a left hand injury, had her little finger amputated. She is now in Kotli in Azad Kashmir, her home village.


Page# 3 of 8.50 A.M. 8 October 2005 by Fatima Bhutto