From 2005 Earthquake book by Fatima Bhutto

Story # 3: Bed No. 9


One of the last beds we came to while visiting the girl's ward at the SACHET Earthquake Relief Hospital was Faiza Safir's. The daughter of Mohammad & Saeeda Safir, Faiza was formerly a Class Five student at the Government Girl's Primary School, Muzaffarabad. The school was utterly destroyed & its ruins claimed the lives of many of her friends & fellow students. Yet here she was, in Bed Number 9, sitting fully upright, her posture nearly perfect but her head bent down. Her dupatta covered her torso so one cpuldn't see what everyone else in the ward knew....that her arm had been amputated. She spoke very softly & only when spoken to. She politely answered every question we asked, but didn't push further with her answers. You could see & sense how devastated Faiza was: it was patently visible, but she carried herself with so much poise that it was disarming. Her account of the earthquake struck me the most because of its blunt & jagged tone....what had happened to her was very real & she wrote about it that way. when I met Faiza I found her shy & diffident. Yet here, in the following account written by her, she comes alive....her strength & firm acceptance of a harsh reality clearly visible in her words.

"On the morning of 8 October 2005, I got dressed & left for school as usual. Once in school, we said our prayers & then went to our classes. Our class had been without a teacher for the last ten days, so we all sat & revised our lesson. Suddenly the ground started shaking & all of us ran as fast as we could. But where could we run to? The whole school building was falling on our heads. A lot of stones fell on my chest. My left arm was crushed.

A man came & started to lift the stones off me. There were so many stones on my legs that he could not lift me out straight away but he kept trying to save me &, one by one, he picked up all the stones until he could lift me out. Then my father came. He carried me in his arms & took me to a field where my mother & two sisters were. My paternal grandfather & grandmother were also there & they had set up a tent where we all stayed.

Three days after the earthquake my grandfather took us to the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, where they put bandages on me & treated me; now I am taking a lot of medicines. After that we moved to a camp for two or three days & now I am in the SACHET Hospital.

My crushed arm was amputated & I ask the government of Pakistan to help me get a prosthetic arm.

I am a student of Class V. There were about three hundered students in our school: one hundered & fifty of them have died & another hundered students were injured. Only fifty of us came out untouched.

I would like to thank all those who treated us.

Goodbye


Faiza remained at the SACHT Hospital waiting for the oppertunity to have a prosthetic limb donated to the hospital for her. Artificial limbs are quite expensive but Faiza was fitted with a prosthetic arm before returning home to her village.


Page# 11 from 8.50 A.M. 8 October 2005