PESHAWAR: The Qissa Khwani Bazaar bomb blast causedbodily harm to Arif but the second-year student turned out to be in high spirits as he explained how he managed to reach the hospital despite being seriously injured.
“Darkness and heaviness overtook me as I held together my intestines in my hands and ran over burning bodies towards the hospital,” said Arif, who was hit by the blast shortly after he got down from a wagon in the famous ‘bazaar of storytellers’, which might now be remembered for its sad tales.
In a situation where most of the people, after learning about bomb blasts and killing of the innocent people, get depressed or angry at undeserved plight, some like Arif becomes inspirational.
He smiles and thanked Allah for getting life another time.
“I thought my life had ended, but I survived,” said Arif while sharing his thoughts when he was injured in the car blast.
Despite serious injuries, the boy had a smile on his face.
He was thankful to the Almighty that he managed to reach the hospital despite severe injuries, and got treatment immediately.
Arif, who belongs to Sardar Kalay of Mardan, lives in a Peshawar hostel.
He was on the way to collect some study notes from a friend when the blast ripped through the bazaar.
Instead of calling his family, he phoned his friends for help as he did not want to worry his family.
His brother, Yasirullah, a teacher at Mardan Model School, sitting at Arif’s bedside in Lady Reading Hospital said that his father was a watchman and the family had pinned high hopes in him and Arif.
Unlike his younger brother, Yasir still could not forget the pain hislittle brother had gone through and had tears in his eyes.
“I seized the senior minister (Sirajul Haq) by the collar when he came here, and asked him why the government wasn't resolving this issue (terrorism),” he said.
Unlike Arif, others injured were mostly the youth working as vendors in Qissa Khwani Bazaar who were lying in the same ward either unconscious or unable to speak.
The attendants, who were there, also had the same question written all over their faces.
Mohiuddin, a vendor in Rawalpindi, was sitting with her brother, Sobidaar, who, too, was a vendor in Qissa Khwani Bazaar.
“We don’t like Peshawar but what else can we do? We have to leave our hometown for livelihood,” said Mohiuddin, who hails from Bajaur, where conflict in the past years has affected the public lifeand property.
Both brothers work as vendors to earn their livelihood.
Mazajan, 40, from Bajaur and a father of five, who used to sellalmonds in the Qissa Khwani Bazaar, was also injured in the Qissa Khwani Bazaar blast on Sunday. His cousins sitting on his bedside were depressed as they had left Bajaur due to the fighting but even then, bombs did not spare them.
Same was the feeling of Khan Said, whose teenage nephew Jawad was a victim of the Sunday explosion.
Many families like that of Maza Jan and Khan Said have left their hometowns in tribal areas to escape bomb explosions and earn their livelihoods peacefully but they could not escape what awaited them in Qissa Khwani Bazaar.
Khan Syed said they had left the Mohmand agency due to fighting in 2007 and settled in Peshawar. He said,
We did not know that we would be hit even here.
In the female surgical ward, four women, who survived the bazaar bombing, were lying on beds as their other female relatives attended to them.
The family from Charsadda (Matta Mughalkhel), which lost 18 members all sitting in a Suzuki van, was the worst affected in Sunday’s blast.
Nazia, a relative, said she had been searching until late night for the missing children and managed to find two children whose mothers have already died in the explosion.
“I saw Ihtisham, just one year old, who was smiling when he looked at me despite having burns,” said Nazia.
She also found three-year-old Gulalai, also injured in the blast.
Of the six children, just Ihtisham and Gulalai were found but both children have lost their mothers in the incident, said Nazia, who said that they had not informed the four injured women about the death of the other family members.
She, like her other relatives tending to these injured, were showing great strength to help them get well soon.
While most people would curse and cry out loud at such a loss, the people who either got hit or lost loved ones in this unfortunate incident braved a smile.
The attendants tended to the injured not showing their grief. Yet, there was a question in their eyes, “What is our fault to deserve such punishment?”
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