KARACHI, Dec 9: “Piercing screams rent the air as we entered the room. Crying badly for help, an injured man lay on the floor, bleeding. Others were lying lifeless in a pool of blood,” recalls Shahid Raza, Edhi ambulance driver who was among the first few who had reached the Idra Amn-o-Insaf at the Rimpa Plaza on Sept 25.
It was Shahid’s first brush with violence. He was a bit horrified. He had joined the Edhi Foundation as an ambulance driver merely six months ago.
“I felt very strange picking up the bodies soaked with blood. But I collected myself and discharged my duties,” he says.
“After taking the injured to the Civil Hospital Karachi, we shifted the bodies, with blood still oozing from them, to the hospital’s mortuary. We were assisted by Rizwan Edhi,” he recalls.
He adds that six months into the job he has already collected bodies of those who committed suicide and the victims of road accidents.
He speaks of another blood-curdling experience. A speeding coach had crushed a young man so badly that its front tyre had penetrated his chest, ripping the rib-cage open.
“We applied jacks to lift the coach and disentangled the body from the tyre,” he says.
Fifty-year-old Akhtar Ali, who has been working with the Edhi Foundation as an ambulance driver for the past 18 years, does not feel as much revulsion as he used to when he was, like the callow Shahid, an inexperienced volunteer.
“I have picked up countless bodies from almost entire Karachi, but I am proud of my job,” Akhtar Ali, aka Akali, says.
“We rush to the place people run away from. When I got this job, my friends ridiculed me for opting for what they described as nauseating work. But I am proud of my work,” he says with his head held high.
Narrating an incident, Akali said that about a year ago a man had poisoned his wife, daughter and son in their apartment in Soldier Bazar.
“The bodies were discovered over a week later when an unbearable stench made itself felt in the neighbourhood. Police called us and I was sent to collect the bodies. On the way I collected plastic sheets from the Moosa Lane Office,” Akali recalls.
“Nobody was willing to stand outside the apartment and the police wisely disappeared. The bodies had swollen to twice their size because of poisoning. I had to puncture the three bodies in order to restore them to their original size so that they could be transported. Otherwise they could not have been taken out from the door.”
I wrapped plastic bags around my hands and tied cloth around my nose and carried out the job, he recalls.
Recalling another incident, Akali says that on May 30, 1995, he collected eight body parts of a man later identified as Dr Qudoos, under the Jam Sadiq Ali bridge in Korangi Industrial Area.
Later, the “DSP concerned gave me an appreciation letter for good work,” he adds. Akali showed the letter which he carries in his wallet at all times.
Saying that Edhi is the driving force behind his inspiration, Akali says Edhi has given him the courage to work selflessly for the cause of humanity.
“We even pick up carcasses of animals, including dogs, donkeys, horses and camels, from streets and dispose them after digging up land off Super Highway,” he says.
He points out that basically it is the work of the city government, “but we do it whenever we are told to do so”.
Akali was critical of those ambulance drivers who use sirens while not carrying a patient or a body. “It is unethical,” he maintains.
Fifty-year-old Iqbal Baloch looks younger than he is and says that it is due to God’s blessings and because of the nature of his work that he looks sturdy and young.
Baloch has been working as an Edhi ambulance driver for the past 20 years.
Before joining the Edhi Foundation as an ambulance driver, Iqbal was an auto-mechanic.
During this period, he has collected numerous bodies in gunny bags, from notorious Jhanda Chowk and Khaji ground.
Besides, he collected body parts from the roof-tops of the surrounding buildings after the Sheraton bomb blast.
Baloch says that on numerous occasions “we came under fire, our ambulances were pelted with stones during riots, but it never deterred us from our work”.
However, youths also used to extend help to us and often accompanied us in troubled areas during the bloody years of the city’s history, Iqbal says.
Eight years ago, Iqbal picked up a body found in the trunk of a red Toyota Corolla parked near Nyreng Cinema, Liaquatabad.
During the same time, Edhi ambulance driver Zubair came under fire in Azizabad, and he lost his kidney, Iqbal says.
Similarly, in Mirpurkhas an Edhi ambulance carrying a body came under fire by dacoits.
“Ambulance driver Ishtiaq received 36 bullet wounds, but the very next morning the dacoits sent an apology letter to Abdul Sattar Edhi seeking forgiveness,” Iqbal recalls.
Each ambulance is allotted to a particular driver who besides driving it also takes proper care of it.
Thirty-five-year-old Farooq Soomro has been working as an Edhi ambulance driver for the past nine years.
He complains that both the police and the medicolegal officers are not at all helpful with the ambulance drivers.
“We have to get their stamps on our log-book whenever we drop a body or a patient at the hospital, but MLOs often refuse to put the stamp,” Farooq says.
