May 03, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, May 2: Sajida Begum had the life of every woman’s dream - a wonderful husband with a good job, a newly-built beautiful house and three lovely children. But now she has been lying motionless at St Joseph’s Hospice for almost two years.

In her mid-30s, Sajida sustained severe head injury when the roof of her house in Muzaffarabad collapsed on her after the devastating earthquake of October 8, 2005.

Only three months ago, she came out of the coma but only to move her eyes and a rare jerk in the left leg. Though her movement came as a ray of hope for her family and the attendants, doctors remain pessimistic about her chances of full recovery.

Her story - unrelentingly sad - has two real tragedies. The destructive earthquake not only left her in a vegetative state but it also scattered her family.

Her husband Mohammad Shakeel Ahmed works in Rawalpindi and the couple’s children are now with their uncle in Muzaffarabad after the death of their grandmother recently.

“Sajida was one of the six patients who came to us in November 2005 after the earthquake. She was in a coma and her right leg was broken,” said Sister Rufina, heading St Joseph’s Hospice. She said the head injury had completely paralysed her neck below. “She’s in for a long hard fight,” she said, standing by her hospital bed and raking her fingers through Sajida’s shortly- cut hair.

Sajida seemed to respond and express by moving her eyes every time Rufina called her name. But she could hardly recognise or understand. And as she moved her eyes to look in the direction the voice came from, Sajida moved her lips as if trying to speak but words don’t come out of her mouth.

Her husband visited her twice or thrice a week. Shakeel, 38, brings her juices, milk and soup and feeds her through a pipe permanently attached to her nose.

“Sajida is very lucky to have Shakeel. He comes and talks to her and gives tremendous support and encouragement,” said Sister Josephine.

She said Shakeel’s family had told him to remarry. But Shakeel, who prayed to hear and see her up and about again, told them that not for as long Sajida was alive because she was a great wife and a wonderful mother.

“And we care for her and keep changing her positions so that she does not develop bed soars. There is no other treatment for her.

The gleam of hope extinguished in their eyes every time Sajida’s children, the youngest boy only three, a daughter and the eldest son almost eight, looked expectantly towards their mother - and she did not respond in her warm affectionate manner.

Many had died instantly in the October 8 earthquake but Sajida had to go through the agony of prolonged fight between life and death.

And while her children wait for their mother to return, doctors said there was no hope of recovery.