At a glance, Huma Mohkam appears to be a beautiful, well dressed, lively woman. But you wonder why she is sitting on a wheelchair. She is paraplegic — 65 per cent of her body is paralyzed.
The day of September 8, 1997, changed Huma’s life forever. On a return journey from Riyadh to Khobar, the tyre-rod of their Ford Taurus broke, sending the car into a spin. The driver died immediately of a broken neck. “The car was grotesquely twisted. I could hear my husband screaming in pain. He had landed meters away from the wreck, his leg broken. I could see my daughters drenched in blood, but thank God they were fine. The blood was from the broken glass which had cut them badly. I surprisingly felt no pain. When I looked down, I was scared to be so pain-free. My hip had shifted in a sickening angle and my waist the other way. I was an educated woman, a school teacher. I knew immediately that I was paralyzed.”
Huma’s ribs were all broken, her hip bone and spinal cord were also badly crushed. But what hurt most was the insurance investigator’s report. Their car had been at the workshop for two days and everything was supposedly fixed. Unfortunately, the Pakistani mechanic had done a bad job. He had, in fact, changed some genuine parts of the car, replacing it with low-quality copies. “My husband is such a patriotic Pakistani that he insisted on going to a Pakistani mechanic. Patriotism has cost us dearly,” Huma says sadly.
Several surgeries and a long recuperation later, Huma was given the bad news...she would never walk again. She even went to the famous Kessler Institute in New Jersey for a second opinion. She was seen by Dr Kursh Bloom, the famous doctor who treated actor Christopher Reeve. “To be honest, I had gone looking for a miracle, thinking I’ll come back walking.”
The latter didn’t happen, but Huma returned with an iron will to survive and succeed. “Dr Bloom taught me to take one day at a time. The first nine months after my accident, I had only cried. My mother used to say, even if you miraculously walk again, you will become blind from the crying.”
“I couldn’t face people. I felt abnormal, like I was not one of them. My friends pretended all was fine. The biggest fear my relatives and friends had was that my husband would remarry. Some were even insensitive enough to suggest to my husband that he needed to start looking for another wife. All this while, I was still in the hospital. My husband only said one thing, “I’ve spent good years with her, and I will spend the bad ones, too.” Huma decided to count her blessings first and then fight back. “I was grateful that I had the use of my upper body. All day long, I would think that the three people who mattered to me the most were alive and well — my daughters, Maha and Marwa, and my husband, Mohkam. I also thanked Allah that he made us affluent. I could afford a maid and good living quarters. I have tried to be the same kind of wife and mother that I was. I attend all my children’s school activities. I do all the cooking myself. I mop and use a handy vacuum. I even wear fancy clothes and try to look good like before, though some people have made nasty comments behind my back, suggesting an invalid should live like an invalid!”
People’s reactions have hurt Huma sometimes more than the accident itself. “When I go to the mall, people stare. Some sympathize, some give me quizzical looks suggesting I shouldn’t really be seen outdoors. The Indo-Pakistani community is the most insensitive. If I go to a pizza place, I can see people literally freeze, their mouths open, thinking, did I just see a woman on a wheelchair. Once, in Pakistan, my husband stopped the car near a shop and was helping me out when a person said, irritated, “Why didn’t you simply leave her at home.”
Huma has to fight life almost everyday. “Its been so many years. I’m managing, but sometimes it still hurts. Like I applied for a part-time teaching job at a well-known Saudi school. I am very experienced and qualified. They did not hire me. The reason: “It will affect the children negatively to have a handicapped teacher.”
The hardest thing for Huma is travelling. “I have to be carried to my seat by two able-bodied men. Unfortunately, PIA and often Saudi Airlines do not have an aisle chair which is narrow enough to glide through the aisles. The regular wheelchair cannot pass through the rows. It is always the same. The staff first requests that I try to take a few steps and walk to my seat. We have to explain that I cannot take a single step. Then I’m lifted in full view of people, with children pointing. That is the most humiliating experience. I wish the airlines would look into the needs of the handicapped. There are many of us around.”
Has Huma ever sought counselling?
“No, in the Holy Quran it says that Allah puts weight on us according to our strength. Perhaps, that is why I have not needed it. I have put all my faith in Allah and He has never disappointed me. In fact, its funny that the doctors in Riyadh and even at the Kessler Institute always asked me to counsel and talk to the other depressed patients. “We have never seen an optimist like you,” they said.
Huma wants to write a book about her experience. “I want to share the frustrations and the struggle and the fight that a paraplegic goes through. We become grateful for the smallest of things that earlier we used to pay no attention to. I am hoping that my book will help somebody in a similar situation. It will tell them, you are not alone and you must fight back and live as normal a life as you can.”
At a glance, Huma Mohkam appears to be a beautiful, well dressed, lively woman. But you wonder why she is sitting on a wheelchair. She is paraplegic — 65 per cent of her body is paralyzed.
