KARACHI: Shahjahan Begum had her first brush with death when she was only five months old. Now, in her mid-90s, she not only walks unaided, but prefers to do most of her work herself.

When she fell into a burning wood fire, she burnt her head and hands. Her left hand was mutilated beyond recognition and the right hand’s second and third fingers permanently stuck to its palm.

Her delicate skull had also been burnt and brain exposed. Her father, who died a few years ago at the age of 113 in Lahore, had then offered the flesh from his leg for transplanting to her skull.

Her husband died just six children and 10 years into their marriage, leaving little for her to sustain the family while they were living in Lahore.

“Initially, we got food from a local mosque where my husband was a prayer leader,” she recalls, but that stopped and she took a job as a housemaid.

‘‘Later, she found employment as an aaya in a government hospital but her physical handicaps did not hinder her in bringing up her children.

Shahjahan the Amma is mentally so alert that she knows many of her grandchildren’s friends by name, reads newspapers and magazines and is well informed of what is happening in her immediate neighbourhood and the world at large.

She divides her time between the houses of her two sons – in Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Nazimabad.

Fasting for several months during an Islamic calendar year, she offers prayers regularly. She often declines her daughters-in-law’s help to prepare Sehri for her. “I fast for myself not for you. Why should I bother you?” she reminds her daughters-in-law and their daughters-in-law when they try to help her in cooking a light meal. She also insists on washing her own clothes.

She was born in Kakul village near Abbottabad. She also claims that most of the land where the Pakistan Military Academy is established belongs to her family.

She has had more than her fair share of tragedies. Her eldest son died when he was only 22. Mohammad Riaz, now in his late fifties and a renal patient is on dialysis.

He was 10 when he came to Karachi. He slept on the footpaths before he got a job with a printer. His hard work and honesty won the confidence of the press owner and a decent living for him. Now he has his own successful printing business in the city centre, run by his three sons.

Asked what she had to say about life, Amma said: “Life is a precious gift from God. But having seen several loved ones die, its charm has diminished.”