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A mother for most means the world of love. A motherland for many means remembrance of the land they have left behind but never forsaken. Today, as we wish our mothers (if alive) happy Mother’s Day or wish they were still around to be kissed and hugged and fussed, the best narrative I can forward is of a son “aged and tired” who keeps returning home with hope and healing.
He’s a surgeon with a magic touch and a humane heart.
It was February 27, 1967 when a young doctor from Peshawar boarded a plane for the first time in his life to land in America. He was to start his internship at a hospital in Toledo, Ohio. All he carried was $7 and a Pakistani passport. There were two simple reasons why Rifat Hussain left his country and parents 45 years ago to migrate to US. “Dire economic condition of the family and his own desire for specialisation.”
So why the need for the surgeon to return to his motherland always?
“I was very close to my mother, an uneducated village woman. She underwent an emotional trauma when I left. So with a salary of $300 per month, I saved all the money I could to fly back once a year, if not twice. I sort of bought time with money…time to spend with those I loved and wanted to be with.” The affection and kinship he received from his fellow-frontier men gave him a live sense of belonging that till today pulls him back to Pakistan every few months. The plastic surgeon scolds me gently when I use the term ‘Pushtun’ or ‘Pakistani-American’ for him. “I do not like such epithets as I feel they are de-humanising, cheap and crude attempts at cataloguing a la Fascism.”
Having specialised in cleft lip and palate surgery, Rifat Hussain has come half way around the world to give freely and generously of his time and services to the poor of Pakistan unable to afford the surgery. How many good folks do you and I know who would offer treatment gratis? When a mother calls him an “angel sent by God to make her daughter’s face whole,” Dr Hussain knows he has arrived!
But some see him as a grouchy “outspoken old man”, even an “evil icon of Pushtun race”, when the doctor from America becomes too blunt if vexed. Earlier this year, he spent days performing cleft surgery on several hundred patients waiting for his healing touch in Gujrat. One day, a pompous colonel descended from the local Kharian Hospital claiming to be an “expert plastic surgeon”. Rifat Hussain, who suffers no fools, erupted like Mount Vesuvius. “I have seen samples of your operating skills on patients who are here seeking my help. I don’t think you should perform surgery in future. Your work is unacceptable. It’s high time you stopped wearing your religion on your sleeve!” There was dead silence in the room. The CEO of the Cleft Centre pleaded with Rifat Hussain saying he was “too harsh” on the man whom the locals looked upon as a “pious God-fearing doctor”.
Hypocrisy and religiosity have kept Pakistan from going ahead. I know some doctors in an Islamabad hospital who disappear for hours under the pretext of offering prayers while we the patients sit cursing them. The real heroes are not those who showcase an exaggerated or affected piety but people who perform works of humanitarianism to improve the life of ordinary citizens. Men like surgeon Rifat Hussain, Dr Ijaz Basheer founder of Basheer Hospital and the plastic surgery team under the leadership of Dr Nicholas Hart from UK who have been coming twice a year to Gujrat to perform cleft lip surgery at Basheer Hospital. For the last 14 years this team has spent a week each time to operate on 20 patients a day.
April 23, 2012: Mission accomplished! The doctors’ years of dedication is rewarded with the inauguration of a full-fledged Cleft Hospital in Gujrat! It’s the first of its kind in the world, exclusively designed to treat cleft lip and palate disfiguration. Built under the auspices of the Pakistan Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate Association and the philanthropist Dr Ijaz Basheer, the hospital received a substantial financial grant from the Japanese Government. “Our aim is not only to provide excellent surgical care to the patients, but to serve as a great teaching institution for the plastic surgeons of the region”, hopes Dr Hussain. On board will be two UK surgeons — Nicholas Hart and Riaz Malick, and from America Dr Rifat Hussain.
“If you have a child or an adult / or if you know of anyone with this disorder, refer them to us,” says Hussain.
Why?
“Because we consider your children as our own and will take good care of them. Cleft palate surgery is not something everyone can attempt.” The problem in Pakistan, he says, is the lack of transparency. “Accurate and honest information is not available to the patients or their parents on where to go for help and whose help to seek.”
Each year in Pakistan there are 30,000 to 35,000 babies born with their upper lip split on one side or both sides or with a hole in the roof of the mouth. The facial disfiguration, apart from a psychological hurt, interferes with the normal intake of food and hearing.
Rifat Hussain is a “loner” in the Pakistani diaspora here. “Because of who I am and what I am.” He’s looked upon as an “iconoclast and a radical” because he exposes hypocrites and phonies who pretend to be holy. But the common man in Pakistan is “kind, loving and generous. Once he finds you sincere, he graciously accepts your offer of help.”
Rifat Hussain’s love affair with Pakistan is best described by the Pushto poet Ghani Khan: Love creates its beauty and then falls in love with it/ Love is sheer madness, sheer madness is our love!
