‘Ada Asif, it’s a bullet, please leave!’

Name: Dr. Zaib Taj

Age: 32 years old

Place of residence: Karachi

Occupation: Female coordinator at DWA (Disabled Welfare Association)

“I was named after my eldest grandmother. ‘Zaib’ translates into ‘Ornaments/decoration’ and thus can be understood as ‘Ornament of the house.’”

Dr. Zaib is soft-spoken. Her voice is low and her words are precise. She sat on her wheelchair with poise and explained everything she said in extreme detail – just like the meaning of her name. You can tell that she is a doctor just by talking to her. ‘I was an introverted child. I never had a lot of friends and I always spoke less. This was a constant complain that my teachers had during parent-teacher’s meeting. They would tell my parents that I needed to speak up’ Dr. Zaib mentions. Despite her teacher’s comments and assumptions of her as a quiet and disinterested student, she was ambitious from within. Not many people could see it except for her parents. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted to become a doctor; it was her and her mother’s ‘dream’. It was during the third year of her undergraduate degree that her mother passed away, and with that she lost her motivation to study too. Nonetheless, she did went on to complete her degree to become a doctor but without the passion that she had once felt for this profession.

Six months after her graduation in 2011, Dr. Zaib got married. She recalls it as the most celebrated time of her life: “I loved going to the salon then. I bought about twelve pair of shoes, several clothes and bangles, racks of them! Since I was the first one to get married in my family, my wedding was what you can call ‘lavish’. I was certainly very happy”. She smiled a little and then immediately returned to her composed posture as if signaling that the events following her wedding were not that joyous after all.

‘24th February 2012, exactly ten days after Valentine’s Day’ Dr. Zaib continued speaking. She also remembered how she had been ‘naraz’ with her husband because he didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day with her. With only a few months into marriage, the newlyweds were still getting to know each other; which is true in the case of most arrange marriages. However that day, she was not with her husband. She was coming back from a mall along with Asif, her brother in law who was driving the car, and her mother in law who was seated beside him. Dr. Zaib sat at the back as she conversed with them throughout the way. Then suddenly at a roundabout, a police mobile appeared and one of the six policemen seated inside said something to Asif. There might have been a misunderstanding but it is hard to understand the nature of this communication. It could have ranged from a slight insulting remark, to a hand gesture or a curse word. Whatever the course of this communication was, it ended up enraging Asif who immediately stopped his car and stepped out. The policemen began hitting Asif and while this scene played out on the street, Dr. Zaib felt a jolt. It seemed to have entered from her lower back and travelled all the way to her right leg. ‘Ada Asif, it’s a bullet, please leave!’ she screamed.

Dr. Zaib was taken to a hospital immediately. She suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury and vertebral fractures as a result of which she could not walk anymore but still has to endure a crushing amount of nerve-burning pain. ‘Do I look drowsy right now?’ I shook my head and she went on to explain, ‘I am on such a high-dosage of pain killers that I seem drowsy to most people who talk to me’ Even though a case was filed against the policeman, they have managed to roam freely without any accountability – as is the case with such similar records. The case is still ongoing.

While she was admitted in the hospital, her husband would come to see her often during the first week. Later, the occurrence of his visits started to decline and she would often yearn to meet him – maybe not so much out of love but necessity and obligation. He was the person who promised to stay by her side forever.

You marry only once, people say.

And Dr. Zaib married him.

Where is he now?

When it was time for Dr. Zaib to go back home, both her husband and her mother in law coaxed her into going back to her parent’s house. ‘Who will take care of you at our place? You should be with your siblings’ they had said. And so she did went on to live with her dad, three sisters and two brothers who looked after her. ‘But this is only for the time-being right?’ she had thought to herself. Later that year, when her mother in law visited her she claimed that her son wanted to marry again but her husband had stated how it was her mother instead who wanted to get him married, again. In an unexpected yet typical turn of events, Dr. Zaib’s father was informed by an acquaintance that her husband had already gotten married again. And singing the nikkah papers for a second time without the permission of the first wife is illegal. But knowing that filing a complaint would never bring back a person who was ever so motivated to leave will, she stayed indifferent.

Weeks later, divorce papers were delivered to her house and she saw the end of her marriage. It was not a devastating moment for her as others might have imagined. An injury left her with paralysis from the waist down and her husband left her because of this injury. In retrospect, it was only best for her. ‘This was not written in decree for me, I am fully contended’ she reasoned calmly and then went on to move her wheelchair a little bit to grab a bottle of water that had been placed in front of us. ‘I am talking so much today, and thus I even got thirsty. You might be thinking, how someone can speak so much?’ she said while placing the bottle back on the table. I chuckled a little and assured her that that was not the case. I was inspired by her words, and noticed that in fact she spoke just the right amount of words. With careful consideration and adequate pauses.

The path towards her recovery was tough but her family was persistent. And eventually she found herself full of courage when she met people who reverberated the same trait. She is now working as a coordinator at DWA, where she counsels other people with disabilities and helps them accept their disability and step back into life. ‘Some people tell me that they felt the sunlight for the first time in years when we take them out for any activity’, and that reason is enough for Dr. Zaib to carry on with her own life. Being able to feel the sunlight is reason enough.

She has changed over the years, she tells me. She speaks a little more and finds herself with the strength that she thinks she previously lacked. But one thing has stood past the test of time. She still dreams, not with her mother but about her. ‘I believe in dreams. I meet my ammi in my dreams. She’s there when I’ve done something good, and on days when I’m not at my best’.