Not food but blood for a displaced person

Khalid Kheshgi

PESHAWAR: Having undergone two major surgeries, Ajab Khan, the father of two thalassaemic children, is too weak to run after relief items meant for internally displaced persons at the largest makeshift camp for the IDPs from Bajaur and Swat at Katcha Garhi camp.

Resident of Sherpalam, Swat, the 33-year old Ajab Khan along with his family had migrated from the violence-hit Swat to Jalozai camp in Nowshera some four months back. But from there he shifted to Katcha Garhi IDPs camp in a bid to easily treat and dialysis his thalassaemic children.

His nine-year-old son, Zahoor, and five-year-old daughter, Safia, are thalassaemic patients, who need frequent blood transfusion while his daughter Asma had died of the disease some two years back at the age of 12.

Wearing the traditional white Dir cap, Ajab unfolded a ragged file, he was holding in his hands and showed all the documents, receipts and prescriptions of his children and himself one by one to this scribe outside the office of administrator of Katcha Garhi IDP camp.

“I am least bothered about the relief items, but am here to beg for a favour from the camp administration to refer me to big hospitals or blood banks in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Peshawar,” he said and added that doctors in one of the health centres at the camp referred him to a big hospital in the City.

“Even I do not have money to make fresh photos of the children, which the doctors said to be attached with the prescribed forms,” he lamented.

A driver by profession, Ajab Khan’s father was a tenant of a local Khan, Noor Muhammad Khan, at Fateh Khan village in Sherpalam, Swat, where his whole family was living in the mud-house since long.

The former taxi driver had undergone back surgery at Hayat Medical Hospital, Peshawar, some time back and was almost recovered from the backache, but one day he was caught in severe firing between security forces and militants in Swat.

“My car received bullets and I along with other passengers jumped out of the vehicle after which I suffered even more severe back pain.” The poor driver once again underwent surgery at a private hospital in Swat where he paid about Rs35,000.

The prolonged curfew and frequent clashes between security forces and the Taliban in Swat forced Ajab Khan to migrate to the IDP camp in Nowshera as his children need blood transfusion and proper treatment. But as he could not afford fares from Jalozai to Peshawar so he opted to shift along with his family to the Katcha Garhi IDP camp in Peshawar.

He said that he could not stand for longer and run so he often returned empty-handed, as there was no discipline in distribution of relief items at the camp. He was also indebted to the Fatimid Foundation, students and other blood donor organizations for providing free of cost blood to his children, saying that the Fatimid Foundation was donating blood to his deceased daughter Asma in Swat.

“As soon as permanent peace is established in Swat I will go back to my village as the people of my native town were very cooperative,” he said. “In the camp and this strange city (Peshawar) everyone is treating me like a beggar as no one understand my problem,” he told this scribe and asked him to personally visit his tent to see his ailing children.