Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Islamabad (dpa) - Islamabad's Melody Cinema was a place of dreams until it was burnt out in October 2003 by Islamist extremists. Today desperation and depression could be expected here in the hastily refurbished rooms.
They are home to women who not only lost family and homes in the October 8 earthquake last year, but also had their spines damaged as the masonry collapsed around them.
Their future appeared in ruins.
Nevertheless laughter rings throughout the old cinema. These women, all of them paralysed to some degree, have not given up but are recovering their will to live. They are more self-confident than they were before.
There may be little reason for these women to laugh, not least because the government wants to close this clinic and transfer them to state hospitals.
In the case of 31 of the 44 women here, their spines are so badly damaged that they will never walk again.
They are housed on the first floor of the clinic, created out of the ruins of the old cinema by its owner and her friends in the space of two weeks, working day and night.
The patients come from mountain villages, where they would be confined to their houses if they returned, unable to manage the muddy roads and steep ascents in their wheelchairs.
"The future these women face is very, very difficult," says Hassan Ahmed Ozgen, who gave up his job as a manager in his family business and is now running the clinic without pay.
One of his patients has been abandoned by her husband, and others face a similar fate, he fears.
"Once the men have laid their hands on the state aid for the rehabilitation of their wives, they will leave them," he says.
It is inconceivable that the men will take over the tasks their wives traditionally perform in the fields or in the household. They would rather look for a new wife.
Atif Raza of the Pakistani aid organization Milestone, which is trying to help the women in the Melody Cinema prepare for their new lives, has himself been in a wheelchair since a car accident some seven years ago.
"Society simply left me in the lurch," he says. "The same will happen to these women."
Before the Milestone workers arrived, many of the patients had not even spoken for a long time, Ozgen says.
"They were unable to sleep and spent the whole night crying. Their sole question was: Will we be able to walk again?"
The women were slowly told of the future facing them. At some point Raza confronted them with the bitter reality and told them: "You will never walk again."
He believes that they have accepted this with the passage of time. "They have begun to take care of themselves again, and now they are saying they can in fact walk. These are their legs," Raza says, gesturing towards his wheelchair.
While most of the women practice using their wheelchairs under Raza's direction, Sehrish lies in bed.
The 19-year-old woman says she is not well today, otherwise she would be joining in.
"Thanks to them I can now do everything on my own. After the earthquake I couldn't move a centimetre, now I can get myself into the wheelchair and get myself into a bath," she says.
Sehrish is one of those who will not walk again. Nevertheless she wants to return to her home in the mountains of Kashmir when she leaves the clinic.
She wants to finish her training and become a school teacher. The man she is engaged to has already visited her in the Melody Cinema, she says.
Asked whether he will stand by her despite her disability, she says: "I'm not thinking of marriage yet. First I want to stand on my own two feet."
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
