WUNRN
Women's Feature Service - WFS
BANGLADESH - ACID ATTACK SURVIVOR
HELPS OTHER VICTIMS
The Bangladesh survivor of an acid attack, Nurun Nahar, 32,
recalls the
slow, painful stages of recovery that have transformed her from a shattered,
angry young girl to an understanding counsellor today.(Credit: Bijoyeta Das)
By Bijoyeta Das
A survivor of an acid
attack in 1995, Nahar, 32, now counsels other victims of acid attacks. She says
some victims are virtually catatonic, some wail, some deny, almost all are in
pain and feel helpless. She tells them her story, how a spurned lover hurled
acid when she was 16. She listens to their stories.
Acid attacks continue
in
The numbers have
waned, falling from 367 incidents in 2002 to 116 in 2009. But even now property
disputes, jealousy, rejected love, eve teasing, dowry, a fight over a bucket of
water and family feuds can spur an attack.
"The damage is
irreversible and healing ongoing," says Nahar, her hair loosely tied in a
bun covering her charred left ear.
Nahar and her
attacker, Jasim Sikdar, then 21, lived in the same Patuakhali village. But he
belonged to the landowning class and she lived with her widowed mother and
sister in a mud hut. He stalked her, harassing her on her way to school. He
proposed to her; she firmly rebuffed him. His wooing then gave way to threats
to destroy her beauty. "I chose to ignore him, didn't take him
seriously," she says.
Then, one balmy July
night, a gang of eight young men broke into her house. They tried to pull her
out. But mother and daughter held each other tightly - scuffling, howling and
refusing to let go. Sikdar and his friends pinned Nahar down and squirted acid
over her face.
"Water,"
she recalls screaming. "I am burning." But the water stung so she
pushed away, writhing in pain and shock. The acid ate into her skin. When she
touched her face it felt gooey and bloody - like melted wax. "Everyone
thought the boys had sliced my face with a dagger."
The doctors in the
nearby town and the district hospital were clueless. She was moved to the
government-run
For five months her
tight-knit family guarded her, kept her away from her own reflection. One day
she stole a pocket-sized mirror from the cleaning lady's handbag. She fainted.
"Then I realised the damage. I looked like a monster," she says.
Pills and creams
blunted her pain, but her face was mangled with jarred and discoloured scars.
Her spirit battered. After nine months Nahar returned to the support of her
villagers. But nothing could stop her anxieties.
Nasreen Huq, a
volunteer activist for Naripokkho, a Dhaka-based women's rights group,
publicised her case. Nahar's medical bills were waived and she moved to
"No punishment
is enough. If I see him maybe I will beat him up," Nahar says with an
indignant edge in her voice.
Over the years she
has gone through dozens of operations, skin grafts and medicines to restore
some sense of normalcy to her scarred face. She shunned mirrors, dressed in
dark-coloured enveloping cloaks. She brushed her teeth under the veil and ate
alone. She wanted to be invisible and move like smoke.
"I never thought
of suicide, but did not know how to live," she says. But Huq persisted in
helping Nahar handle the trauma. "Everyone said the society should be
ashamed and not me," Nahar says.
But, despite the
help, she was being swallowed by a very specific, very focused anger that
asked: 'Why me?'
One day she began to
accept that her life was inside out, upside down. She began picking up the bits
and pieces. Grief and fury ebbed and she began to focus on restoring her life.
Gradually she shed
the shroud, joined college and made friends. Today she is scorched but wiser
with a new sense of dignity.
"Before the
attack I thought dark people were ugly; I never drank from the same glass as
them," she says. Now she says she knows that beauty is all about the heart
and gaily looks at the mirror.
Nahar has worked with
Naripokkho, Action Aid and other non-governmental organisations as a counsellor
to other survivors and has become a vocal activist against acid violence.
"But tragedy is written on my face. Even when I moved on, there are always
those jabs reminding me of what I have lost," she says.
Nahar is aware of
people on the streets often angling for a glimpse. Children stare, sometimes
turning around craning their necks. There are also jeers and jokes. Mostly she
ignores them. But sometimes she is provoked when a rickshaw puller asks,
"What happened, sister?" Her voice is clipped and angry; her lips
tightened as she says, "They know exactly what happened. But they want to
hear it. This is plain sadism."
That attack robbed
her of her looks, fleetingly crushed her soul and perpetually erased her faith
in God. "My mother prays five times and tells me 'if you pray before
sleeping you are safe,'" she says. But Nahar smiles ruefully, "That
night also I prayed."
She asks if Allah is
omnipotent why didn't he stop what happened. It was monsoon season; snakes were
scuttling across flooded fields and water-logged backyards. "Why didn't
Jasim and his friends slip and fall? Why didn't a snake bite them?" she
asks.
She may never get
those answers but she has certainly decided to give answers to others like
her.
By arrangement with Women's eNews.
(Bijoyeta Das is a multimedia journalist currently covering