KARACHI: TDF’s MagnifiScience Centre, in collaboration with a non-governmental organisation, on Saturday, presented a session, titled ‘Breathing Books’, offering visitors the chance to connect with people with diverse abilities and promote inclusion through meaningful conversations.

The visitors were given a library pass before being allowed into a space allotted to the Human Library on the first floor of MagnifiScience Centre.

It was an eye-opening experience to go through the live books themselves telling their stories. Each breathing book, meaning a differently-abled person, had a table with two chairs in front for visitors to sit on and listen to their stories.

There was Agnes Karamat, a Catholic lady who was struck by polio at the age of one. “My paternal grandmother [dadi] used to live in Liaquatabad where she used to run a small shop. I was very close to her. I used to crawl to her lap,” she said, adding that it was at the shop that she was spotted by a priest from the nearby St Teresa’s Church.

“The father urged my grandmother to send me to school. She was reluctant at first but then later allowed him to take me to school. That’s how I was first helped by the church to get operated and fitted with leg braces. Soon I found myself as a student in Christ the King School while also living at a hostel at Numaish called the Lemmenes Home,” Agnes went on with her story, which also saw her confined within the walls of her home where she longed for freedom and independence.

She said that she completed her matriculation from the school and left the hostel to go home after that. “For 10 to 12 years, I sat at home idle. Then I met an old friend from my hostel at a wedding. My friend was also a victim of polio but she was doing something worthwhile with her life. She was a teacher. She advised me to join NOWPDP, a disability inclusion initiative that works for the identity, welfare, education, skill building and economic empowerment of persons with disabilities,” Agnes explained.

At NOWPDP, Agnes attended stitching classes for three months. She now takes in orders for stitching and makes things such as tool bags, lunch bags, pencil cases and school uniforms. “I am making 25,000 rupees working with NOWPDP and it is only the beginning. Later, I intend to go into business myself,” she beamed as she completed her story.

The next breathing book, Ahmar Iqbal, had acid thrown on his face eight years ago by a jealous suitor of his fiancée. “My fiancée had rejected his proposal because she liked me. Besides, our families were also quite close. He could not tolerate the rejection and came after me,” Iqbal, who has gone blind and undergone 40 surgeries on his face by now as a consequence of the attack, told Dawn.

He says that he was a software engineer before the tragedy and after he had enrolled himself in computer classes at NOWDPD. “Because of my expertise in computers I could easily master computers in 10 to 11 days,” he said. Though now he has taken to cooking. “I am a chef now, I also play the guitar and am penning my memoirs now,” he added.

He also teaches cooking by encouraging his students to cook using their sense of smell, taste and touch while also keeping track of time of the cooking processes. “I want to open a restaurant where the entire staff would comprise people with disabilities,” he said.

The third and last breathing book at MagnifiScience Centre’s Human Library was rapper, actor, director and writer M. Khalid Anwar, who goes by the stage name of M.K. Anwar. Looking to create awareness about persons with disabilities, he is also one of the founders of ‘Dining in the Dark’ an activity where people wearing blindfolds come to enjoy food cooked by visually-impaired persons.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2024