13/12/2022
On a journey home to see her family in 2008, Muniba Mazari watched the rural landscape of Pakistan pass by her passenger window. She was excited to see her brothers again and celebrate her 21st birthday. But those hopes were dashed when the car crashed and fell into a ditch by the side of the road. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct34p8
Muniba opened her eyes to find an old man gently holding her head. Her body was in shock and as she came-to, local villagers began dragging her out of the car. They put her in the back of a jeep, and she began to realise the extent of her injuries. She cried out in pain: “I cannot feel my legs, where are my legs?”
Once she got to hospital the doctors confirmed her fears, she was paralysed from the waist down. They performed several operations, inserting titanium rods into her arm and spine. When they told her she would never be able to carry a child, she felt hopeless: “That was the moment I was devastated… I cried my eyes out.”
But her brothers brought her a gift that would change her life: a sketchbook and a set of oil pastels.
Sick of staring at the white walls, Muniba began to draw everything she was feeling. She spent the next two years bedridden, where painting became her only solace. Listening to the world outside, she painted pictures of dark streets and women walking alone to express her feelings of isolation and pain. She says that “the only way to say it was to paint it.”
After two years of confinement, she finally sat in her wheelchair for the first time. It took a long time to accept her new reality but continuing with her art gave her purpose.
She began piling up her pictures under her bed, sure that no one else would ever see them. But her family continued to support her. Her brother told her “You’re not piling them up, you’re working on your collection and one day you will exhibit your work.”
So when she received an email offering an opportunity to show her paintings, she was thrilled. Soon, the public started to relate to her work, seeing her struggle through her images. She says that “my artwork [from that time] reminds me of the worst moments, but also the moments when I didn’t give up on myself” and her viewers connected with them too.
Soon, she was speaking publicly about her experience and eventually she became Pakistan’s first wheelchair-using TV show host as an anchor on national television. Now people call her the Iron Lady of Pakistan, on account of the titanium in her body, and she’s using her platform to challenge narratives around disability:
“When I’m sitting in my wheelchair and I’m doing my weekend show, I’m thinking about that little girl or a boy, sitting in a far-flung area of Pakistan, sitting in their wheelchair or with their disability and thinking, 'if she can do it, so can we.'”
Muniba finally achieved her dream of becoming a mother when she adopted her son in 2011, and he brings her hope for the future.
“There were days when there was nothing to look forward to and today when I see him standing in front of me, I think, wow there is so much to look forward to now.”
Listen to our interview with Muniba on Outlook:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct34p8
📸 : credit Muniba Mazari