A hero’s handling of trauma
Pakistan bus driver Meher Mohammad Khalil watches as Sri Lankan
cricketer Mahela Jayawardene gestures during a felicitation ceremony at
The Sri Lankan Cricket office in Colombo on April 6, 2009. (Getty
Images)
LAHORE: Meher Khalil earned fame and success after saving Sri Lanka’s
cricket team from a deadly 2009 attack in Pakistan, but the bus driver
calls the incident ‘tragic’ and says it is best forgotten.
The 43-year-old was one of the guests of honour at Lahore’s Gaffafi
Stadium on Friday (22), when Pakistan play Zimbabwe in their first home
international since the notorious incident. Khalil was driving the
team’s bus when it was attacked by rocket launcher and machine
gun-wielding extremists in an assault that left eight people dead and
seven players injured.The attack brought an end to international cricket
in Pakistan, until Zimbabwe agreed to visit for a short series in Lahore
which will be held under unprecedented security. Khalil was feted after
he held his nerve to drive the team to safety, and with reward money
from Sri Lanka’s government and donations from well-wishers, he started
his own bus company.Six years on, he told AFP that he wishes he could
drive the Zimbabwe team to the stadium for the first Twenty-20
international on Friday. But he admits that his recollection of the
events of March 3, 2009, still fills him with dread. It took him a
moment, he says in an interview, to realise what was
happening.“Initially I thought that they were Lahorites and were
celebrating with the firecrackers,” he remembers. “But when two people
came towards me and started firing at me then I realised that it was
some other kind of work.” Momentarily stupefied, he was shaken into
action when the players began shouting “Go! Go!”
“Those words were like a 440-volt current jolting through my body. I
gathered myself and then hit the throttle.”
There were 10 to 12 people who attacked them as they were coming from
the team hotel, he says. “Thank God I kept my confidence and dashed them
(the players) safely to the stadium.”
Khalil said once the players were rescued and taken to a safe airbase
for their return home, they wanted him to come along to Sri Lanka with
them.
“But I told them that I am a family man and excused myself at that
time. Then a month later, their president invited me and I went there,”
he said.
“When I reached the airport, I realised that I am not the driver
Meher Khalil who has come here but I am a VVIP. When I used to go out to
the market for shopping, people would call me ‘hero’.”
Besides the praise and an expenses-paid holiday, the Sri Lankan
government rewarded him with a cash prize of US$21,000. Together with
private donations, he began his own company and now owns three buses
which carry passengers along the Lahore to Islamabad motorway - an
impressive feat for a man who once earned Rs.35,000 (US$350) a month.
On Friday, instead of driving Zimbabwe’s bus, he took his place at
the stadium as a spectator.
“When the name Liberty Chowk comes up, even the mention of it raises
my hair,” he told AFP, referring to the roundabout just outside the
stadium where the attack took place. “That was a tragic incident and
it’s better if we don’t remember it.”
(AFP)
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