Young man conquers disability inflicted by mine explosion every day in northern Syria’s Manbij
MANBIJ, Syria (North Press) – 24-year-old Muhammad al-Jaber, from the northern Syrian city of Manbij, connects his prosthetic leg to a belt, then drives to work on his motorbike.
Al-Jaber works in a restaurant, making deliveries to shops and hospitals for a daily wage of 3,000 SYP to support his mother after losing three of his brothers in the war.
During the intensification of battles between the SDF and the ISIS in the city of Manbij in 2016, al-Jaber and his family were displaced to the eastern countryside of the city, returning two months after the expulsion of ISIS from the city in August the same year.
Meanwhile, al-Jaber and three of his brothers decided to go to their sister’s house in the Hazawneh neighborhood on the southern side of the city to check on them, especially after they were displaced from the city for two months.
“We knocked on the door, but no one answered. We had concerns; my little brother suggested to go into the house to check. We pushed the door forcefully and entered the house. Since then, my life changed, the mine exploded,” he said.
After a short time, al-Jaber opened his eyes to find that two of his brothers had died, and the third was fighting for his life, so he was only trying to save him. “The scene was horrific, my leg was beside my head and I could not move.”
“I tried all kinds of treatment, but in vain. I performed approximately 13 surgical operations, but without success. My leg was blue because of the severity of the infections, so the doctors decided to amputate it. I felt that death was better for me than living with one leg.”
The number of dead and injured people in northeastern Syria as a result of mines so far is about 12,000. "The areas that recorded the largest number of victims are the city of Raqqa and its countryside," Adnan Hassan, director of the Roj Organization for Mine Clearance, said.
Later, al-Jaber moved to the city of Azaz in the northern countryside of Aleppo to complete his treatment, as the doctors in the city of Manbij decided to amputate his leg. Doctors in Azaz could not guarantee a good rate for the success of the operation due to the proximity of the injury to the pelvis, and they expected that his entire body was inflamed due to the short distance remaining after the amputation.
“The surgeries cost about three million SYP, but I could not afford to pay such an amount…one of my relatives paid the costs, but he also could no longer pay more.”
After a while, and with the support of the medical humanitarian organization Physicians Across Continents, a prosthetic leg was installed, “but the prosthetic leg was installed in a primitive manner consisting of silicone and gypsum. The cost of transplanting a leg in the bone is estimated at $10,000, which is a big amount for me and there is no one who can pay such amount.”
Al-Jaber suffers from the problem of his leg falling continuously. “The prosthetic leg was placed just under the bone without pins and bolts to fix it, and now I am fastening it with a belt to my waist to fix it.”
Al-Jaber lives with his mother in a family-owned house, which he arranged in several stages, because it lacked doors, windows, and clothing.
In spite of the difficulties that al-Jaber faces in his life and long hours of work, “I struggle to be able to continue living and complete the rest of my life like any young man my age.”
About a week ago, al-Jaber asked a local girl to marry him. “My wedding will be nearly two months from now. I feel very happy that I will have a family, which will make up for everything that has befallen me.”
Reporting by Saddam al-Hassan, editing by Lucas Chapman