Following interview of Dr. Shakir S. Vali, Sharjah, by Mudar Patherya:

This anecdote dates back to 1988 when one of my patients was in acute pain. Gangrene had spread; the legs and hands had blackened. He went to Mumbai to seek specialist opinion and experimented different therapies. He tried the Russian magnetic therapy, which made him worse; he tried hydrotherapy, which blackened the legs and hands further. The collective verdict: amputation from the ankle downwards across both legs and in the right hand from the wrist onwards.

 

This seemed like the final say except for one detail. The muminbhai decided in his gloom to turn to Aqa Maula. Aqa Maula asked for the bandages to be unpeeled across both legs and hands. When they were opened they were not only completely black but also smelling rotten.

 

Maula took a look at the rotting limbs and conferred shifaa. The muminbhai requested for treatment raza by me. Huzurala replied: “Dr Shakir paase ilaaj karaavo. Maari dua chhey. Tamne shifa kulliyat thaase.”

 

Thaase! That one word was a beacon of hope with which this mumin patient came to my clinic in Sharjah with Shaikh Taherbhai Saasa and Shaikh Shabbirbhai Taheri. Coincidentally, a British surgeon was with me when the bandages were opened; the room was filled with the pungent stench of dead tissues. Shaikh Shabbirbhai almost lost his balance; Shaikh Taherbhai left the room immediately. The British surgeon’s verdict: immediate surgery and amputation. I now turned to the muminbhai for Huzurala’s prognosis. He repeated: “Tamne shifa kulliyat thaase!”

 

I set about to work. I suggested cleaning the arms and legs with hot water and applying a bandage of shehed (honey), a highly unusual treatment. Here on the one hand we were talking of surgery; now on the other I was recommending something as facile as honey. His wife and children objected; they felt that I was trivialising the issue. I asked them to have faith in the power that had got them to me.

 

And so started an enduring routine. For a month-and-a-half, I kept cleaning and applying fresh bandage, I kept cleaning and applying fresh bandage.

 

Within three months, a man who should have been on crutches for the rest of his life, walked out of my chamber with no bandages – or worries.

 

It wasn’t a doctor; it was dua that did it.

 

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