CMH,” he added.
Shehzad Sadiq’s elder brother Irfan Sadiq, now 17 years old, also suffered two bullet injuries. “I was hit in the leg and the hip. I was under treatment for 15 days at the CMH. I feel pain in my leg when the weather is cold or when I walk too much. Otherwise, I am okay,” he said. He recalled sitting in the third row of the auditorium when the attackers launched the attack. “We first tried to hide between the chairs. I then ran towards the dressing room where I met my brother Shehzad. I was left stranded there while Shehzad managed to escape. We were hiding our faces among the dead and injured when the gunmen came back and fired at those they thought were alive,” Irfan Sadiq recalled.
He said their slain English teacher Ms Saima had been transferred to the APS only a month ago. “It is not easy to forget the way she and some of our class fellows were killed,” he remarked. Irfan Sadiq is still studying at the APS and is now in class 10. He said a basketball court, library and computer lab have been built at the site of the auditorium. He added that the new building of the auditorium is presently under construction at the school. He has plans to seek admission at the Military College, Serai Alamgir, and join his brother after qualifying his matriculation examination at the APS.
The day Shehzad Sadiq and Irfan Sadiq were injured in the APS attack, their younger brother Bilal Sadiq studying in class 1 was present in the junior section of the school. The terrorists couldn’t go to the junior section and thus the schoolchildren there weren’t harmed.
Shehzad Sadiq and Irfan Sadiq recently appeared before a medical board at the Police Hospital, Peshawar to see if they needed further treatment, possibly at the Aga Khan Hosputal, Karachi. Shehzad Sadiq is in greater need of treatment of his left leg. Both the brothers were among the APS students who were sent by the Army authorities to Saudi Arabia for Umra. Other students were sent to the US, Oman, China and Tajikistan for sight-seeing. All these visits were intended to provide spiritual and recreational healing to students who survived the most brutal attack against schoolchildren anywhere in the world.
Still haunted by the unforgettable memory of the APS tragedy, Shehzad Sadiq and Irfan Sadiq are keen to pursue their studies even though it isn’t easy for their soldier father to pay for the education of his three sons and four daughters.