Baqubah – I.A. – Aya Mansour
“My family searched for my missing limbs for days while I was in the hospital. Our neighbor brought them to us three days later. They fell on the roof of their house due to the force of the explosion. I asked my mother many times while crying and searching for them; where are my limbs? Where did my hands go? What happened to my legs? My mother would answer me: God will return them to you when you grow up, be patient. I never imagined that losing my limbs would make me the Asian table tennis champion one day.
It was just a normal day, Imad’s daughter (20 years old) was sitting waiting excitedly for her father, who was in the Iraqi army, to return from work. She was only four years old. His spoiled and beloved, she trembled with joy when she heard the sound of his car and ran quickly, she says it was a usual thing she did whenever he came.
He brings her gifts every time, and she loves the idea of him putting her in his lap and driving her around the neighborhood. This time, she didn’t see what he brought her, because as soon as he picked her up and put her in the car, before he could get in, a bomb planted by a terrorist to kill her father exploded.
Najla’s right hand and legs flew away, along with the gift. We return to the present, and she is carrying her bag and leaning on a second crutch to complete her training in preparation for her participation in the Paris Paralympics today.
Najla told the (INA): She stayed in Baquba Hospital/ where she lives for more than six months, during which she underwent dozens of operations on her limbs and the shrapnel that mercilessly penetrated her soft body; I was devastated, yes very young, but I remember everything, that the day before I was playing in the neighborhood with my friends, then I ran my only remaining hand over my foot and I did not feel it. I remember my mother’s tears over me and they wet my face, I thought that perhaps these tears would grow something in my body again, but what relieved my heart was that my father was not harmed.
Does the dream end with an explosion?
Her survival from the terrorist incident in 2008 was a path full of thorns that extended throughout her school years, with sadness and challenges, and endless questions from her family: Is it possible for her to go back to running like her classmates? It was a bold scene, my peers in the schoolyard, while I sat on a chair that one of my family members moved for me, something that caused pain in my soul, and I was met with their questions: Where did your limbs go? Why don’t you have two feet like us? Najla says.
She wanted to leave school more than once, but her mother’s words “God will compensate you” were enough to make her start trying to survive the effects of staying alive in the car bomb. Najla, whose important limbs were stolen from her by the war, explains that she now wants to “take revenge” on the terrorist by winning in life. “After my final exams in fifth grade, my father brought me an iPad as a gift. Of course, my only task on it became searching for sports that would suit people who had lost 3 out of 4 limbs. I spent a long time watching wheelchair players playing table tennis. My heart pounded and I felt something pulsing again in my soul, but I discovered that this sport is not available in my city of Baqubah/ and there are no training halls,” Najla Imad explains in her speech.
For a long time, Najla suffered from the inability to use her left hand. However, she holds the ball tightly and hits it against the wall with her hand, which begins a new life, and returns to hitting it. She continues in this state for a while. Then the door knocks, and the opportunity comes that highlights her talent and strength. She says: “Coach Hussam Hussein, a well-known coach in Diyala, was looking for people with special needs, to see if they could enter sports training camps.
“Luckily, he asked me if I wanted to practice table tennis, and I felt like my mother’s words had come true.”
She returned to the wall this time with real training, it became the opponent, with training in the coach’s house because it had a table, these two places were enough to train Najla for six months and make her enter directly to participate in the 2015 Iraqi Championship, where she won first place and joined the national team directly, as the youngest player in Iraq at only ten years old.
“My life has changed for the better. My mental health has become much better. I was young and did not have time to enjoy my limbs, but I found in table tennis a pleasure that was equal to the feeling of what I had lost.”
From Baqubah to Baghdad and then the world
“Najla’s father has always tried to do the impossible for her. Despite his work, he used to take her to Baghdad in his car and return to Baqubah on the same day after her training was over. Despite his old age at the moment, he still brings her from one governorate to another. Najla trains for more than four hours alone, then asks for help from her brothers and father to train for two hours with them. Of course, she needs the main halls in the capital because there are many colleagues and trainers from whom she will benefit,” Luay Al-Saray, Vice President of the Paralympic Committee, told (INA).
Al-Saray added, “In the first championship, Najla defeated players who were older than her age, with their athletic age in table tennis. She is persistent, she comes to the training halls with her curriculum and has not failed a single year. She studies during breaks. All her international participations took place while she was studying. She takes exams and comes to the airport with new books, competes with the players, wins, and then returns to her school.”
For more than four years of playing locally and internationally, Najla has been winning gold and first place, using her wheelchair. She has tried dozens of times to make limbs for herself, she did that in several governorates of Iraq, and each time she came up with different results; the limb was narrow, or wide, short, or hurtful, and caused many scars.
She still keeps trying to get a leg, without feeling pain or for her limbs to start pumping blood. Louay Al-Saray says: “The Sports Federation decided to provide her with suitable limbs, so that Najla, nine years after her injury, can train to start a new life and take steps again.”
It was not easy at all. The last time Najla walked was when she was four, and suddenly when she was 15, she said: “I thought of all those who cannot afford to buy prosthetics. They are very expensive in Iraq, and the local factories do not provide any real quality, especially for someone who is a professional athlete. It seems like an additional punishment for what happened to him.”
Certainly, Najla’s best moments were her victory over important players. She explained: “The first time I won, I wished I had two legs. I couldn’t jump for joy, I did it to myself through the wheelchair. After the limbs were fitted, I could at least raise my hands to celebrate the victory.” Najla, in a career that was still very early, was able to participate in more than 30 international and Arab championships, in addition to local ones, and in all of these championships she won first or second place. She was also the youngest player to participate in the Paralympic Games, at the age of fifteen, and the youngest player in the history of the Asian Championship to win a silver medal.
Winning over the Asian champion
“Najla lost twice to the four-time Asian champion and world champion, Lee Kun-woo, the last time in the Asian Championship, and because of her she won the silver medal. I told her the third time, while she was training with one hand and trying to hold her book to read the final exams with the other, that she had to win this time. She was careful, not sleeping, training and reading, so I played with her in the Asian Masters final, and I was able to defeat her with three sets to one,” he added, adding that her victory in the Asian Masters placed her in fifth place in the world.
Najla concluded: “I was not afraid, but rather excited to test my training skills with the same player who deprived me of the Asian gold. I said to myself, I will snatch the victory for the sake of peace in my country.”