By Sara Bharrat
Still recovering after being set on fire by his son, Husman Mohammed is afraid to live alone.
Mohammed, 56, formerly of Lot 31 Enmore North, East Coast Demerara was discharged from the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) last Wednesday, his hands heavily bandaged and now useless.
He was admitted to the institution’s Burn Care Unit, along with his wife Gaitree Dhanraj, on April 27. A week after the fire, which completely destroyed their home, Dhanraj succumbed to her wounds. Several days later, the woman’s funeral took place beneath a tarpaulin in the Enmore yard. Mohammed was unable to participate in his wife’s last rites.
Mohammed was left in this state of suffering after his son set fire to their Enmore North home in April. Police said the incident occurred when Husman and his son, Deonarine Mohammed, had an argument. It is alleged that during the argument Deonarine “threw gasoline around the home and set it on fire.” He has been on the run since the incident. “Since the night the police take my parents to the hospital we na hear nothing from them again and we na see my brother since then either,” Kamini Mohammed said.
The still healing Husman Mohammed has been staying with Kamini and her reputed husband at their Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara home.
The weeks he spent in the hospital were unkind to Mohammed. He has lost weight and is now a frail man. At 4.30am five days a week Mohammed and his daughter leave for GPH’s outpatient clinic for his hands to be cleaned, dressed and bandaged. They arrive at the hospital at 5am and wait for the doctor to arrive. By the time they get there, Kamini said, many patients are already waiting for the doctor to arrive.
This is the only way to ensure that Mohammed is treated as early as possible. After waiting for about four or five hours, the woman said, her father finally gets his turn at the doctor. After Mohammed’s wounds are tended they must then wait at the dispensary for his medication. In all, they spend approximately seven hours at the hospital. “We usually get out of there by 12 or a little after that,” Kamini said. “On weekends I have to tend his wounds myself because the clinic is not open.”
Since the incident, Kamini said, her father has not returned to the Enmore location. There is nothing for him, she said, only a pile of ashes. Hours after the fire, the pots and other things which survived the fire had been cleared off by persons.
The area where her parents lived, Kamini explained, was originally a squatting area. Residents recently started paying for the land in order to get a transport as proof of ownership. Shortly before the fire, Mohammed, she said, had just rebuilt his house and the money they had almost finished saving to pay for the land was destroyed. “When my brother start that fire,” Kamini said, “he more than just burn down that house. He kill our mother, almost kill our father and leave him to suffer now without anything of his own…my father can’t even feed himself.”
Disability pension
Already, Kamini said, she is feeling the strain of caring for her father. The woman lives in a small two room house with her husband, on whose salary they depend for survival. Travelling expenses for the frequent clinic visits are already affecting them.
Mohammed said that he used to work with the Enmore and La Bonne Intention sugar estates as a labourer. However, several years ago he suffered a spinal injury and was forced into retirement early. His disability pension from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) was his main source of income. The fire, he said, destroyed his identification and NIS documents as well as other important papers. He has not been able to get his pension since April because of this. “They (NIS) tell me that me na going to ever get me pension again because me na got me book or card,” Mohammed said. “But me been to the estate and me get my NIS number so me going back to them,” he added.
When Dhanraj was alive she did domestic work on the side to supplement his pension. Without her, Mohammed said that he will have to fend for himself; something he has not done since he was 20. His wife, he added, has always been with him to take care of him. “Me miss my lady,” Mohammed said his voice becoming unsteady with emotion. “It use to be me and meh lady and we used to be so good.”
He is greatly bothered by the fact that he is unable to assist his daughter financially and he is afraid of what would happen to him if she can no longer take care of him. Even as he wishes for his independence, Mohammed stated, he is still afraid to live alone; afraid of what Deonarine will return and do to him. “Me na got no where to go. If me daughter put me out then me got to go and kick brick,” the distressed man explained.
Despite the fact that he is afraid to live alone, Mohammed still hopes to have a small place of his own. It is not proper, the man stated, for him to be living with his daughter at her “marriage home.” “When she and she husband get problems me na want he tell she anything about me and me na want become a burden to she,” he added. “Frighten or not me going to have to make it on me own.”
“…lock up.”
The night of April 27 will always remain in his memory, Mohammed said. A “lil talking over food,” according to him, triggered his son’s attack. “He going to get lock up,” Mohammed stressed. “He got fuh get lock up for what he do.”
About five years ago, Mohammed recalled, Deonarine started going to sea. The vessels he worked on went mostly to Suriname. He believes that it was during his stint at sea that Deonarine developed a taste for drugs. “Before he start to go sea he never use to smoke and drink,” the man said. Despite the fact that Deonarine had been “smoking and drinking” for so long, Mohammed said, his son had never gotten violent before. Prior to the incident, Mohammed recalled, the man had not been working. “Me and he mother keep telling he to get a work but he never get one,” the man said.
An Enmore North resident, who requested anonymity, had told Stabroek News that it was smoke coming from the Mohammed house that alerted the village to the situation on April 27. Shortly after, a “scorched” Dhanraj was spotted running from the house.
Mohammed, the resident had recalled, went to the police station, where he made a report before he too was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital. “I know these people for years,” the resident said, “and this is the first time I know anything like this happening to them…I never hear them and the son [Deonarine] quarrelling.”
Police, Mohammed said, kept him at the station for nearly 30 minutes that night before they allowed an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The man said he was in severe pain throughout that time and still does not understand why they did not take him to the hospital right away.
He loves moving around and being in the sun, Mohammed said, but cannot do so because of his still-healing wounds which blister.
