KARACHI: It was a warm and windy day at the Bilquis Edhi Welfare Shelter Home for Mentally Disturbed Women in North Nazimabad. The little almond trees planted by Faisal Edhi swayed in the wind. `Soon these almond trees will grow big and strong offering cool umbrella-like shades to sit under. Then these winds, too, will turn into a breeze,` said Waseem Baji, one of the senior staff members, at the shelter home.

She also spoke about the other trees on their grounds.

`We also have neem and eucalyptus, jujube, tamarind, chiku [sapodilla] and jamun [java plum] trees here. Faisal [Edhi] just loves big shady trees,` she said.

This Bilquis Edhi Welfare Shelter Home has some 1,300 women. Most of them are elderly mothers. The talk about shady trees earlier also makes one think about mothers. It won`t be wrong to compare mothers to fruitful trees with shade. But sometimes these fruitful trees can also be attacked by termites. In the case of mothers at the Bilquis Edhi Welfare Shelter Home, their own families turned out to be the termites ailing the trees.

Shagufta Kamal has been living at the Shelter Home for 10 to 15 years. She is about 42 years old now and was first brought here by her father. `Iwas told that I had lost my mind after my mother passed away and my father had no other option,` she said.

Later, when she was better, her older sister found a nice match for her and married her off. She stayed with her husband for some years, but then he also brought her back when she started fighting with her mother-in-law.

She also has a child but he is still young to have a say in these matters. `So I am here and my family is there,` she said.

Naureen Khan, another woman at the Shelter Home, said that she didn`t fight like Shagufta. `I wish I could fight.

Then I would not have accepted my fate the way I have,` she said.

Naureen was sent here 10 years ago by her three sisters-in-law, her brothers` wives, who didn`t want to keep her. `I got divorced when my daughter was three and my son was only one years old. My ex-husband took my children from me and sent me to my brothers. I never approached the court for my children`s custody because if I had got them where would I have taken them? There was not even room for me at my brothers` house,` she said.

Naheed Bano has four grownup children two sons and two daughters.

`When I was living at home, not a day would pass by when my mother-in-law and sistersin-law would leave me alone.

They would constantly be picking on me. When I would react they would tell my husband that I needed psychological care. Then he left me here never to come back,` she said.`My daughters come to see me sometimes with little gifts.

When I ask them to take me back home, they say they would when they have a bigger house because they cannot accommodate me in their small house, Naheed said.

`Maybe, there really is no longer any room for me in their house and hearts but there is a lot of room for me here at this Shelter Home,` she said. `I pray for Bilquis Endhi, Maulana Edhi and their family.

Faisal and Sabah Edhi are our real family, who take such good care of us here. They tend to all our needs and also make sure that we get our medicines on time here,` she said.

Shazia Fayyaz is back at the Edhi Shelter Home for the third time now. She has not seen her family in the 13 years that she has been here since the last time she returned.

`My daughter is married and in Hyderabad but my son is here. My husband had divorced me, saying that I am crazy. He has also poisoned my son`s mind as he doesn`t take my phone calls,` she said.

Another woman also named Shazia with Ghafoor as her second name said that she also had been in and out of the Edhi Home. `My husband is my cousin, my maternal mother`s son. He divorced me on his mother`s orders but then when the children started giving him trouble, he decided to get married to me again. But for that I had to marry another man and getdivorced from him in order to get married to my first husband again,` she said, adding that she did that but got in the family way from the second husband.

`I have a six-year-old son from him. He took away my youngest child after I gave birth. We were already divorced. And my aunt got her son, my first husband to someone else while I was sent here over some domestic quarrel.

Now she has gotten her son married to someone else from outside the family and the new wife doesn`t want me there,` she said.

Zaibunissa has been living at the shelter home for eight years now and has one daughter back home whom she misses dearly.

`It`s been one year since I saw my daughter. My daughter is 16now. We often speak over the phone and she tells me that her father and stepmother don`t allow her to meet me,` she said.

Shakila Parween has also spent eight years at the shelter home.

She is the oldest of the seven mothers and says she has four grown-up children out of whom two are married also. `But none of them seem to have a place for their aged mother. I thank God every day for having this shelter home roof over my head at least,` she said.

Dr Naseem Ageel who has been taking care of the mothers for some 20 years now said that she was allowed four days off a week but she came to the shelter home every day. `I come here every day because they miss me if I take it off even for a singleday,` she said.

She said that 99 per cent of the mothers were mentally disturbed.

`But they get better until you can`t even tell that there is anything wrong with them. Then sometimes when their families take them back home they are not very strict about taking their medicinesregularly,whichresults in another outburst bringing them back to the Home,` she said.

`Here they have so many other mothers going through the same kind of issues as them. All miss their children. They all talk about how they feel with each other, which is also like a therapy.

Similar company creates a bond among them. It also takes some of their loneliness away,` the doctor concluded.