REYHANLI, TURKEY // Grasping the bed sheets, Abu Staif braced against the pain as he lifted and lowered his weight-strapped right leg.
The knee is swollen and there’s a large chunk missing from his lower leg but painfully, painstakingly, he is getting better – thanks to a new mobile physiotherapy unit in the Turkish town of Reyhanli.
Just over a year ago Abu Staif, now 47, was in a barbershop with his two young sons in his hometown of Idlib, northwestern Syria, when an air strike hit a building across the road, bringing down the ceiling and spraying the shop with shrapnel. Staif, his eldest son, died. He was twelve years old.
His other son was lightly wounded but Abu Staif suffered grievous injuries. He lost a fist-sized lump of muscle and bone from his right leg. His left leg was also broken.
The medical care in war-torn Idlib was rudimentary and he soon came to Reyhanli – a border town close to Syria – for treatment. After several operations in Reyhanli, Abu Staif was discharged from hospital. But the extent of his injuries and a lack of money for transportation meant that he could not make it to Reyhanli’s physiotherapy centres and his recovery faltered.
His leg broke three times when he tried to walk using crutches and he grew resigned to being bed-bound as he deteriorated.
All that changed in May this year, when a new mobile physiotherapy unit was formed in Reyhanli.
Finally, the most isolated and badly injured Syrians in Reyhanli could be reached. The treatment has transformed Abu Staif’s life, who can now move around his apartment using crutches or walking-frame. “Now I have hope to live again,” he said, puffing between his exercises.
“We call Reyhanli the frontline of physiotherapy,” said Hisham Younso, who heads the mobile unit. Hisham is also a Syrian refugee, from the northwestern town of Bidama, who came to Turkey in 2014.
He qualified as a physiotherapist just as the uprising broke out in Syria in 2011. For more than three years he hustled, saved and improvised to build up his own physiotherapy unit at his house in Bidama, providing free treatment to local Syrians.
But in 2014, his building was hit by a Syrian army shell. No one was home but all of Hisham’s physiotherapy equipment worth thousands of dollars was destroyed. Hisham was also falsely accused by a militant group of being an army soldier because he was clean-shaven at the time. It was time to leave Syria.
When he first arrived in Turkey in May 2014, Hisham had to take up odd jobs such as painting and decorating to get by. He was taken on a year later as the physiotherapist for an alternative Syrian national football team made up of professional Syrian footballers who became refugees – but the funding dried up a year ago.
When the mobile unit was launched, he jumped at the opportunity. “When I see a paraplegic guy stand up and he cries, believe me: I cry before him,” Hisham said.
“I feel like I am paraplegic and I can walk again. To see them have hope is the best feeling in life.”
Reyhanli, close to the now largely closed Bab Al Hawa crossing, is cheap and has several hospitals and physiotherapy centres – if you have the money, health, and family support to access them. The mobile unit – run by the Syrian NGO Hiba and funded by the International Medical Corps (IMC) – has treated around 500 cases since opening. Its four physiotherapists currently treat around 30 serious cases, and are locating new patients stranded in homes around Reyhanli and outlying settlements. Hisham said a few seriously injured patients had managed to make it through from Syria since Turkey’s open-door policy ended last year.
The unit’s primary focus is on civilian war injuries and it treats patients for free.
Walid Dia’ey, 25, was shot by the Syrian army in 2013. A chewed-up spiral of flesh on his arm indicates where the bullet entered his body. It ricocheted off a rib and lodged in his spine. Walid lost all sensation in his legs but his mother and sister were unable to help him move and he struggled to get to the physiotherapy centre.
“I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t walk ... the strength of my muscles was so weak,” said Walid.
Hisham put him through a series of stretches and rigorous muscle-building exercises on his bed, and then helped him strap callipers to his legs. With the help of mobility aids, he recently walked for the first time in three years.
Last month, he regained some sensation in his legs, perhaps 10 per cent. “I am, like, flying from happiness, ” he said.
Once patients are in treatment, their main hurdle is psychological, Hisham said.
Walid is highly motivated because he sees incremental progress. But the treatment needs to be continuous, and the future of the mobile service is precarious.
There is only one car to transport its four physiotherapists, who usually work alone to cope with the workload, and sometimes do not have enough time with each patient.
Funding is only guaranteed until March 2017. The IMC, which also oversees six other mobile units in southern Turkey, relies on donations and there is a growing crisis in international humanitarian funding. If the mobile service is closed, many of its patients will likely plateau in their recovery or even regress.
Basel El Rejjou, 27, a former farmer, was severely wounded in February 2013 while visiting his uncle in a village close to the city of Hama in central Syria.
He came to Turkey in May 2014, and after seeing the mobile physiotherapists, he can now move around his apartment with mobility aids, taking some pressure off his wife who has to look after their toddler daughter.
Basel has one simple wish for the future: “To walk. The most important thing is to heal. It’s a dream.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae