Fauzia Mazhar embraces humour after near-fatal crash
A year and a half ago, Fauzia Mazhar was seriously injured in a collision in Dubai.
Now, she’s thinking about a second career as a standup comedian.
But she can’t stand up, because her injuries were so serious, she is now in a wheelchair.
That won’t stop her.
“I’m taking big humour to all my interactions — even staff meetings!” the founder and executive director of the Coalition of Muslim Women Kitchener-Waterloo said last week during a talk at the Kitchener Public Library.
The sympathetic audience of about 70 people laughed warmly.
Yet, like so much of standup humour, the jokes leave a bitter aftertaste.
Mazhar described being in rehabilitation and being asked if she could pick something up off the floor while in the wheelchair.
Why should she try to do that, when she can just call one of her children to get it, she mused.
“I don’t have to do it!” she said. “I’ve done all my life for these children, it’s their time to return the favour.”
And she’s not worried about prepaying her funeral, either. Her kids can pay. “Why give them free passes all their life?”
It was funny in the moment, partly because it seemed so miraculous that this woman who has achieved so much, who has faced down Islamophobia, white supremacy, Stage 3 breast cancer and now a neardeath experience, is able to crack a joke at all.
And it was also bitter, because it was at precisely the moment she was trying to let go and enjoy herself, riding a quad bike on some sand dunes in the desert, that she crashed.
Mazhar is a household name in many circles here. She arrived from Pakistan in 2000, operated a driving school, raised children, taught a course in community engagement at Conestoga College. She was a founder and the chair of the Coalition of Muslim Women K-W, which confronts anti-Muslim stereotypes and builds skills and confidence in women. The group started with 12 women. It now is a huge presence in this community’s life. Mazhar built it.
Like many people who give their lives to making society a better place by building up the less privileged, Mazhar put herself last. She didn’t make enough time in her own life to have fun.
In 2018, “I was really struggling with these things,” she told interviewer Liz Monteiro, at the talk, which was hosted by the YW Kitchener-Waterloo.
“Why can’t I just have a regular life, just have parties and stuff like that? Why am I always busy in serious work?” she said.
“I felt I’d left something behind me — a sense of adventure, and fun.”
Then, late in 2019, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Stage 3 breast cancer.
It took until 2022 for her to recover. By then, “I felt very good. I was ready to get back to normal,” she said.
She had planned a summer trip to Pakistan for a family wedding, and decided to stop first in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for a little down time.
Dubai has set itself up as a tourist destination with lots of attractions. Mazhar and her daughter thought it would be enjoyable to go on a desert safari.
She didn’t know anything about quad bikes and “I really didn’t think it was a risky activity,” she said.
With her daughter on the back, Mazhar drove around among the sand dunes for about 40 minutes. She was loving every second, and wanting more.
“I was having the best time in my life,” she said. “You’re high on something. I was really high. I saw a higher sand dune and I said: ‘Let’s go there.’ ”
But something happened as she went up the dune. “I lost judgment of where I was,” she said.
Her daughter jumped off. Mazhar went through a fence and “I hit the pole,” she said.
The impact caused life-threatening injuries to her head and spinal cord, and she stayed in the U.A.E. in hospital for five weeks before she could be transported back to Canada. For the first few days, doctors did not think she would survive.
Mazhar didn’t remember the moment of impact or the first 10 days after the crash. Yet she was told that when she regained consciousness, she didn’t ask any questions about why she was in the hospital or why her family was around her.
The community rallied around her, with $96,000 raised by almost 800 people in a GoFundMe campaign.
Part of the money was used to pay for an elevator to be installed in her home so she could continue to live there in her wheelchair.
She is incredibly grateful for the love and support. But still, recovery has been really difficult. Not only physically, but also because it is a reminder of how vulnerable she still is.
She knows she has to fight for respect. She’s already a woman, a person of colour, wearing a hijab, and speaking with an accent. Now, she’s in a wheelchair, too, which adds to the difficulty of advocating for herself.
“People didn’t expect that to come from a person like me.”
She sees that people look at her and don’t think she is well educated, articulate or powerful. She struggles to keep her emotions in check, stay calm and not raise her voice when someone acts patronizingly toward her. Because if she does lose control and gets angry, “I’m going to lose, not them,” she said.
An audience member asked her if she might start advocating for people in wheelchairs. The answer was honest and a little surprising.
“I don’t think I’m at a place where I really can do it,” Mazhar said.
“I still have a lot of resentment, anger, frustration. For now, I feel like there’s a lot on my plate. Maybe at some point. Not now.”
What does help her is rest, lots of quiet time, sleep, and working with her beloved coalition, where she is taking time for succession planning so that its work can continue without her.
She loves the coalition like a fifth child, she said. And then with a smile she shared that her children think the coalition is “my most favourite child.”
It’s just a flicker of humour. Enough, for now.