BANNU: Mamoor Khan’s family members were all awaiting his homecoming to Mir Ali in Pakistan’s north. When his body arrived from the UAE, days before the planned reunion, all their hopes were shattered, leaving them numbed by shock and grief.
Khan and two Indian nationals were killed when drone and missile strikes by Houthi rebels in Yemen hit fuel trucks near storage facilities of state oil giant ADNOC in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 17. Khan was working as a driver with an ADNOC contractor.
“We were preparing for his homecoming,” Khan’s younger brother, Manzoor Ahmad, told Arab News. “But we received his dead body instead.”
Khan, 49, is survived by his parents, wife and eight children, who were waiting to see him as he promised to come home for a vacation in late January.
His second brother, Javed Khan, also a driver in the UAE, was the first to learn about his death.
An ADNOC employee called him to say Khan suffered injuries and was at a hospital in Abu Dhabi.
An undated photo of Mamoor Khan, a Pakistani worker from North Waziristan who was killed in a Houthi attack on the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 17, 2022. (Photo courtesy: Mamoor Khan's family)
“I still didn’t know what had happened, but the site where my brother working was on fire,” he said. “I asked the caller to tell me clearly if my brother had died. The caller replied in a choked voice, ‘yes,’ and that his dead body was in the hospital.”
Khan was the main support of his whole family in North Waziristan, an impoverished tribal district on the Pakistani-Afghan border, where years of militancy and security operations have thwarted social and economic development.
A week after the funeral, his father, who sent him to the UAE over two decades ago to find a better way to survive, told Arab News he is still unable to talk about the loss.
“I was feeling like I’m stepping over raging fire when I received the news about my son’s death,” he said.
Khan’s mother has been on tranquilizers ever since.
Everyone believed he would be safe.
Yasir Ahmad, son of Mamoor Khan, prays at his father's grave in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, Pakistan on Jan. 24, 2022. (Photo courtesy: Mamoor Khan's family)
“At home, we suffered a lot due to militancy, and when Khan left for the UAE, we were sure that he would enjoy a safe life there,” Khan’s neighbor and friend Munawar Shah Dawar said. “His death left us devastated, as he fell prey to a terrorist attack there too.”
Yasir Ahmad, Khan’s eldest son, said he and his father had many plans for the family’s future and would often discuss them over the phone. One of them was to materialize later this month, when Khan would come home to set up a small business that would later allow him to return for good.
Besides homecoming, the most important thing for him was that his younger children get an education, which he asked Ahmad to oversee.
“My father wanted my younger brother to become a doctor, so that he could come back and spend the rest of his life with us,” he said.
“We’ve nothing left now, and even the education of my brothers would suffer because I’m a daily wage laborer, earning 600 rupees ($3) daily, which isn’t enough.”
Khan’s remains were repatriated to Pakistan and buried on Jan. 20.
Mustafa Haider, director general of the welfare division at the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, told Arab News death benefits would be paid to the family and the foundation was also considering financial support from its own funds.
