We Did it for Aafia

By Nadrat Siddique

Training for a marathon (26.2 mile race) is a months-long process, very different from casual running for fitness.

In the lengthy preparation for a marathon, many things can happen to derail one’s training:  With 8 weeks left before the 2017 Boston Marathon (held in April), I developed a looming shin splint. I addressed it immediately, switching over to walking and low impact workouts at the gym for about three weeks.

Then, with 7 weeks left before Boston, I woke up one morning with shingles (I had chicken pox as a child). This lasted about two weeks.

Then, about 5 weeks before the marathon, my 26-year old stepbrother passed away. His sudden and tragic death deeply affected the family, and for me, brought back many memories of the death of my child, Hanzela, who died a SIDS death in his second month. At that point, I decided I really did not feel up to running Boston, either mentally or physically.

A week passed, then two, and I saw the mother of my dead stepbrother (my stepmum) heroically carrying on the motions of life, despite the passing of her beloved son, and I toyed again with the idea of running the illustrious marathon.

At this point, I’d run 31 prior marathons, and qualified for Boston many times. At the risk of sounding cocky, I had little to prove! The original—really the only—reason I’d wanted to run the race was to bring attention to the plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist nabbed in a joint U.S./Pakistani operation in Pakistan, raped and tortured by her captors, and ultimately sentenced to 86-years by a kangaroo court for a crime she clearly could not have committed. It particularly sickened me that neither the Pakistani government, nor any of the major Muslim organizations in the U.S. were actively seeking her release from what was a clearly politically-motivated and flagrantly unjust imprisonment. If I ran the Boston Marathon—held in the city where Aafia, a top scholar at MIT and Brandeis University—had excelled both scholastically and spiritually—it would have to be in her name. Once again thoughts of running Boston entered my head.

There were only two weeks left before the Boston Marathon when a tiny lump I’d had for three years on the side of my neck suddenly became inflamed. It turned out to be an inclusion cyst which developed an abscess. I tried ignoring it until after the marathon, but it only got larger and more inflamed. Then on Monday of the week prior to the marathon, I had a minor surgery for the cyst. Three days later (Thursday), I did a 15-mile run on a favorite tree-lined trail, with the gash on the side of my neck from the surgery, to see if I was up to the task of a marathon. I felt fine afterwards, and was egged on further to attain the seemingly unattainable.

On Saturday, I jumped in my car, packing little but my marathon outfit and some food items (I am a picky eater), and took off for Boston, arriving around 1:00 AM. The next day was Sunday, and I took the Boston subway to the mandatory bib number pickup at the John Hynes Convention Center, prayed a lot, and did little else.

Then, on Monday—Patriots Day in Boston—I ran the Boston Marathon wearing my long-sleeved black “Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” tee (prepared for me by brothers from Masjid Al-Islam in SE Washington, DC). I was the only Pakistani woman in the field of approximately 37,000 runners, and finished the very hilly course in 4 hours 4 minutes, despite high temperatures during the mid-afternoon race (Marathons are ordinarily held in the early morning to decrease the possibility of heat injury among the athletes. But in Boston, the runners in my “wave” did not start running until about 11:00 AM, and we did not finish until about 3:00 PM. I saw many runners being carried off in stretchers, likely as a result of the very warm weather. According to the organizers’ website, 810 people were unable to finish the race; the Boston Globe reported that 2,000 required medical treatment during or after the race.)

About an hour after finishing the race, I was in my car, and on the way back to Maryland, composing letters to the Boston Globe on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in my head as I drove. I reached Maryland safely at 3:00 AM. God is Great.