India

HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad woman, Syeda Lulu Minhaj Zaidi, who went to the US to pursue a master's degree and was found dishevelled, homeless and starving on the streets of Chicago has briefly taken shelter at a neighbourhood family, who hail from Hyderabad, after critical injuries to her leg and shoulders and acute menstrual bleeding.Between intermittent spells of incoherence and amnesia, she displays flashes of rationale and clarity in thought, but refuses to allow anyone to venture close as she wallows on the streets and picks food offered to her from a distance.

"She was pleading for 'dahi' and 'palak' and has moved to the home of a Hyderabadi woman in Chicago, Sajida Begum, after her condition deteriorated on Tuesday.

She has till now refused to move permanently to a shelter home or the embassy," a social activist in Chicago, Syed Mukaram, told TOI on phone.Nobody, however, could confirm if she met with an accident that caused severe injuries even as she wobbles on a walker provided by an onlooker and is mostly spotted near the Weston Grand Avenue police station, St Francis Evanston Hospital or in the proximity of a church.Her mother Syeda Wahaj Fatima, 65, is inconsolable.

In an exclusive chat with TOI, Fatima said, "She rose from the debris of a harsh night after she was divorced within six months of her marriage.

She was barely 26 years of age then.

The tumult in her marriage left deep scars and she refused to tie the knot again and delved into academics.

She wanted to leave behind traumatic memories of Hyderabad and build a new life in the US.

But my little girl is in so much agony and I cannot fathom how she's surviving alone on the dark, dangerous streets.

She wouldn't even sleep alone at our own home in Moula Ali and would slip into my room at night.

When she was unreachable for two long months, I would frequent the US consulate in Nanakramguda and plead with officials to help find her, but there was no succour.

The nightmare was agonising till MBT spokesperson Amjad Ullah Khan chanced upon a stray video from a Hyderabadi in Chicago and tweeted officials in Delhi and the US.

The response was swift.

Khan sahab has been our guardian angel, the prime mover and our support.

I want to bring my daughter home and appeal to the US consulate to expedite my visa." With her husband bed-ridden and her home in Moula Ali usurped by land sharks, she's staying with her sister, Mubashra Fatima, in Old City's Noor Khan Bazaar.

"I want Mubashra to accompany me to the US.

My health too is sinking since the tragic turn of events," she says.

But what triggered the emotional relapse? Was it just the mugging incident on Chicago streets when she was robbed of her bag containing certificates of her degrees along with her cellphone? Or did she suffer an agonising assault? Her mother says "Lulu was scheduled to complete her master's programme from Trine University, Detroit, in September.

She was returning from the campus after paying her exam fees, when she was mugged on April 26.

I think her American dream crashed and she thought she lost everything she worked for all these years.

She suffers from a guilt that gnaws at her heart.

When I first spoke to her on a video call, she couldn't recognise me briefly and then she wept inconsolably."While Hyderabadi Good Samaritans in Chicago are sponsoring Syeda Wahaj Fatima's to-and-fro flight tickets, visa processing fee and her stay in the US, how will her daughter be brought home on a long flight? No wonder, there's always a long pause and an incoherent turn of phrase, every time Lulu Minhaj Zaidi is asked if she wants to return to Hyderabad.





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