JEDDAH, 12 July — Every time middle-aged Saudi professional Shogi Khayat gets in or out of his Volkswagen, he attracts the attention of onlookers and passersby.
There is nothing strange about him. What raises the public’s curiosity is that he is able to conduct himself independently with the help of a folding wheelchair.
"This has been happening for the past 10 years, since I suffered a spinal cord injury that disabled me below the waist. People wonder how I’m able to get into my car and drive all by myself without any help.
"What they don’t understand is whatever your disability, you can overcome it if you have the determination to lead a normal life," Khayat told Arab News.
"It was a black day in my life," he said, referring to the accident. "I was heading for Makkah to visit my brother, who had been hospitalized. I was driving along Jeddah-Makkah Expressway and was about 10km away from the holy city when my car axle broke and the vehicle was grounded with a thud. My spinal chord was broken and I was rushed to hospital."
At that time Khayat’s second child, a girl, was a month old. He has a son, Sari, who is now 13. Khayat was working in Samarec (Petromin), now Saudi Aramco, as a refinery system manager. Three months of hospitalization and rehabilitation in the Kingdom did not result in a great improvement in his health, so he spent the next two and a half months in Houston, Texas, under American specialists.
He returned home, resumed normal office work, and the company relocated him for a year to Houston (where Saudi Aramco has an office).
On his return, he was assigned a project in the UK for a year and a half as a project engineer. "The time I spent in the US and the UK was immensely educational for me. It’s amazing... especially the kind of facilities they provide for the handicapped.
Whether at office buildings, hospitals, schools, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls or entertainment centers, they provide ramps for the disabled. There are demarcated parking areas and specially built washroom facilities for such people. Restaurants provide tables and chairs suitable to their needs. These are the things that we lack here in Saudi Arabia," he complains.
Khayat, who has now retired from Saudi Aramco, keeps himself busy by devoting time to a project with the main purpose of creating more social awareness about the handicapped here in the Kingdom.
"Most of the people here who become disabled spend the rest of their life in self-pity and shun public life. The aim of my project is to assist all such people in leading a normal life," says Khayat.
"If the handicapped lead normal lives by putting their disabilities in the background, society will welcome them. But if they behave like they are different from normal people, they themselves will suffer. The logo for the project is ‘My Friends Act’, based on the American Disabilities Act that fights for the rights of the handicapped," Khayat says.
What is of urgent need, according to Khayat, is legislation in the Kingdom that will force builders to meet the needs of the handicapped by providing various facilities for easy accessibility and movement.
At the official level, rehabilitation centers have been established where education programs are conducted for the handicapped. But a rehabilitation center is not what he is aiming at. "Merely remaining within the four walls of a rehabilitation center will not help the handicapped lead a normal life. He should be able to move about on his own if possible. So what is lacking is a sustained program to create an environment-friendly atmosphere.
What Khayat means is that the municipality make it mandatory for every builder of a new school, hospital, office, shopping mall or a residential complex to take care of the needs of the handicapped.
"Every building, government or private, should be accessible to the handicapped without help or external support. If I want to go to, say, the Passport Office, I should be able to move about the premises in my wheel chair.
"So it’s a tremendous responsibility on the part of official agencies to help create an atmosphere that is environment-friendly for the handicapped," Khayat says.
