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The Muslim heroes of Manchester who rushed to help in the wake of the city's terror attack

Tawqeer Rashid, a vascular surgeon, was woken by a phone call on Monday night. “It was the hospital registrar. He said, ‘It’s chaos here, we’re calling everyone in’,” Rashid recalls. They didn’t know then what had happened — that a suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, had blown himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, killing 22 and seriously injuring 64.

The 44-year-old works at Manchester Royal Infirmary but was told to go instead to Salford Royal Hospital because it doesn’t have any surgeons with his specialism. When he arrived after 1am, he treated a woman with multiple injuries who was being taken to the operating theatre. “There was a problem with blood flow to her legs —that case ran through the night.” In the morning he saw a patient with a spinal injury and damaged blood vessels. He didn’t leave until 3pm.

“The injuries we saw were horrific,” Rashid says. “It hit home when I was removing the bolts from people. They were bigger than a 50p piece, not little bolts you use in your home — enormous ones. This is a level of depravity I cannot understand: how a human being would be capable of planning this if they knew what it would do to another human being. These bolts ripped through bodies, into the stomach, the legs, severing arteries, severing nerves, smashing bones and damaging spinal cords.”

Rashid’s particular area of medical expertise is foot problems in diabetes patients. “Sometimes it takes a team of 20 of us working for months to save a single toe. And yet someone — in a second — deigned to wipe out 22 people like this.”

Surgeon Tawqueer Rashid infant of the MRI Manchester rushed back to work in the wake of the attack (Zenpix Ltd)
Surgeon Tawqueer Rashid infant of the MRI Manchester rushed back to work in the wake of the attack (Zenpix Ltd)

What struck Rashid, though, was the extent to which everyone rushed to help. “I didn’t know my way around the hospital but — this will sound like the simplest thing — people helped me. I needed to make sure the right kind of CT scan was done for a patient, and someone walked me to the room. We operated through the night and staff brought us hot food and tea. Everyone was pulling together — every shade of religion, or none at all.”

That was echoed at the scene too, and in the aftermath. Sam Arshad, who owns Street Cars, gave free rides to survivors stranded at the arena. “I had left the office to go home and passed the arena on the way, where a police officer told me there had been an explosion,” he says. “I had a bad feeling, span my car around and went back to the office. The phones were going crazy, with panicked parents and children who wanted to get out of there.” Arshad contacted his drivers and decided they should take passengers home without charge. “The news had started coming in that there had been fatalities, so we got the gist of what was happening. We said we needed to pull together for the people of Manchester.”

Taxi driver Sam Arshad switched off his meter and drove injured concert goers away from the scene (Zenpix Ltd)
Taxi driver Sam Arshad switched off his meter and drove injured concert goers away from the scene (Zenpix Ltd)

Arshad notes how many people chipped in. “It wasn’t just us. People left their houses to come and help. It was hotels giving free rooms, restaurants giving free food. I saw people carrying crates of water bottles down the street.”

Gibran Awan, who runs his own jewellery business, had taken his two sisters, aged 14 and 15, to the concert. “They were meant to go with one of their friends but she pulled out at the last minute,” the 26-year-old says. “I’m so happy I ended up going with them so they weren’t alone.”

The concert, he adds, was joyful. “My sisters had planned their outfits a month in advance and played Ariana’s songs on the way there.” He says the explosion came mere seconds after the lights came up. “I thought it was a burst speaker, or something heavy dropping. I had never heard a bomb blast before.”

Gibran Awan was inside the arena when the blast happened (Zenpix Ltd)
Gibran Awan was inside the arena when the blast happened (Zenpix Ltd)

He was high up so had a vantage point over what was happening. “Parents were handing their children to strangers who were closer to an exit. It was like a scene from the Titanic. They were trying to save their children in case there was an attacker there still, or perhaps something was going to collapse. That’s how a lot of children became separated from their parents. Some other people were pushing people out of the way, clambering over them. I don’t think it was their fault — an instinct kicks in to save yourself.”

Awan didn’t want to be separated from his sisters so grabbed their hands and stood beside the railings, allowing others to pass. Once he found a quieter exit, he walked around the arena with his sisters, as his car was stuck behind a police cordon. “There were lots of young children there. You could hear a 10-year-old girl saying, ‘I don’t want to die today’.”

Awan still didn’t know what had happened. He saw a young man covered in blood and mistakenly assumed there had been a fight. “There were a lot of groups of teenage girls on their own, with no adults,” he adds. “And they were really scared, crying and trying to call their parents, but lots of phone calls weren’t going through as there were so many people trying to ring in the area.” He spoke to some girls, to try to offer comfort. “They couldn’t really speak — they were just crying.” Some girls were so frightened they just kept running. By the time they stopped, they weren’t in Manchester city centre any more.

Awan is a practising Muslim. “If you look at the perpetrator, he fits a similar description to me — a Muslim male in his twenties. I could have been killed — he wouldn’t have known I was a Muslim and spared me. There may be people out there who are ignorant — they think all Muslims are terrorists — so I think it’s important they know Muslims could have died too.”

Half a mile from Manchester Arena sits the Bukhara Restaurant on Cheetham Hill Road, which serves halal food. That night, two women walked in as the restaurant was closing. “They were distressed and were given water,” says Zaffer Khan, who does marketing for the restaurant. “They weren’t aware of what had happened, and neither was the proprietor. He only realised on his way home, listening to the radio. The following day we had a quick discussion and decided what we would do.”

The restaurant gave out food — a chicken biryani — to the emergency service workers. “We’re part of this community,” he adds. “We’re Muslim, but whether we were Muslim or non-Muslim, we would have done this. We wanted to give something back.”

Othman Moqbel, chief executive of the Muslim charity Human Appeal, has launched an appeal for the victims and their families. It has raised almost £15,000. “We do a lot here in Manchester: feeding the homeless, food banks, so on Tuesday morning we launched this campaign,” Moqbel says. “We — from all different backgrounds, faiths, religions, ethnicities — must stand united against anyone who wants to divide us. Manchester is a peaceful, neighbourly city.”

He adds that, during Ramadan, non-Muslim neighbours brought him food when his wife was away so he had company for iftar, the evening meal to break the fast. At Christmas, he and his wife visit them. “You cannot blame a religion for crazy people who do this,” he says. “We are all praying for the victims and their families.”

Othman Moqbel has launched an appeal for the victims and their families (Andrew Parsons / i-Images)
Othman Moqbel has launched an appeal for the victims and their families (Andrew Parsons / i-Images)

Rashid is a Muslim too. “These people claim to be my co-religionists,” he says. “But if they want to make it a battle of them and us, the ‘them’ is them and the ‘us’ is all the rest of us. I know there’s the English Defence League and the Katie Hopkinses of this world who will never warm to people like me but this is a time when we stand together as one. It’s been the same thing throughout the ages — if people have a political agenda they will slap religion on it to justify their ends.”

In the aftermath of the atrocity, arsonists attacked a Manchester mosque. Awan reveals that a friend of his mother was spat on in Greggs the following day. “I was a potential victim that night and the next day I could have been another type of victim, of a different kind of violence,” he adds.

“We cannot stop people reacting negatively,” Moqbel says. “But that is just a few individuals. People have come together this week and supported one another. Any kind of reaction should be a positive one — a negative reaction just fuels the problem. We stand together — for the children and for the great city of Manchester.”

@RosamundUrwin

The crowdfunding campaign for victims and their families: mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/muslimsformanchester