Dubai: A violent fall while riding a horse is only a temporary break from writing poetry for a 13-year-old Canadian student in Dubai.
The young published poet, Gulmehek Khan, suffered a severe concussion on April 13, which has left her with partial memory loss. However, this won’t be stopping her from doing what she loves, she told Gulf News three weeks after the unfortunate event.
The grade 7 student of the Nord Anglia International School, who has been featured in Gulf News twice for publishing her first poetry book at the age of 11 and for leading a group of schoolchildren on a mission to spread Christmas cheer in a Dubai community, is making her daily progress in recovery with so much perseverance, her mother Naureen Khan said.
“When she fell off the horse, the doctor said it will take her one year to recover, but she was the one to tell me not to worry and that we are fighters. I have never seen any child or adult with so much of positive attitude in life,” said Naureen, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.
Recalling the accident, Naureen said that her daughter was riding before the horse became hostile, throwing Gulmehek off to the ground where she fell unconscious.
“She was riding her usual horse which was supposed to be very friendly and docile, but suddenly the horse started bucking and she could no longer control it. The good thing she did was that she held the reins tightly, so the fall was not so strong and did not result in a fracture, but she became unconscious for a few minutes,” said Naureen.
For quite sometime, Gulmehek could not recognise her own father. “It was a case of extreme severity concussion. There was complete memory loss of events, she woke up the next morning remembering things she had to do from three years ago. Her whole memory was mixed up. She couldn’t remember the day or what happened. Even now, she is struggling with her vocabulary,” said Naureen, as she held her tears up.
When Gulmehek spoke to Gulf News, she said she would never quit doing what she is most passionate about, including horse riding. “In one or two months from now, I want to start writing poetry again, once I feel better. It’s going to be exciting after what I have experienced from concussion. I might write about what happened to me and how important it is to stay healthy,” she said.
“Nothing will stop me from doing what I love, and from riding the same horse,” said Gulmehek, who is also determined to give her final exams in June.
Naureen said doctors have only allowed Gulmehek to do 15 minutes of work in an hour and have asked her to get complete rest. “She resumed school this week and is getting lots of support from her teachers and friends. She refuses to see anything as a difficulty, even though she is finding it challenging to do some of her school work. Anything that requires a lot of mental energy is making her dizzy or causing a blackout.”
Gulmehek became among the youngest published poets in the world after Motivate Publishing published her first collection of 30 poems in a book called Flowers. The young girl, who began writing poetry at the age of seven, likes to discuss profound issues in her poems — from bullying, running after success, to even recent tragic world events that have claimed the lives of innocent people.
“Every day, Gulmehek goes around with the phrase ‘happy living, happy today’. Knowing her, she has always come back stronger. I hope it would happen this time too,” Naureen said.
