BAQUBA: Twelve-year-old Iraqi Nejla Imad holds a white table tennis ball against her bat with her thumb, flicks it into the air and sends it bouncing over the net. She does this with her left hand while sitting in a wheelchair: Imad, like tens of thousands of Iraqis, is a victim of the bombs that have terrorised the country for well over a decade.
A roadside bomb ripped into her family’s car in Baquba, a city northeast of Baghdad, when she was just three years old, taking much of her right leg, part of her left and her right forearm. Despite these injuries, she took up table tennis when she was four and is now a rising Paralympic star. “Table tennis... has begun to change my life for the better,” says Imad, who wears a green jersey with her country’s flag on the front and “Iraq” written across the back.
“My self-confidence is increasing day after day.” The kindness she has been shown has also helped her deal with the pain of her injuries. “I see the people around me show sympathy to me, and their readiness to help me...and this is something important that greatly eased the physical and psychological pain after I became handicapped,” Imad says.
Imad trains in Baquba three times a week and also journeys to Baghdad twice a week to practise with the national under-16 Paralympic team. Her coach Hossam Hussein says that Imad won medals in several local competitions, drawing the attention of the National Paralympic Committee, which invited her to join the Iraqi under-16 team.
“Nejla is one of the most skilled players on the team. She has great skills and great confidence in herself,” Hussein says. In 2015, Imad was placed second in the Iraqi championships for disabled players under age 16, and also won silver at the Arab championships the same year.