ISLAMABAD: A Saudi-born Pakistani honored by Italian authorities this week for rescuing two children from a violent attacker despite having undergone heart surgery just three months earlier said on Saturday the courage to act came from his mother’s teachings.
Naveed Aslam, a 39-year-old delivery courier living in the northern Italian city of Brescia, was sitting with his family in a park on June 19 when a man under house arrest and suffering a drug-induced psychiatric episode attacked nearby children.
The 29-year-old Nigerian man first grabbed a four-year-old Egyptian boy by the neck, lifting him into the air along with his bicycle. Aslam rushed to rescue the child and pushed the attacker back. The man momentarily retreated, sitting on the concrete and punching the ground until his fists bled.
Moments later, the attacker lunged at a seven-year-old boy, knocking him to the ground and twisting his arm. Aslam rushed to intervene as his wife tried to hold him back, fearing for his life because he had been fitted with a cardiac pacemaker just three months earlier after a sudden drop in blood pressure caused him to lose consciousness for nearly two hours.
“I told her, ‘Life and death are in Allah’s hands. Today he is doing this to someone else’s children. Tomorrow he could have grabbed mine, and then no one would come to save them,’” Aslam told Arab News over the phone.
The attacker threatened to slit Aslam’s throat before the struggle began, he said.
Aslam managed to wrestle him to the ground and held him there for about 20 minutes until police arrived, absorbing punches and elbow strikes to his chest as the suspect repeatedly tried to break free.
Aslam said no onlookers came to help, and he even had to assist police officers in handcuffing the attacker and placing him in the patrol vehicle.
“If anyone is in trouble, if anyone is facing a problem or is poor, you must help ... This is what my mother taught me,” Aslam said, crediting his upbringing for his split-second decision to act.
Following the rescue, hospital scans revealed two large bruises on the left side of Aslam’s chest, though doctors found no damage to his pacemaker.
After four hours of medical tests, he took the medical report to the police station to help finalize the criminal case, leaving at 4 a.m. before reporting for his courier shift just an hour later.
On Friday, Brescia Mayor Laura Castelletti presented Aslam with a civic plaque “for his heartfelt and courageous gesture” during a ceremony at Palazzo Loggia.
“We thank Aslam,” Castelletti said, according to Italian newspaper Il Giorno, “for his act of courage.”
“He has recently started the process for citizenship, but one is also a citizen because they possess a sense of civic duty and belonging,” she said, informing Aslam that his pending citizenship application would be expedited.
Instead of waiting another two years, Aslam said he was given an appointment for next Friday to complete the citizenship process.
Aslam, who spent the first 26 years of his life in Riyadh before moving to Pakistan and later settling in Italy seven years ago, said making his mother proud mattered more to him than the public recognition or the prospect of obtaining Italian citizenship.
“Her prayers and the values she gave me are the reason I was able to do this,” he told the gathering, which his mother watched virtually from Gujrat, Pakistan.
“I have made my mother’s and father’s names shine with pride,” he added.
