‘I count their breaths’: A homeless mother protects her children in Delhi

Abida, 40, sits on a mat with her three children under a flyover in Delhi. Almost every morning, she walks to the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, a bustling Sufi shrine, to ask strangers for food or money, finding people there kinder than on the main road. Throughout the day and night, she keeps her children close [Suhail Bhat/Al Jazeera]Abida, 40, sits on a mat with her three children under a flyover in Delhi. Almost every morning, she walks to the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, a bustling Sufi shrine, to ask strangers for food or money, finding people there kinder than on the main road. Throughout the day and night, she keeps her children close [Suhail Bhat/Al Jazeera]Nights are the hardest. Abida sleeps semi-upright, the bulky bag under her head, holding Soni against her chest, five-year-old Hamir and seven-year-old Roshni curled around them. “I count their breaths,” she whispers. “I’m always afraid someone might take them away.”About 5am on a cold November morning in 2023, Abida and her children were sleeping, wrapped in a thin blanket, when a speeding car crashed into them.“When I opened my eyes, everything was dust, blood and screaming,” she says. “My two children, Sonia and Amir, were crushed to death in front of me.”The bodies of five-year-old Sonia and seven-year-old Amir were trapped beneath the vehicle. “I collected their pieces with my own hands,” she says, pressing her hand to her forehead as if trying to push the memory away. “I screamed for help, but it came too late.”Abida remembers standing frozen in place, blood on her hands, her body shaking. “I just kept looking at them, thinking maybe they were breathing,” she recalls quietly. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they will wake up.”Abida later heard from bystanders and police officers that the five people inside the car had been drinking. “People told me the smell of alcohol was strong,” she says quietly. “Maybe that’s why they lost control.”Abida followed the ambulance in an autorickshaw to the hospital morgue. She waited silently for hours to see her children one last time. Then she left, knowing she had no place to bury her children. “I still hear that sound every night, the crash, the screams,” she adds quietly, holding Soni close to her chest.“They used to fall asleep holding my fingers in my lap,” she recalls, steadying her breath and looking at her hands.“Since that day, I feel depressed, as if a part of my body was taken away.”Abida and her family continue to live on the same pavement where her children were killed because they have nowhere else to go.“What home do we have?” she asks. “We have no land in the village, no job here. If we move, the police chase us away. This road is the only place where we are not pushed.”