Acceptance and faith: how master’s student Saad Naveed rebuilt his life after tragedy

The story of Saad Naveed (25) is a remarkable one of courage, acceptance and faith. From a childhood living in Botswana to being shot in Pakistan and having his leg amputated, to his ongoing voyage of becoming a biomedical engineer, Saad teaches us about feeling connected to a greater purpose and the importance of community ties. 
  
Born and raised in Botswana to Pakistani parents who had settled there in 1994, master’s student Saad’s upbringing was shaped by a father who works tirelessly as a pharmacist and a mother, an economics graduate now working as a housewife, who is the powerful, nurturing force that raised him and his two younger sisters to be who they are today.  
  
Saad moved to Cape Town in February 2018, his first time living independently, to commence his mechanical and mechatronic engineering degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This new season of life was characterised by challenge and friendship: mechanical and mechatronic engineering was a demanding yet rewarding programme and he developed a camaraderie with his classmates, spending many hours chatting, laughing, studying together and exchanging notes. He cherished his new-found support structure.  
  
However, at the end of his first year, calamity struck. While on a visit to Pakistan in December 2018, two men attempted to mug him. The situation came to a head when he resisted and ended up getting shot four times: once in his leg, once in his back (which damaged his kidney, spleen and pancreas) and twice in his left arm. He was rushed to hospital in Pakistan and had extensive surgery performed on him.  
  
The leg amputation, he says, was in fact performed while he was unconscious as it was an emergency.  
 
“When the nurse came in to change my wound dressing, that's when she removed the blanket, and I saw my leg was amputated. It was a shock initially. For like a good 10 minutes I was shocked. But I calmed myself down and thought that Allah (God) has written whatever is meant to happen and I can't really go back and change what's done. So, I thought about how best to approach things moving forward and that was my start.” 
  
This profound courage and spirituality, along with an ocean of support from his family and friends, is what contributed to him regaining his strength and mobility. His convalescence took a total of six months: three spent in a hospital in Pakistan and three spent at home in Botswana. He returned to UCT in the second semester of his second year. 
  
Through sheer determination and an enthusiasm for physics, coding and design, Saad completed his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering only one year after he was initially expected to graduate — a remarkable feat. He is currently in his second year of a master’s in biomedical engineering, a field that applies principles of medicine, engineering and biology to develop devices to help diagnoses and prognoses for people. 
  
For his master’s project, he is working on a device that is related to lower-limb amputees. He explains that when people undergo amputation, lower-limb amputation, they lose the limb — the physical support — as well as a sense of proprioception [the body’s ability to sense location, movement and action].  
 
“If you were to close your eyes right now, without even looking at your leg, you know where it is. But when a person undergoes amputation, they lose that ability to know where their limb is.” 
 
Therefore, people with prosthetic legs, while able to walk, are not conscious of where their leg is, which subjects them to a higher risk of falling and injury. Saad’s device is an attachment to an existing prosthetic leg, which sends vibrations to the person telling them where the different parts of their limb and foot are — as well as warning them of nearby objects — without them having to look down at their limb.   
 
When asked if his own injury was the inspiration for inventing a device to aid patients with prosthetic legs, he says that it is something he frequently muses about — the coincidence of learning about biomedical engineering as a field, his conflicting desires over whether to be a doctor or an engineer and the convergence of these with his own situation as an amputee.  
 
“When I was an undergrad, I didn't consider it much,” he says, explaining that he initially heard about biomedical engineering in his first year from a lecturer, Malebogo Ngoepe, who had visited the class to speak about it. 
 
“Before that, I had no idea what it was. And before that [studying engineering], I actually wanted to be a doctor, too, to do medicine. But I was conflicted whether I should do medicine or engineering.” 
  
However, after the traumatic incident in Pakistan, it dawned on him that biomedical engineering could be an invaluable career avenue as he was passionate about constructing and designing things. And if he could design things in the context of medicine – a field he had always been eager about - it would open the doors for profoundly meaningful work.  
 
Apart from his haptic feedback device, he is working on a cane for blind people, designed to restore independence to them. The cane guides the person through their daily journey in every area of their life, from navigating outdoor paths to aisles in a grocery store.  
 
He light-heartedly remarks that his prosthetist, Chris Harper, still struggles to fathom how he was able to accept his setback and altered life circumstances so quickly. But Saad’s story demonstrates that in times of crisis, the best of humanity shows up. He credits his parents, sisters, extended family and friends — along with his strong faith and spirituality — for providing him with a consolation and hope he never knew was possible.