Thiruvananthapuram: Merina Jose still has nightmares. The unsettling sights of guns pointed to her head and the deafening sounds of grenades razing an entire neighborhood are fresh in her memories. The Kerala nurse whose ordeal in war-torn Iraq in 2014 inspired the acclaimed movie, ‘Take Off’, has changed her vocation forever. She is running a bakery in her hometown Pala along with her husband.
In Thiruvananthapuram as a special invitee to the Loka Kerala Sabha, an official platform of the Malayali diaspora, Jose said that she was still living with the trauma of Iraq. She could not even talk to anyone immediately after returning from Iraq. “I wanted to be alone. It took me days to come back to my normal self,” she said.
“A flash pierced your eyes just before a bomb went off. The next moment you see a building in flames. I was seeing that light for days after my return from Iraq.”
Jose and many of her colleagues quit the nursing profession after the traumatic experience. Half of them in the group returned to jobs in Bahrain and other countries. Jose was older than them and lacked a BSc certificate.
The government had promised to rehabilitate the evacuated nurses but Jose is yet to hear of it. She is not complaining though. “This is my rebirth. I owe it to the prayers of my family,” she said. Now she is happy being with her children.
Actress Parvathy had a long chat with Jose before she set out to act the part in the biographical movie. The movie bagged Parvathy an award at the International Film Festival of India.
Jose said that they were not in a position to just flee their jobs. “When you tell a nurse in a conflict situation to come back home, they would ask you what options do they have at home,” Jose said. “They would have taken huge loans for their studies. What can you tell them?” she asked.
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