Samira Omar was 17 when four classmates, whom she believed to be her friends, beat her and doused her with boiling water. The physical pain is immense, as is the psychological pain. "I remember looking in the mirror and screaming 'help' and seeing the torn skin hanging down my face," she says.
Fortunately, the young woman hears about Basma Hameed, a Canadian tattoo artist specializing in burn repair. And there is relief. Thanks to her, Samira regains her skin color. A woman's face. Like Samira, women from all over the world now flock to the office of this expert, herself seriously burned.
Basma Hameed does not do this job by chance. When she was two years old, this Iraqi-born accidentally dropped a pan of boiling oil on her face. Disfigured, she underwent more than 100 painful operations, from cosmetic surgery to laser treatments. In vain:half of his face remained red.
More and more, the doctors told him that there was nothing more to be done. “But I felt like there were other solutions. So, I studied the subject, I went to school. Then I discovered the magic of tattooing, by having an eyebrow drawn (to replace the burned one). So why not color my skin too, I wondered,” she says.
Basma before and after his tattoos
So Basma started on her own face, slowly, gently, to be sure to get the desired result. Quickly, she helped thousands of other women to give them a face, an identity. And two years later, she's become a pro at easy reconstruction.
A beautiful story, very inspiring.
>basmahameed.com
