Shamshada was engrossed in conversation after lunch at her cousins’ house in 2016, when, all of a sudden, she thought the room was filling with smoke.
The 40-year-old stood up and screamed: “There’s a fire in this room!” As her relatives tried to pacify her, she ran outside, barefoot. It was a panic attack.
Panic attacks have been part of her life ever since. This first instance was both “painful” and “embarrassing”. “I don’t know what happened to me. But I could see fire and I could feel it in my body,” Shamshada said.
