Conjoined sisters given a one-in-a-million chance of survival have beaten the odds to become happy, healthy 16-year-olds.
And now bright A* students Zainab and Jannat Rahman hope to pursue their dream careers at Oxbridge universities.
The girls were born as one, conjoined from chest to abdomen, sharing one liver.
And it took a risky pioneering operation to separate them at six weeks old – with doctors giving them only a million to one chance of survival.
Yet while surgical skill managed to physically part the girls, their unbreakable emotional bond has always kept them firmly together.
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And it’s meant they have only ever spent ONE NIGHT apart.
But Zainab and Jannat have now celebrated their 16th birthday, both knowing that in a couple of years that could change.
Zainab is aiming for Cambridge en route to achieving her ambition of being a pediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where their lives were saved.
Jannat is studying three languages and wants to go to Oxford. She plans to become a lawyer and live in France.
Zainab said: “Maybe it will be hard, but I guess we have to be independent at some point.”
Jannat adds: “People do ask us, ‘Will you be OK?’ I think we will. As we’ve got older we’ve got more confident.”
Yet the parents who have watched their little wonders grow up reckon wherever they are, they’ll never be apart.
Dad Luther, 42, said: “I laugh when I hear them say that as I know they will end up in the same place. So I’m not concerned.
“Even though they try so hard to be different from each other, they end up doing the same. I strongly believe that’s because they were conjoined.
“When they were younger they would sit across a room and smile at each other and laugh before they could even talk. They’ve always had a deep connection.”
Mum Nipa, 36, spoke of her pride at seeing the girls she once feared might not live turn 16.
She said: “It’s unreal. It feels like yesterday they were babies. They’re thriving and I’m so proud.”
Zainab and Jannat were born at Homerton Hospital, East London, in 2002, weighing 6lbs together and sharing a liver – the only organ in the human body that can regenerate.
Zainab was healthiest and had 60 percent of the liver while Jannat was suffering from a hole in her heart.
The prognosis for their survival was not good – but renowned Great Ormond Street surgeons Prof Lewis Spitz and Edward Keily prepared for the op just six weeks after their birth.
Luther said: “The day they took them for the operation I held them and I was crying. My tears fell on to Jannat’s face and she just smiled at me. That smile, I tell her every day, said, ‘Don’t worry I’m coming back’.”
And back they came – Jannat went on to have another six operations to fix her bowel and the hole in her heart and was left with a long scar on her chest. The telling and re-telling of their survival is now deep in family folklore. As the girls celebrated their 16th with a big bash, complete with DJ and 120 guests, Zainab said: “We grew up with the story of what happened to us.
“There wasn’t a day where our parents didn’t mention it. It was only as we got older we realised how complicated everything was and how lucky we were.”
The girls say they were five when they first remember seeing pictures of themselves conjoined. Jannat said: “I didn’t think the picture was real. It was so odd seeing something like that. It was weird to see that was us. At primary school, people would ask us who is older and we would say ‘we were conjoined’.
“But I don’t think we realised what this meant till later.”
