The doctors told me that it was a result of my chain smoking,” said the widower, who has been smoking since he was a teenager. To save his life, doctors quickly operated on Ismail, performing a laryngectomy that left him permanently without his voice. “Now, I feel lonely as I can no longer hear my own voice. It makes me sound funny, but at least I can speak,” said Ismail. But on one occasion, the can blew up in shreds and a shrapnel hit my right eye and damaged the cornea.