Newsday

Umar Naseer has a new name for his mother: "Mighty Mom."

"She saved me and my brothers and sisters," the 10-year-old Bensonhurst boy said in a hospital interview Friday, recounting her heroism as fire raced through their apartment a day earlier, trapping them in a bedroom. "I thank her for saving my life."

With nowhere else to go, Nabila Nazli, 38, tossed her twin month-old sons, Mugees and Mubeen, out the second-floor window to five neighbors, who caught them with a quilt and ushered them to safety.

Sister Shamail, 4, jumped next, followed by Umar.

"It was like committing suicide or like killing myself," Umar said. "Everything happened so fast when I jumped. I just saw all the things around me - it all seemed like a dream.

"Then I landed on the [quilt] and it felt like reality."

His mother and sister, Nimrah, 5, were still trapped.

Nimrah did not want to leave her mother's side, firefighters later said, and both mother and daughter were overcome by smoke and had to be rescued by firefighters, who climbed a ladder and into their window.

Nimrah, who was beside a bed, was taken out of the building through the window, while other firefighters carried her mother down the stairs and out the front door.

All five children and their mother were recovering Friday, with Nazli and Nimrah listed in critical condition at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx with second-degree burns. Both are expected to survive.

Umar and his other sister and brothers were less badly hurt, suffering mostly from smoke inhalation. They were in stable condition at Coney Island Hospital.

Umar said he couldn't wait to see them and the rest of his family.

"Thank God we're still alive," he said. "At least we can still see each other."

The predawn blaze Thursday destroyed the Bay 50th Street apartment, where the family had lived for two months. The fire probably was caused by an electrical problem, a Fire Department spokesman said Friday.

It started just before 3 a.m.

Umar had been asleep only two hours, having stayed up late doing math homework.

The next thing he recalled was the face of his frantic mother.

"I remember my mother was shaking me," Umar said. "And she was crying. There was so much smoke. A teardrop dropped from my eye and I got scared."

The next frantic moments, he said, were a blur of screams and abject fear.

Amid the chaos, Nazli made a move critical to her and her children's safety, firefighters said: She closed the bedroom door after everyone was inside. That kept the fire at bay just long enough for the family to escape.

"The last thing my mother told me was to jump out into the [quilt]," Umar said. "She said, 'You'll be safe.'"

Umar, a student at PS 128 in Bensonhurst, was visited at the hospital by his principal.

"Everybody from the school wants to know the condition of the kids," said Umar's dad, Mohammad Naseer, an immigrant from Pakistan who was working at his job as a livery driver at the time of the fire.

Umar and the twins are expected to be released very soon, his father said, with Shamail expected to stay in the hospital a bit longer.

Nimrah and Nazli are likely to remain hospitalized up to four weeks, Naseer said.

"She was unconscious," Naseer said of his brief visit with his wife. "She wants to cry, but she can't. She can't hold my hand because there are a lot of tubes. I told her, 'You did a job the best you can and I appreciate that you save your kids' life and put them before yourself. God will do everything good for you.'"

Naseer said the family probably will relocate to a relative's home on Long Island.

Lost in the fire was most of the family's possessions, including Umar's iPod.

He couldn't care less.

"I do not want to lose my mother," he said. "I don't care about the other stuff."

Matthew Nestel contributed to this story.