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Sleeping
With The Dead
by Chip Duncan
There
are thousands of tents amid the rubble that was once the thriving
city of Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. As I drove along the main
street two weeks ago, one of them stood out. It was white
and dirty, but most of the tents were white and dirty. It
was jimmied in among rock piles, garbage and debris, but that's
not uncommon here either. What made this tent unique is that
the front flaps of this temporary shelter were just inches
from a new grave.
Still,
nothing about the tent suggested to passersby that sleeping
with the dead was anything out of the ordinary. That's because
ordinary in Muzaffarabad changed forever at 8:40 a.m. on Saturday,
October 8th, 2005. Located in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier
Province, Muzaffarabad was the epicenter of the quake. But
the devastation covered more than 30,000 square miles. It's
a mountainous area roughly equal in size to the southern third
of Wisconsin. Despite the difficult terrain of the Himalayas,
the Northwest Frontier Province and Azad Kashmir were densely
populated. Larger cities such as Balakot and Muzaffarabad
were prosperous, modern communities known for their beauty,
tourist amenities, schools and hospitals. But 85 seconds changed
everything. It was a sunny, beautiful autumn morning. Most
children were in school (it's a largely Muslim country where
Friday is the holy day), most men were working, and most women
were in their homes doing chores.
In
Balakot, thirteen-year-old Sadia and her sister, fifteen-year-old
Rabia were among the 450 girls sitting in the classroom of
their three story, cement school house. As the building began
to rumble, Rabia remembers her teacher  shouting
to everyone to "run for your lives." Her teacher was among
the 326 who perished as each floor fractured and toppled on
to the one below it. Sadia and Rabia's mother, brother and
friends are among the approximately 85,000 known dead. Nearly
everyone who was inside a building at the time of the quake
was either killed or severely injured. Miraculously, Sadia
and Rabia survived. As we spoke with them, each fought back
tears as they recalled their loss. Each battles nightmares.
Though each shares a sense of determination, they also have
scars that will be with them forever. The sisters are among
the roughly three million displaced Pakistanis whose homes
were damaged or destroyed in the quake and who now live in
the tents provided by the United Nations or one of the international
relief agencies that struggle to provide care. It's hard to
imagine three million people living in tents. I wasn't able
to until I saw it. It's hard to imagine schools, hospitals
and entire communities laid to rubble. It's hard to imagine
losing everything you own and worse, losing your loved ones.
It's hard to imagine living through a Himalayan winter while
sleeping in a tent on a carpet you dug out of the rubble that
once was your house. It's hard to imagine wearing the same
clothes every day, bathing with a pot of water heated over
a communal fire, scavenging demolished buildings for shoes,
or standing in line for hours during a freezing rain while
waiting for emergency rations of flour and cooking oil. But
that's daily life in northern Pakistan.
In
late February I spent a week documenting
and photographing the area for a Los Angeles-based non-profit
agency called Relief International (RI.org).
I
wish I could say the tragic story of Sadia and Rabia is an
anomaly. It's not. Virtually every person we spoke with had
lost a loved one in the quake. Most had lost several. And
unlike those who suffered in the tsunami that hit the Indian
Ocean on December 26, 2004 or Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged
the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, the world community remains
painfully unaware of Pakistan's misery. Those who are so often
generous with their time and money simply didn't show up this
time around. Officials we met with in Pakistan, including
President Pervez Musharaff and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz,
call it a case of "donor fatigue." While they're grateful
for the work of various NGOs, the UN and pledges of aid and
loans from several nations around the world (including the
USA), the devastation and desperation far outweighs the response.
At the current pace of relief work, I believe it will take
a generation before the area flourishes as it did before the
quake. Right now, it's all the local people can do to simply
survive the winter. In the quest to return to some sense of
normalcy, several communities have begun holding classes for
those students who survived. Tents have replaced the cement
block school buildings and, weather permitting, classes are
held outside. Like schools and other government buildings,
hospitals were also hard hit during the quake. The modern,
five-story hospital in Muzaffarabad was destroyed almost instantly.
A row of parked ambulances was crushed as the first floor
was flattened.
Patients,
doctors and nurses had little chance of survival. Today, doctors
and nurses from several countries have set up tent hospitals
in the largest communities and tent clinics in the smaller
ones. Many nations responded with short-term emergency care.
But the need continues. Perhaps surprisingly, Cuba has the
largest contingent of health care providers still on the scene.
Prior to the earthquake, Pakistan and Cuba didn't even have
diplomatic relations. Various aid workers also expressed a
need for mental health professionals. Psychological counseling
is not a typical part of Pakistani life as it is in North
America and Europe. Emotional matters have been dealt with
in the family system. In this crisis, however, what comprises
a family unit has changed dramatically. In one brief stop
in the village of Hilcote, we met a widower near a roadside
cemetery. He'd lost 8 family members. Only one small daughter
survived. As we were talking with him, another man came by
with his two daughters. He's lost 7 family members. Both men
looked at us as if we could provide help or answers. All we
could do was listen, and then, only for a few minutes. Is
there hope for the people of northern Pakistan? Yes. Despite
the misery and suffering we saw throughout the region, we
also saw children with smiling faces finding their way under
new circumstances. For many of them, life is an adventure.
They showed a resilience sadly missing on the faces of adults
still beset with shock.
The
challenge now is to create a long term, sustainable lifestyle
that provides opportunities for those same smiling children.
That means finding the resources to rebuild homes, schools,
hospitals and government buildings. It means providing educational
opportunities during the rebuilding process and meaningful
employment for adults who lost their jobs. Of all the places
I've been privileged to visit, none has provided such a positive
opportunity for exercising the goodwill of the USA. It's the
right thing to do. But it's even more than that. In the war
on terrorism, there's often rhetoric about "winning the hearts
and minds of the people." Prior to October 8th, this region
was considered a hotbed of anti-US sentiment with sympathetic
leanings toward al-Qaeda. Today it's a region on its knees
and in need of help.
Though
it may seem contrary to the images seen on television news,
our small documentary crew was welcomed with warmth and smiles.
Even as we visited the tents of people with no resources,
 we
were offered whatever hospitality they had - a cup of tea
or a piece of fruit. Is it conceivable that by doing the right
thing - whether individually or as a nation - that we might
also win the hearts and minds of a proud, intelligent people?
Of course, it's convenient to call such a suggestion "naïve."
Those who wage the war on terrorism with weapons, troops and
billions of defense dollars often label such notions as ignorant,
uneducated, inexperienced or naïve. Perhaps it's time to change
the paradigm. As one who's witnessed the power of goodwill
and humanitarian pursuit in Afghanistan and Pakistan during
the past few months, I can only attest to my own personal
experience in visiting these challenging areas. The people
of this planet, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or economic
status are far more similar than they are different. The mother
who has lost her child is like our mother. The family crippled
by poverty or whose home has been destroyed is like our family.
As a nation, we have a long history of resolving conflicts
through war and aggression culminating most recently in our
"preemptive" invasion of Iraq. The cost in both life and dollars
is extraordinary and there is no end in sight. As a realist,
I'm aware that there are situations where force is the only
recourse. But making a collective shift as a nation to one
that builds bridges, creates life-affirming coalitions, and
works toward a positive embrace of our mutual desire for peace
is something we can only do at the demand of the American
people. Pakistan, now reeling from a devastating earthquake
and in dire need of international assistance, represents exactly
that opportunity.
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Chip
Duncan is an EMMY award-winning documentary filmmaker. To
contact Chip Duncan, please click here: Chip@DuncanEntertainment.com.
Your comments are welcomed.
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