Disaster Tourism

On October 8, 2005 a massive earthquake struck the regions of Kashmir and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. In Pakistan the disaster killed close to 87,000, maimed countless survivors and left 3.0 million people homeless. Hundreds of Pakistanis from around the world have been volunteering in the quake zone. Maniza Naqvi was one of them. She wrote this piece while she was in Pakistan.

December 2005

By Maniza Naqvi

As I write this I feel like I've come down from the hills and from my disaster tourism. It feels that way when you can't do very much to help people. Such as, take down their fevers; remove the pain from their faces and hearts; or put a shelter over their heads that won't leak or won't let in the cold.

How sad and awful that so many people lost everyone and everything. How awful that one accepts it. And the tremors just don't seem to go away. But life goes on, no matter how tough it is to go on. People suffering from grief, wounds, cold and exposure. The news tells us this and the sight of tent villages tell us this and the scale of relief efforts is evidence of it.

But until you reduce it down to one, it’s hard to feel the magnitude and enormity of the disaster. What does it mean to us, reading headlines about thousands dead, millions homeless? This is numbing, so large, so enormous, hard to wrap one’s mind around that, hard to wrap one’s arms around that and offer comfort.

Reduce it down to one. The heartbreaking grief, the density of hue without light in the eyes of a man who has lost everything, his wife, his five children, his mother his father, his aunts and uncles, his grandfather, his nieces and nephews. His flesh; his blood; his bones; his home; his roads; his entire village; his world; his time. Time for him has stopped. And you have to stare right into his eyes and try to provide comfort. What do you say? What do you do? Do you have the courage to sit with him a while, quietly? Without taking a photograph. Or are you coming from a world where you must say, you must do, you must roll, you must shop, hand over cash immediately to shield yourself?

So here it is, a month later the desire to write. A desire to sort through it all perhaps, making a trajectory of it all. It may be that it is just the end of the year as I write this. It may be the reckoning, the squaring away of the return----or rather the returns-----returning home and then returning. Unable perhaps to square it all.

There has been, I’ve noticed my own defensive prologue and prefacing the answer to the question Howwazit? There is almost an immediate response that involves God and home. The rejection of both. The acceptance of both. I love you, I hate you. All of it all together. Yes, no doubt confusion, no doubt schizophrenia.

I have always dreaded the packed suitcase leaving from the door of the house---this time when leaving Pakistan I packed the suitcase and had it sent to the car almost a day before I left. I had hit upon it-----what upset me so---it contained as it always does what is essential for the journey ahead. The packed suitcase at the door, the Noah’s ark of what will go on. The packed suitcase at the door has meant to me, a coffin. A departure, a death. The time between an arrival and a departure—a lifetime---and this time the return to such a beautiful place----heaven on earth, Kashmir (thanks to the imagery of Bollywood films, the songs, and poetry and of course, childhood’s place of summer holidays). It’s devastation only an affirmation of God and nostalgia.

Can it be that the earthquake zone is for me and for many others, an archetype of the Garden of Eden—now lying in rubble with the symbols of the apocalypse all around—mountains turned to dust and so on? And it may be that heaven was in the moment “after” the earthquake and not before when there was such an intense and acute awareness of “being” and of being human, frail, vulnerable and in need. In need of love.

In those moments fissures opened and gaps between people closed. It was those moments, hours, days after the earthquake that there was a near heaven experience—people-- ordinary, every day people caring for each other, responsible, giving, saving, rescuing, helping, moving relief, sharing, moving mountains, associating, organizing, coordinating, cooperating without any presence of the military and thus exploding the myth that Pakistanis are in need of the military to defend them from outsiders and from themselves.

But it was just for a moment, this brief staring in the face of grief and the beauty of human will. The need to save, touch, be one--- was immense. But then slowly but surely that too began to fade as that moment of what is essential disappeared under piles of donated stuff. The serpent began its re-entry into the Garden of Eden.

In the mountains above Balakot it had begun snowing when I flew east from DC to London to Pakistan on a plane full of doctors and volunteers almost all in their twenties almost all from Europe going to the earthquake zone to join the relief effort.

Easy to recognize the type by their plumage: that certain relief chic of scarves and clothing from disasters past and prior stints. Almost all of them gaunt and in need of nourishment with a dash of the cowboy attitude. I studied my own accessories: dangly earrings from Sarajevo; scarf from Cambodia; shoes from Payless on the Upper Westside; rings from Addis Ababa on my pinky, another from Sarajevo. I was on my way home, from home.

Just like the Dutch woman who was on the flight with me to Islamabad: a dupatta from Rahimyar Khan covering her face as she slept as though she were a tenant farmer shielding her eyes from the sun while taking a break in the afternoon. We had talked almost the entire flight. She spoke with me in Urdu. She felt more at home in rural Pakistan than she did in Amsterdam.

For her the sense of belonging was the same as mine. For her, Holland meant nostalgia, the smell of snow remembered from her childhood, while her black duppata edged in crochet from Rahimyar Khan represented the present. Just as the sight of nomads-----Pavindas, arriving down country and snow shining in the distant Hindukush mountains was nostalgia for me. The present was the Metrocard for the New York subway tucked away in my wallet.

But the two of us, we were citizens of the same place. We were not sure where that was perhaps it was the plane we were on with our fellow citizens. Nomads. On the flight out of Pakistan it was the same thing: a plane load of tired, wind-lashed, cold and sunburned relief volunteers going home. Kashmiri caps and shawls added to the accessories.

I overheard a stewardess remark about how quiet the plane was. I looked around me everyone was so tired. Sleeping, at home, on their way home, looking for the next home. And my mind was filled with memories of movement and of the dislocation of people down the mountains on foot, in trucks, on donkey carts, horses, rickshaws, Suzuki vans tipping over with people hanging on to the railings. The landslides and the huge boulders which had come crashing down the sides of the mountains. I thought about the Pavindas coming down from the highlands single file herding their livestock before and around them.

Pavindas, the nomads of the north, who for me have always been the symbol of adventure and who personify freedom of movement and a way of life that are a reminder that the world is borderless and full of color. The appearance of Pavindas at the doorsteps of my childhood homes, in Mangla and Tarbela and in Abbottabad carrying gatrees (bundles) of Chinese and Russian silk and pashminas in November were always the first sign that snow had settled in the mountains. The bundles carried on their backs and on their heads evidence of where they had been and that behind the Iron Curtain were products we coveted.

Going to the earthquake zone has been an overwhelming experience. Once again nature claiming its supremacy over anything that we have to offer as a defense. Except perhaps for sheer human will or hope as it translated itself in so many people from everywhere and particularly from Pakistan helping each other to go on and survive.

But it has been frustrating to see so many accepting it as God's will and frustrating hearing people being told to accept this as God’s will for their misdemeanors. It has been frustrating to hear so few voices raging about the landslides that killed because mountains were denuded of their forests; or because the war and land grabbing forced poor people to live in places where even eagles don't dare to nest; or the dishonest construction and corrupt contractors responsible for over12,000 schools under whose collapsed walls and roofs 40,000 children died.

The earthquake was intense but over 12000 school buildings crumbled in an instance-------- all government schools, all filled with children. All financed by that line item, that disbursement category of most donor agencies called: civil works. And in all this raging on my part I am humbled by the patience and stoicism of the affected people, their belief and faith; and the humanity and spirit of volunteerism that has overflowed in Pakistan. It is this crisis that has exposed the finest qualities in Pakistanis and also all their fault lines.

I have to say the outpouring of generosity, humanity, altruism, philanthropy and team spirit that Pakistanis demonstrated right after the earthquake has been amazing. This has been Pakistan’s worst disaster and its finest moment.

There are many who think the country does not require additional debt or grants from foreign agencies or countries. Pakistanis have enough resources to carry this day.

The question arises as to what reasons to attribute this outpouring of altruism and volunteerism.

Here are the various opinions put forth when I asked this question (1) the number of people from the affected areas working in all the major cities and working as domestic help in almost every middle income family home created an instant connection to the rest of the country and all income groups (2) the month of Ramzan warranted the need to be kind and generous and the sense that this ‘act” of God, the earthquake was a test of our humanity and how we would rise to the occasion (3) the sub conscious need and yearning to show the world and to ourselves that we were not what the world and its media had made us out to be since September 2001 and July 7, 2005 (4) the acute need by the very educated younger generation to have a meaningful cause and to take on leadership (5) the media’s coverage of the earthquake after the first 24 hours (6) the media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina which showed Americans for being less than the developed and civilized society that they were claiming to spread all over the world with the help of the sword. Pakistanis spontaneously showed that their values were far more civilized and humane than that of the Americans. (8) Kashmir is such a big part of the Pakistani peoples’ ideas of security and their ideas of Pakistan, that the disaster in Kashmir brought out in everyone a deep need to save and protect it. People felt that if they failed to help here, it almost seemed to threaten the meaning of Pakistan.

Every Pakistani in the country and in the Diaspora felt that this was the moment in which they defined themselves as Pakistanis---------in the saving of Kashmir. But the far too hasty shift of focus to reconstruction from relief without adequate thinking through of needs or capacity to deliver will lead to further fault lines of a political and social nature.

Such fault lines include: (1) Who has ownership and leadership in the reconstruction efforts; will it be those who came forward in the first week and untiringly provided relief and rescue, volunteers and NGOs? Or will it be the government and military that seemed to be in denial of the magnitude of the devastation even after a week of the catastrophe. (2)What is the role of the Government of Azad Kashmir or the provincial Government of NWFP? (3) People are wondering as to what is the purpose of the government launched National Volunteer Movement and is the government taking credit for something for which they were largely absent? (4) What is the reason for the Government handing out cash to earthquake affectees as though there is no tomorrow, is it a bribe to keep the peace? (5) What is the sense and where is the decency of handing out cash grants against death in families? What affects will this have in the long run after people sit down to think about the reasoning of the cash hand outs?. (6) Where has the Government come up with this type of money to hand out as cash grants?

Some of the conjecturing, conclusions, and rumors that people in tent villages and those in tents outside their ruined homes are talking about as to why this earthquake happened include: (1) This is the will of God (2) Act of God as a test for all of us, for those who suffered it is a test of endurance and acceptance of His will, and for those who help and struggle to save it is a test of their humanity and devotion to His will. (3) Punishment of God for the rigged elections that took place just days before the election.........schools fell because the rigging happened in schools which were used as polling stations and mosques fell because promises were made there on fair and free elections (4) Army conducted nuclear tests underground ala Chaigai, and this went wrong that's why the military was reluctant to discuss or admit the destruction and fatalities right away (5) America's bombing in Afghanistan has caused the earth to shift (6) If all the trees hadn't been cut the landslides may not have been so severe and many a village, roads and passengers on the roads would not have been buried under landslides (6) these schools were built by the Government using financing from donors, money that should have gone into solid construction went into the pockets of the rulers who built strong and large homes for themselves.

In terms of reconstruction, particularly of housing, there are many sensible options being discussed but not surprisingly I don’t see them in the mainstream discussions. This could be because these are low cost and owner driven options, in which the role of appropriate technology; indigenous knowledge; development oriented constructers and architects is greater than that of cement and mortar retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers and construction contractors.

The question that these development oriented architects and planners who have been responsible for low cost seismically sound construction in the Northern Areas ask is why is there such a focus on expensive housing construction which has the involvement of a cast of thousands of outsiders when the job can be done by local residents with guidance from experts.

These development experts who are focused on appropriate technology have created a design manual and the steps needed to be carried out not only in the construction of the individual houses but in the overall implementation and supervision of housing reconstruction. This can only be done, they say, if there is an overall policy implementation and without a sound policy implementation that guides all of the steps required for owner driven reconstruction this can’t be achieved. They suggest and are implementing a process whereby the rubble is considered as the main rebuilding construction material.

What is required is manual and machine labor to break down the rubble into construction material. There is enough timber in the fallen destroyed houses that can be salvaged for reconstruction. The recycled, crushed rubble, salvaged timber; approximately 16 CGI sheets per house; the residents of the houses; combined with the supervision of teams of community construction/architects that can do the job efficiently and effectively following sound seismically appropriate housing principles (already laid out in a guiding manual). They have already been distributed in the earthquake zone.

They point out that the earthquake zone encompasses 172 union councils and damage to houses and needs assessment can be carried out in a very meaningful manner if a bureaucrat let’s say a grade 18 or 19 officer be stationed in each of these union councils in a winterized tents and laptop, communications equipment to get the job started. They would team up with the patwaris and community level activists and community persons to figure out land usage and land rights and get the job done of damage assessment.

All this has been written up as editorials and discussed on television (in English) in Pakistan and an article on this has been published in the DAWN around October 25, 2005.

Meanwhile another person working with relief commented that she could not help but think about the stories from the American civil war of carpet baggers descending to take advantage of the misery of the poor affected people. Examples of this are all over Islamabad where there are models and prototypes of houses that can be “supplied” ranging from 14,700 to Rs.50,000. All doll houses, and all rather inappropriate.

In the earthquake zone of Hazara and Kashmir, tent villages appeared to me like rows upon rows of collapsed silent chaddar covered women waiting patiently for nightfall so they could venture out into the fields to relieve themselves .

I have come down country now with bullet points of conflicting thoughts of people steeped in grief and loss, tents that seem to me like chaddar clad women, bazaars silent and reduced to rubble or teeming with people and laden with fruits and goods. Life goes on just when we expect that catastrophe will strike everything dumb.

But life goes on in all its confounding synchronicity with funerals alongside weddings, commerce alongside relief, savings alongside debt and rescuing along side retribution and murders. Where Chinooks flying overhead, made the air reverberate like the rumble of an oncoming earthquake causing people to run out of their tents or out of their still standing houses afraid that the next tremor would bring everything down.

One heard from the people of their deep gratitude and praise for the young foreigners, doctors and relief workers, their humanity, kindness and stamina (“more than our own families would have done for us!” a constant refrain); of the 1200 Cuban doctors who worked tirelessly and of the anxiety about the American marines.

Rumor had it that 2400 marines had set up camp alternatively in Shinkiyari or Muzaffarabad depending on who you talked to. “Now they’ve got themselves a foothold in Kashmir, they’ll never leave!” This was in reference to the MASH set up in Muzaffarabad which was set up after a Pakistani volunteer medical camp was requested to take their camp elsewhere since the location was the most secure for the Americans. I thought of what Hawkeyed would have made of all this. Something flippant and funny. Jon Stewart. But apparently the local people felt differently.

I have come away from there, where one is left with the impression that all vehicles are brightly painted decorated trucks. In Pakistan the trucks are art. Everyone knows that. What a touristy thing to say. But I have to say relief never looked so good. Trucks with poetry written on their bumpers, blaring their eardrum piercing horns and loaded with relief goods as they race up into the mountains to rescue but while doing so almost kill any bystanders or the passengers of other vehicles.

Nearly being driven off the road by one such truck I managed to catch not its license plate but its poetry, "Chalti hey garti, to orti hey dhool, Jaltey hain doshman to Khiltey hain phool." The gist of which though not direct translation is: The truck moves, dust flies. Enemies are envious and I’m so high. Another one read “ Hum to Dushman ko bhee izaath ki saza deh tey hain, hath ota tey nahin, nazron sey gira dey tey hain.” We punish even enemies with respect, we never lift our hand to punch, just drop them from our gaze as a diss. Street poetry on the move, loses itself in translation I can see.

These poems were impressed into memory as I sat yellow knuckled gripping the dash board of the jeep I was traveling up to Jared in as it bumped along on the now mud track of a narrow road up into the Kaghan valley. Landslides everywhere, mountains that looked as though they had been sliced. Trucks and cars from that fateful October 8th morning sitting silently under gigantic boulders that had come thundering down the mountains.

We passed by flattened villages, under a full moon, eerily lit up by its light. I sat there terrified and silent as the driver negotiated the steep climb and curves and the truck ahead of me loaded with relief goods, rolled from side to side, threatening to fall off the edge of the cliff at any moment. A guy in the jeep with me from the NGO declared, “I can see the difference now between emergency assistance and development! One requires action, the other conferences and workshops.”

Coming down that same mud track from the opposite direction and from those very villages where we were headed were trucks loaded with the autumn crop of potatoes. The moment the road was opened, even that suicidal mud track of a path, the first thing people did was to get commerce going. These trucks loaded with potatoes were traders from down country, who had come to pick up the crop and sell it at a premium down country like they do every year. There was a huge lesson to be learned here. The money that these potatoes were going to get them,would help to rebuild houses, and would diminish the endless cash grants and handouts. The trucks were also carrying people down country to warmer climes.The road was the essential feature, no matter what shape it was in. For this community development and job creation specialist this was another lesson learned.

In Abbottabad’s old Katla bazaar which in named after its function of cleaning cotton for the filling of razaees (duvets) and the making of razaees. I tried to persuade the shopkeepers that they should reduce the price for the razaees. After all, I argued, I wasn’t buying a dowry but the shopkeepers were unmoved and remained humorless. They asked me, to have a heart, after all when again would there to be such a run on blankets? It was an eye opening moment. Let the market prevail.

All around us were piles of colorful razaees exactly the type that I was always very attracted too, fluorescent colors of greens, blues and magentas velvety and cotton with huge floral prints. Now I was getting to buy them to my heart's fill. Our razaees which were procured and negotiated for from various shops in the bazaar started arriving in wheel barrows from various alleyways to be loaded on to van to take it on to the NGO office and from there to be loaded on to the truck.

What a sight wheelbarrows loaded with colorful razaees on a cold clear winter morning. While we waited, for all the razaees to be piled, counted, loaded and accounted for, we ordered chaapli kebabs and tea from the chai-khana in front of the shop. We watched the elderly shopkeeper of one of the shops trying to make the accounts for our bill for all the various shopkeepers. He was finding it difficult to do the job so the young NGO staffer with me took on the task for him. We sat there in the bazaar thinking that the people in Abbottabad seemed unaffected by the calamity in the mountains……..or in the earthquake zone. I later thought the same thing after I arrived in Islamabad and attended a reception complete with fairy lights for the donor’s conference.

A Hurricane Katrina parallel, of which there are many, the one that stands out is the sneering towards the poor by the rich Administrators, whether it is in the form of cash grants per dead family member or the ensuing commentary by the well off and the unhurt on the immorality and greed of the people who take these cash grants.

When the New Orleans affectees arrived at the DC Armory I saw that people from poorer parts of DC showed up at the Armory, hoping to ‘adopt a family” on the basis of the cash grant being offered to the affectees for housing. Why weren’t the affectees receiving shelter from the neighboring and unaffected suburbs of New Orleans?

Many people are moving down country particularly to Karachi to places like Baldia town where they are taking up residence with their relatives or people who are offering them housing in return for a share in the cash grants that these people are receiving.

On the surface this seems like a money grabbing opportunity. But in reality it is the poor helping the poor by offering them space at a rental. In Abbottabad, Mansera, Haripur, Murree and Islamabad---the towns and cities closest to the affected areas, people who were well off as were the not so well off were donating in the form of tents, relief goods, and money. But they were not by and large opening up their palatial homes to the affected families to provide them with shelter, heat, and water.

Granted that the three story house turned into a rehabilitation center where I helped out had been donated for six months by a wealthy family in the area. No doubt in my cynical mind that the recognition for patronage would be extracted later.

While in Karachi after coming down from the mountains I went through our family albums. Childhood days in Mangla. There are pictures of my mother and her friends all. so young and so fashionably dressed. There are pictures of Ami and Nusrat Bhutto, and other ladies circa 1965 at hospitals visiting soldiers and pictures of them providing relief for Kashmiri refugees and training Kashmiri refugees at industrial homes, for sewing and embroidery. Amazing.

Somehow things come full circle in amazing sorts of ways. I need time to process all this. It’s been so surreal going back to Muzaffarabad, Abbottabad, Shinkyari, Baffa, Balakot and Jared. So many entwining incidents past, present and premonitions coming together.

Like speaking in Russian with the young Pakistani Doctor working at the rehabilitation and nursing home that I was helping out at. Remembering how when I was a kid back in 1972 I listened one lazy summer holiday afternoon in Abbottabad wide eyed and terrified to a fiery eyed and foul mouthed neighbor, a General’s daughter, telling my grandmother, my mother and my aunt that the Russians were coming soon, mark her words, to take over and they had sent their spies ahead disguised as Kashmiris and Pathans, because no one could tell the difference, they had the same color eyes and complexions.

Three decades later here I was speaking in Russian with a fellow Pakistani who had studied medicine in Russia. And I had done my stint of missions in the former Soviet Union. Now here we were in a disaster zone: Chinook helicopters flew overhead, the marines it was rumored had a base for medical purposes right there next to us in Shinkiyari and yet it was not a war.

Always, while in Bosnia I have had this premonition that I was rehearsing. That somehow someday I would be in places in Kashmir in a jeep with military helicopters flying overhead, dreading that someday I would be doing what I did in Bosnia.

I had always thought it would be due to war, never thought it would be so devastating and due to an earthquake. And now here I was, in a jeep, Chinooks flying overhead, army everywhere, refugees, victims, houses reduced to rubble. Not a war, but nature. It was all there, coming full circle.

It occurred to me as I sat freezing and fearful in a jeep making its way precariously close to the edge of the mud road high up in the Kaghan Valley that the word in Urdu for yesterday and tomorrow was the same. Kal. And now I cull these thoughts in my mind of tremors and fault lines; of speaking in Russian; of Pavindas and snow; of nomadic existence; of Bosnia and war helicopters flying overhead; of coveted colorful razaees; and black and white pictures of my mother working in refugee camps.

To be able to have returned to a place of childhood memories, to a place approximating heaven in its outline. Now so wounded and so troubled.

I am not a doctor, nor a psychologist nor do I have anything to contribute save for the offerings of someone who has spent too much time at a desk pushing paper. I’ve been writing this in between the frenzied painting of my parent’s kitchen in their apartment in Karachi, which I felt compelled to fix before I left for the States, rather than ponder on the fact that they are perched on the 12th floor of an apartment building on reclaimed land!

Why do they call it reclaimed land? It’s been appropriated from the sea. Will not the sea come to reclaim it? Pushing that thought aside, I continued to paint the walls yellow and the cabinets a lime green. I succeeded in scrubbing away the paper label, National that was stuck on the stove since the day it was bought 15 years ago and never removed and which always irritated me.

In Karachi, I was taking a break before returning to the States. I had a great desire to fix things. But of course, it was limited to painting the kitchen in the colors of brightly decorated trucks, perhaps looking for relief, touching up rain water marks on a 12th floor apartment, scrubbing off the stove, a paper sticker advertising a label “National”. Getting it atrophied down to Nation then getting rid of the end n and the i. Getting a giggle then wiping it off.

Maniza Naqvi works in international development in Washington D.C and is the author of three novels, Mass Transit, On Air and Stay With Me. She is working on her fourth novel and has also published several short stories.