A quiet miracle

Thursday, November 20, 2008By John Lane They say you should never go back, that it can never be the same. Notwithstanding, three years after the South East Asia earthquake I did come back. In October 2008 together with my wife I made a journey of remembrance, travelling from London to Islamabad into NWFP and AJK.
For it was in the Kaghan Valley and the surrounding hills that we had worked in those dark days of the winter of 2005-2006, privileged to be seconded from VSO to the Pattan Development Organisation, our office in the capital and our front-line tent alongside all the other tents of newly homeless affectees on the banks of the fast-flowing River Kunar in the Pattan camp. And now, on our return to Balakot, we were both hoping that there in the city itself, and in the valley beyond and on the hills, things would indeed be different.
As we drove up the Karakoram Highway we found ourselves wondering what awaited us in the new Balakot, the rebuilt city of today – the old Balakot having been swept away, closest concentration of population as it was to the epicenter of those grinding tectonic plates that recorded 7.6 on the logarithmic Richter scale, and which flattened the buildings of the town almost without a single exception. All that remained was a township of jumbled debris from which in the ensuing days the cries of the entrapped could be heard through the intermittent rain that fell from leaden skies.
Recovery, re-construction and rehabilitation, restoration of the economy: those were the catch-phrases that followed the rescue and relief phases of the emergency. Implicitly there had been a cherished utopian dream of building back better, including the abolition of poverty. Except life had not been easy in Pakistan in the intervening period; how great, we asked ourselves, would we find the gulf between hopes and reality?
In Abbotabad we saw hardly a vestige of the tragedy. Likewise in Mansehra (aside from a few lingering hints of the past destruction), where the customary bustle of street commerce had every appearance of prosperity. As we passed we waved to the proprietor of the metalwork shop where three years before we had bought 350 hand-made ungethi stoves, which in consignments of 50 had rattled their way to Balakot, to be carried up the mountains by the villagers (to be followed by duvets, blankets, mattresses, winter warmth clothing and the inspiration of hot water bottles which was so obvious that no one else had thought of it) to heat their Pattan-provided emergency shelters which lay close to the snowline.
Onwards we drove – the road now free of the trundling World Food Programme trucks and the former hard-to-overtake army convoys, the adjacent verges cleared of the previously never-ending straggling encampments of the IDPs (the internally displaced people) – past two brand-spanking-new donated schools, the pupils spick and span as always (something which they somehow achieved even in the bleakest days when they queued outside the temporary UNICEF schools in the earthquake aftermath). A handful of kilometres further on we came to the proposed new area for Balakot City (the old town theoretically destined for re-location, lying as it does astride a known fault line). We gazed at the deserted site in silence; so empty is it that not even a photograph was possible.
In the enchanted forest of majestic and ancient pines that lies above Garhi Habibullah we found the trees mercifully untouched. De-forestation, pollution of the rivers and irreparable damage to the environment had been major post-disaster pre-occupations (if not immediate priorities); now, as we looked across the panorama of NWFP towards AJK, the long scars left by the landslides on the mountains were healing, the fields below freshly harvested, no longer neglected, abandoned and mottled with row upon row of multi-coloured tents. Down in the town we visited the owner of the shop where in 2005 Pattan had bought 100 sewing machines for an income-generation handicrafts project. 'I have re-built my house in accordance with the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) model and received the grants,' Faizan told us. 'I lost many things but now we are well past the shock of the earthquake.'
Approaching Muzaffarabad it was as though the valley floor had been freshly renovated and re-carpeted: green fields and homesteads instead of depressing tents and shelters. To our eyes, accustomed only to the devastation of October 2005, Muzaffarabad itself was as a city transformed. The buildings gleamed white in the sun, whilst beyond the river on the far side of the conurbation the handsome dome of the mosque glinted between graceful minarets, the re-provided pink-painted Secretariat buildings standing alongside. Entering the town we found that the piles of rubble we had known had been spirited away, with hardly any buildings showing signs of damage.
Material recovery is one thing; personal rehabilitation is harder to assess. Muzaffarabad had not been our designated area of operation: we had over-flown the city by helicopter in the dark days, and driven through the desolation many times. Now the change in appearance and the upturn in the atmosphere was dramatic; nevertheless it was in the villages around Balakot that we had our contacts and friends and it was to them that we now went, past the bridge which the Pakistan Army had built in 21 days from start to finish ('now a tank may cross,' the army commander had declared); past where the mounds of unwanted unsuitable clothing had smouldered like funeral pyres; past where the tented villages without number had spread across the muddy fields.
Finally we came to our own Pattan camp site, formerly under the yellowing leaves of the poplars and the whispering eucalyptus. It had been one of the smaller settlements, but all were of critical importance. Now the area was tranquil, the spot where we played volleyball and cricket with the children deserted. It was then we remembered the fate of the caram board donated to the families but unfortunately commandeered as firewood on one of the coldest days of the year, and we recalled how, in common with all the camps, it had taken us time and hard labour to dig the latrines in the rocky sub-soil and until that time the euphemism of 'free-lance sanitation' had disguised the total lack of facilities.
Further into town we passed the spot where the barber had been found three years ago, still with the razor in his hand and the customer still with the shaving foam on his face, both with broken necks. Now the all-pervading smell of those days, the sickly odour of dead roses had gone, the facemasks worn as a badge of office now discarded. More relevantly we saw the booming new construction (low level, prefabricated buildings, as befitted a designated 'red zone'), and we gauged the feel of the busy market. Unquestionably, through the resilience and fortitude of its citizens we had found a Balakot that was back on its feet (and incidentally, the massive concrete bridge across the river had somehow been levered back into its rightful place and was again secure).
In the villages where Pattan had worked the story was the same. Rebuilding of replacement houses is well advanced. Electricity and water supplies have been restored; livestock and crops are being tended, just as in years past. The children are back in school. The message is one of optimism and hope.
Our impressions are but of microcosms of the whole. Just as in the relief phase, help never comes soon enough nor in sufficient quantities, so in the rehabilitation phase the recovery always seems obdurately slow. Inevitably impatience will manifest itself (as indeed it has done) in protests and complaints. Yet the achievement of Pakistan in recovering from the comprehensive devastation of the 2005 earthquake has been nothing short of remarkable, and in this the willpower and courage of the people has been over-riding.
'Now we are on the path,' our friends in villages Jabbi and Arban told us. 'The earthquake is in the past. This is our home, no one is leaving and we are looking to the future.' We are sure the people of Ziarat will show their resilience too and make history, the way people of Balakot did. And for our part, how good it was to come back.
The writer is a published author and lives in London and Iquitos, Peru. Website: www.johnlanebooks.com http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=147776