From 2005 Earthquake book by Fatima Bhutto

Story # 3: Bed No. 9


One of the last beds we came to while visiting the girl's ward at the SACHET Earthquake Relief Hospital was Faiza Safir's. The daughter of Mohammad & Saeeda Safir, Faiza was formerly a Class Five student at the Government Girl's Primary School, Muzaffarabad. The school was utterly destroyed & its ruins claimed the lives of many of her friends & fellow students. Yet here she was, in Bed Number 9, sitting fully upright, her posture nearly perfect but her head bent down. Her dupatta covered her torso so one cpuldn't see what everyone else in the ward knew....that her arm had been amputated. She spoke very softly & only when spoken to. She politely answered every question we asked, but didn't push further with her answers. You could see & sense how devastated Faiza was: it was patently visible, but she carried herself with so much poise that it was disarming. Her account of the earthquake struck me the most because of its blunt & jagged tone....what had happened to her was very real & she wrote about it that way. when I met Faiza I found her shy & diffident. Yet here, in the following account written by her, she comes alive....her strength & firm acceptance of a harsh reality clearly visible in her words.

"On the morning of 8 October 2005, I got dressed & left for school as usual. Once in school, we said our prayers & then went to our classes. Our class had been without a teacher for the last ten days, so we all sat & revised our lesson. Suddenly the ground started shaking & all of us ran as fast as we could. But where could we run to? The whole school building was falling on our heads. A lot of stones fell on my chest. My left arm was crushed.

A man came & started to lift the stones off me. There were so many stones on my legs that he could not lift me out straight away but he kept trying to save me &, one by one, he picked up all the stones until he could lift me out. Then my father came. He carried me in his arms & took me to a field where my mother & two sisters were. My paternal grandfather & grandmother were also there & they had set up a tent where we all stayed.

Three days after the earthquake my grandfather took us to the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, where they put bandages on me & treated me; now I am taking a lot of medicines. After that we moved to a camp for two or three days & now I am in the SACHET Hospital.

My crushed arm was amputated & I ask the government of Pakistan to help me get a prosthetic arm.

I am a student of Class V. There were about three hundered students in our school: one hundered & fifty of them have died & another hundered students were injured. Only fifty of us came out untouched.

I would like to thank all those who treated us.

Goodbye


Faiza remained at the SACHT Hospital waiting for the oppertunity to have a prosthetic limb donated to the hospital for her. Artificial limbs are quite expensive but Faiza was fitted with a prosthetic arm before returning home to her village.


Page# 11 from 8.50 A.M. 8 October 2005

From 2005 Earthquake book by Fatima Bhutto

STORY # 2: I Remember



Naheed Akhtar is Afira Naz's mother & I remember her as being a great support to her daughter. She is a senior teacher at the Girl's High School in District Poonch, Muzaffarabad, & was by her daughter's side at the SACHET Earthquake Relief Hospital. She listened, with obvious love & pride, to every word Afira spoke 7 never attempted to intervene & speak for her. Naheed seemed so focused on her child that it was not until I read her own account of the earthquake that I realized she had been through a trauma of her own.



This is her story.



On the morning of 8 October 2005, when the earthquake struck, I was at school, setting the Urdu paper for Grade Ten. As the ground shook, I started reciting the Kalma straight away. I thought that the earthquake was going to be a mild one that would soon pass but I soon realized that it would not. teachers started running out of the building & I told them to sit down & pray. That's when the earthquake became more intense. There were no more options-we all ran out of our classrooms. As I was running, it felt as if the earth was slipping from underneath me. I managed to get out of the building & joined the middle & high school girls who were also outside. All the katcha houses in the vicinity had fallen & there was so much smoke & dust in the air that the whole town appeared enveloped in darkness.



At that moment I felt that Qiamat(the Day of Judgement) was upon us & I started praying. The school walls had totally collapsed. I saw little girls under the big stones of the building & although it was very difficult to pull them out from under the bricks, the school staff & other kind people worked very hard to save them. One of our teachers, Khalida Parveen, was also trapped there. Her legs were badly injured; she was put on a cot & taken away. Unfortunately, the shopkeeper Pervez, who had helped us rescue the girls & Khalida, had his own tragedy to bear. His daughter, who was in the eighth grade in another school, had been killed by the earthquake. Pervez & his brother found her body & then dug the grave themselves to bury her. There were six to seven dead bodies in each house. I can give you a few names. In Jamil Shaheed's house there were six people dead including his parents. Then there was Numberdar Khan who lost seven family members; Sardar Shafi Khan's home saw the death of six of his family; Sardar Ashraf's family also lost six of its members &, I believe that further from us, the entire town of Jhunda has been totally destroyed. With so many deaths all around, it became impossible to keep count of the dead. After sending the children home we, the teachers, set off towards our own homes. Each of us was worried about our own children. No one knew in what condition we'd eventually find them.



I told the teachers, "You take care of other people's children; Allah will take care of yours." Everybody was crying & praying to God. When we reached the main road we were told that there was no transport avalible. A little further on, we found that the bridge at Abbaspur, the biggest in Azad Kashmir, had been obliterated. We started walking on the road but a few men stopped us & told us not to continue because further on the road had been blocked by a landslide. We then walked along the riverbank. On the way home we saw student from the Boys High School, who were seriously injured, but because the hospital had also collapsed it was not known if they got any medical treatment.



After walking for two hours I reached Abbaspur town. When I had left it at 7:45am that morning it had been full of hustle & bustle. Now it had been reduced to dust. On the way we were told that Abbaspur High School 7 the Degree College for girls had been totally destroyed & there were bodies of dead students everywhere. Then someone told us that Kashmir Public School, in which my own children were studying, had been completely destroyed. I was devastated. Out of fear I did not ask about my children, not knowing what I might be told about them. On my way home I saw the ruins of several schools &, a little distance away from home, I was told by Afira's grandfather that her little finger had been totally crushed.



When I reached home I saw my children looking absolutely petrified. Afira's hand was hurt, but we didn't know the actual state of her finger because initial first aid 7 bandaging had been done by her aunt. When we reached the hospital we found the building in ruins. Outside the hospital grounds there were countless patients waiting to see a doctor. There was no place for people to be given drips properly; the drips were either held up by the patient's relatives or some Good Samaritan. Our worst trial was yet to unfold: it started when it began to rain. After seeking permission from Maulana Ilyas Sahib, it was announced that the injured could be brought to the mosque because its roof had remained intact though the walls had fallen.



We got Afira vaccinated &, after a few stitches, we were advised to move her to another hospital. Iftari time was approaching & people were saying that we should not travel that night but wait until the next morning. We left anyway though it took a great deal of trouble procuring a car, which we had to fill with diesel worth Rs 755. Our cousin Ikhlaq Ayub drove us to Hajira. From there we rented another car for Rs 3000 & reached the PIMS Hospital in Islamabad. We were already strained financially & thought we would have trouble getting medical attention. However, as soon as we reached the PIMS we were taken care of &, by midnight, Afira was x-rayed, given stitches, & admitted as a patient.



A close relative of ours, Danial Ahmad Jamal, was brought to the same hospital with a fractured leg. A few girls from Bagh, who had lost their mother & brothers, were also there. Seeing others in such a bad state made us feel that our situation was fortunate by comparison. After a week we were refferred to the SACHET Hospital where Dr Habib, Dr Irum, Dr Noreen, & all the nurses took good care of us. They created a homely environment for us. My girl's little finger was amputated & her two other fingers were also affected. Her hand is not moving properly yet. The doctors say she should try to exercise her hand.

We pray to Allah to bless these doctors & to keep Banigala always safe. I pray that God will make my daughter well again, the way she was before the earthquake. I am quite hopeful that she still has the courage to think positively & follow her dream.

Page# 5 from 8:50 A.M 8 October 2005

From 2005 Earthquake book by Fatima Bhutto

I Want To Be A Doctor


Afira Zara Naz was the reason we started this book. The daughter of Sardar Zulfiqar & Naheed Akhtar. Afira was a student at the Kashmir Public Science School in Muzaffarabad. When I met her I found her to be this fearless little girl who was sitting up in bed with her mother beside her. She answered all our queries articulately & confidently. We didn't quite catch her name initially & she promptly took out a pen & paper & wrote it down for us. Afira wanted to talk about what had happened to her. She had lost a finger, & it was as if this loss & the trauma of the earthquake took away any shyness she may have had & forced her to become brave. It was my mother, Ghinwa, who said to Afira after hearing her speak that it was very important that she write about her experiences, so that others can begin to fathom the extent of the physical & emotional devastation caused by the earthquake. Before my mother had finished speaking Afira had started writing. Here is her story....


"On the eighth of October when the earthquake took place, I was in school. It was during our first period that the earthquake started. All the children started to run outside. I was the last one to get out. My teacher, Miss Shamsa Khalil, & I were running outside when a wall fell on us. We were on the second floor & everyone on the floors below was also trying to leave, but the wall fell on us before we could run any further & we lost consciousness. When I became a little conscious, I looked up & could see children's legs sticking out through the rubble. The whole building had fallen down. With great difficulty, I managed to get out from under all the rubble while the wall was still crumbling. A lot of people from the town had came looking for their children. I saw parents lifting their children out of the rubble, trying to save their lives.

A teacher, Sir Basharat, lifted me up & gave me to some other person. That man took me to the hospital but, as we reached the hospital, we found that it had been destroyed too. There were a lot of bodies of our fellow classmates & other students around. There were so many injured people who were being transported to the hospital-but there was no longer any hospital.

The hospital's doctor, Dr Liaquat, brought some bandages from the medical store & started treating the superficial injuries that people had. He also put a bandage on my hand but it was a very bad wound. My finger was almost separated from my hand, & it looked like it had gone through a mince-meat machine. My bleeding did not stop & I had to be taken back to the hospital where they stitched up my finger; but the doctor told us that I should be taken to the hospital at Kotli or Pindi because they could not fix my wounds properly in our town. So my father dtruggled to arrange a car &, though he managed to find one, it was of little comfort because the main bridge had been destroyed. Because of the landslides all the main roads were closed so we had to take the unpaved katcha roads to Hajira. From there we got into another car & finally reached the Pakistan Institue of Medical Science(PIMS) Hospital where they took good care of my wound & me. The doctors there were very good. They were affectionate towards everybody. It was there that I discovered how much people love Pakistani Kashmiris. Volunteers from schools & colleges, boys & girls, were giving blood, consoling, & entertaining the children.

My treatment took almost a week & then they sent us to The Society of Advancement of Community Health, Education, & Training(SACHET) Earthquake Relief Hospital in Banigala. Here too I've been getting very good traetment. The doctors here are very good. They have given us a lot of encouragement & support-dil se-straight from the heart. I thank these doctors. They treat us with love. Dr Irum, Dr Noreen, Dr Habib, & Brother Jacob are all working on my hand together to fix it, but they had to amputate my little finger. Thankfully, they didn't have to cut my other fingers. The surgery done by Dr Irum was very good for me but my hand is still painful. Because of the pain I can't move my fingers or exercise-it makes me feel so helpless. I just don't know what to do. I am trying to move all my fingers so that I can go home. I also think that, perhaps if I get plastic surgery done on my finger, everthing will be all right again. I would be so grateful if that could be arranged. Then I can progress much faster & in a better way. In the future I would like to be a doctor so I can serve other human beings. God, please give me the motivation & fervour that you have given to these other Pakistani brothers & sisters of mine.

Back home, our katcha house has been destroyed. In our town all the good houses have cracks but are still standing. Our was only a simple house, though, & now it's gone. There were eleven people in our family but eight or nine of them have died & the rest are wounded. God, please keep all tragedies & miseries away from us, Ameen. The roads in my town have been destroyed. Our shops are gone & even our photostat machine has been damaged. I cannot shake the memory of the earthquake from my mind. Whenever I think about it, my head spins. Even now I remember every moment.....I cannot forget it...."


Afira Zara Naz, the patient with a left hand injury, had her little finger amputated. She is now in Kotli in Azad Kashmir, her home village.


Page# 3 of 8.50 A.M. 8 October 2005 by Fatima Bhutto