And There Were No More Screams

By Asem Mustafa

The catastrophic earthquake in Pakistan on October 8 has thousands of wailing parents staring at the debris of the schools that were the architectural masterpieces of corrupt contractors and served as communal graves of the generation that was future.

They have their children school bags, shoes and clothes close to their hearts and they spend hours in the vicinity with transfixed eyes at the entrance that their loved ones will come running to their arms.

No amount of words can explain the pain, which this scribe shares with the bereaved families who once were free and respectable people and now have been reduced to the level of beggars.
The traumatized families and scores of mothers are found wailing and running from one end to the other in mental frenzy hoping that their child will come running out from the rubble, which never happened.

The count is never there as what exactly is the number of schools alone in the two regions of Azad Kashmir and Frontier Province that were communal graves of the future of the nation but they run in easy thousands and with hundreds of children in each school the figure crosses 100,000.

The official figure is different as in the aid that was pledged and never given as all aid is as promised requires transparency which despite efforts can not be guaranteed. The donor’s conference next week will decide the fate of these affectees who are in millions and are without food and shelter.

It was as expected a trail lead to the corrupt practices where women arms were cut for gold ornaments, people selling the relief goods in the market and unaccounted for money reaching few who thrived on the dead besides doing politics.

The Saturday quake exposed many things but the most painful ones was the negligence witnessed in the case of school children and there have been scores of documents in which the dying kids under the rubble wrote the trauma they went through while surviving under tones of rubble.

Nine-year-old Taj story under the rubble tells as how she survived for days trapped inside the classroom. She narrated all as what she observed in her pauses of consciousness when she witnessed the death of her class mates and her teacher and later accompanied by a friend Nazia who also lost her life while the two huddled together praying for the darkness to leave them.
She wrote all in her homework notebook with date and all her accounts after October 8 are mixed as in where ever she find the page she put a line there, when there was light reaching from some corner.

She has asked her father and mother many times for food and water and complained of cold and demanding them to give her blanket and then there is just a line which marked the end of her life.

A group of Japanese rescuers found their way in to the school hoping to find some survivors but there were none as it was after two weeks they were able to be there and in them were over two dozen starved children who screamed their hearts out for help which was not there.

Taj along with Nazia was found holding on to her homework copy and she had a pencil gripped in her fingers and her last sentences on her notebook were “Mama Papa am hungry, am cold, give me blanket. Where are you mama, where are you mama.”

There was line in the end as till end she held that notebook and was found with it, there has been few other pieces from these dying children reaching to the media that made thousands tearful but fact remains that efforts needed with a lot of haphazard rescue work left a lot to be desired.

The last but not the least were the baton charging policemen from Punjab Police who leave no stone unturned in giving a befitting thrashing to the affectees who dared to protest as they refused leave the refugee camps.

So much is written and said about the relief operation that a common man is now reluctant after a month that the money and material he is sending will reach the deserving or not.

The thousands who are in the hospital are complaining that there is nothing as promised reaching them.

The much promised iron sheets for the affectees have not reached and are not there as the money that is announced is not even reaching them. A little and few people who are seen on TV taking cheques are not even one per cent of the total affected.

In all this the thousands of orphans and nearly 20 million of women and children are shelter less and are vulnerable. The government has announced that it will look after them but the question remains how it will be done.

The complaints from relief agencies are mounting and hungry and angry people sitting in the cold with inadequate supplies are beginning to show resentment since long.

The self-esteem all gone and reduced there are scores of children in school dress are found running after the big wig politicians who visit the areas for photo opportunities and they only beg for food and not money.

The extreme differences in all top hierarchy are visible and common man is left aghast as where to turn to. In the entire scenario the common man deserves kudos that came forward and so far a concrete plan is still awaited from government side.

A few suggestions also surfaced as the royal and palace like accommodations of the governors who have staff of hundreds running here and there to cater to one man can be declared sanctuaries for the orphan children and women as they will be well protected but so far nothing has been done in this regard. These palaces were to show the grandeur of the British Raj and currently symbolize repressive regime as commonly referred by the masses.

“They ask us to sacrifice why don’t they start from their own place,” said an angry Kashmiri who lost all his family members in the earthquake.

“It’s a bunch of thieves I have to beg them to get food and I was a rich man had means and all and I use to feed the poor but the way humanity is treated here I wished I had died in that quake as why I have survived to see this day.”

There have been reports women with kids surviving the quake are losing their children to disease and hunger as cholera and pneumonia are reported maximum in children who have no adequate shelter.

The tents provided in emergency are not waterproof and rains and snow is reported in upper parts of the mountains.

Where should we go,” said a woman crying, “Its our fate that instead of instant death we die each day. I have lost a child in school, I have one lost to the cold and one is dying what should I do.”

These stories are in thousands and everywhere there are complaints and very few words as in praise as losing all people have lost the sense of belonging and in trauma they complain and act violent.

The reason given are different but the bottom line is that they complain of neglect and callousness and all self-esteem gone they react different.

No such catastrophe struck Pakistan before it was visible so action was taken floods a few months ago in southern Pakistan in three provinces devastated an easy million and more but it was hushed up as the water cleared all traces.

“We are here and we wait and we have nothing and we are neglected and we can’t complain as we leave this to Allah and pray it will pass we have been punished severely,” said a woman crying.

There are millions but they only care for few thousands, what about the remaining ones,” she asked, “Who will care about us.”