Purple pieces of paper

Feeding the survivors during Ramadan, BBC, Owen Bennett Jones, 15 October 2005

Mandra Hussein had walked more than 40km by the time he reached Bagh. An elderly man with a long white beard, deeply creased face and a flowing shalwar kameez, his clothes were threadbare and dusty. And he was the bearer of bad news.

His village had been destroyed, there had been a heavy snowfall, the children were becoming ill. He had made the long journey to raise the alarm. Before setting off he had made good preparations. He had written out everything that had happened on a few sheets of purple notepaper. His idea was to give the document to someone in the army or perhaps to a newspaper, so that help would be sent.

He did not have much luck.

No-one was particularly interested in his pieces of paper.

He did manage to see a brigadier to explain everything, but the army man was overwhelmed. Many others from remote villages had similar stories. He just made some vague promises and, feeling sorry for the old man, gave him two small cartons of mango juice and that was it.

Despite the adversity he faced, Mandra Hussein remained a very pious man. The earthquake may have measured 7.6 on the Richter scale but it had not shaken his faith.

"Our village may have been destroyed but I give thanks to Allah," he told me, "for making the earthquake happen in the daylight hours, so that many people were out of their houses. Allah ensured that many of us survived."

a picture for memory's sake

More than ten years ago, i used to know a lady who, with her husband, used to rent out the top part of my grandmother's home in Islamabad's F/6-1 sector. They were a young couple, perhaps recently married. At that time they were childless. i was maybe five or six years old, not any older than that. My two older sisters and i used to love spending time at her place - even though we had loads of relatives downstairs. She doted on children, anyone's children.

In her living room were floor-to-wall brown bookshelves, lined with toys and soft dolls. Each soft doll had a particular name. i remember she picked up a small orange cat doll (that was Garfield), and asked us what she should name it. The three of us instantly yelled out, "Garfield!" For us, she was the coolest Auntie around - she would engage with children in a way that children respected and would respond to most sincerely, never in a condescending manner. In short, she was one of my favourite Aunties.

That was more than ten years ago. Since then, Allah Blessed her and her husband with two sons, whom i am sure were brought up in one of the most loving environments possible. That was three days ago. Her eldest son, while running down the stairs of the apartment building they lived in during the earthquake, died. Her younger son is in critical care at a hospital. She pleaded with the authorities to allow her back to her building, her rubble, to permit her to find one picture of her eldest son - one picture for memory's sake. That is the sole tangible item she may have of her eldest son, if she finds the picture amidst the rubble of a high-rise apartment complex.

Her husband passed away a few years ago.. now her son is gone and the other is in hospital. i think about this mother's devotion towards all children, how desperately she and her husband wanted their own biological children, i think of her generosity and love towards everyone... and i struggle to make sense of why this happened to HER, when rapists and murderers walk the streets of Islamabad and every other city, when those who abuse their children manage to do so, when "bad" people are not punished and it seems only the good ones are.

There must be some logic, somewhere, that resides solely in Allah's possession; it is beyond my grasp. i know that the One who planned everything in this universe, the planets' orbits, the moon's phases, the unity and interconnectedness of an ecosystem, must have in His infinite wisdom some reason for this. Even if i do not understand that reason (and i freely acknowledge that i fail to), it should be enough for me to submit that His will be done. To submit, afterall, is to be a Muslim.