It is that time of the year again. There is usually a certain anticipation in the air that is almost palpable. A feeling of jubilation and festivity that so poignantly and fittingly marks the culmination of a month of fasting and introspection. A celebration that unites us as a global community. A time for getting together with family and friends. An opportunity for us to SMS creative messages, wear new clothes, impress each other with our repertoire of culinary expertise, compare notes about work and children and plans for the coming years. A bigger house. A new car. Sending Sami to America for college.
This Eid is different for me though. Somehow, it is hard to entertain a mood of frivolity when the shocking pictures of the earthquake are still fresh in my mind. This Eid my thoughts remain with the people of Pakistan. The unimaginable suffering of those who have nothing to celebrate and no one to share their burden of misery with. The orphans and the destitute who watched as their lives crumbled around them.
For while we engage in trivial banter, feign distress over the most minor of issues and complain about the petty goings-on in our blessed existence, there are people not so far away from here who have to quite literally pick up the pieces of their devastated lives, bury their dead and go on. Carrying with them until they too die the memories of a day that robbed them of their future as we looked on in stunned silence, once again all too soon reminded of our impotence in the face of calamity.
Today I received a phone call from Charlene Gubash, a colleague of mine, who spent three weeks in the affected areas reporting the event.
I listened in humility as she narrated a myriad of tales that spoke of courage and determination in the face of the harshest adversity imaginable. The story of a man whose house had collapsed and had dug with his bare hands through the rubble for two days in the hope of finding his family alive. When he uncovered the body of his wife, he dug three graves. One for her and the others for his daughters he knew he would eventually uncover. He worked ceaselessly until he found another body and then continued in the anticipation of unearthing the third. But then a miracle happened and on the third day he found his child alive. His joy knew no bounds as he carried her barefoot through rough terrain for days, hoping against hope that he would be able to get her the help she so badly needed. Gangrene set into her wound long before they were picked up by a convoy to Islamabad.
As the father watched on during her amputation, he lamented the fact that he was still alive while she suffered and cursed his fate that might now bear witness to losing his only surviving daughter. His will to live relentlessly returned when the operation was declared a success and a Russian orthopedic surgeon prepared her for a prosthetic implant.
One story in particular that made me realize my own innate insignificance was that of a man who had been carrying his injured child through the mountains in the belief that there might be a way of finding medical help at the end of his journey. He braved the elements without provisions or water and only carried a handful of walnuts with him for sustenance. Charlene told me that when he arrived and saw them standing at the end of the pass adjacent to the camp, he immediately outstretched his hand in a remarkable gesture of kindness and offered them his remaining food. Such is the resilience and tremendous fortitude of these people in spite of the unfolding tragedy that has befallen them.
And so the list goes on. A natural disaster of epic proportions that in spite of all our progress, technological advancement and predilection for deluding ourselves into believing that we are masters of our own destiny we had neither the power to anticipate nor prevent. The figure of the dead keeps rising. In the future it will be recorded as a statistic that fails to capture the screams of those buried alive or the cries of those who found the bodies days later. And now with the impending winter, the bitter elements will bring upon the survivors a new torment and agony far worse than that brought upon those who perished before them.
So this Eid, let’s not forget our brothers and sisters in Pakistan who mourn their dead and their living. I believe that as a society we have made an incredibly earnest and selfless contribution toward supporting them in their hour of need, but I also believe that we can always do more to help. So instead of wasting our time and effort on sustaining ostentation and inculcating such idle concepts within our children, let’s dig a little deeper for those who truly need it. For disaster strikes without warning, indiscriminate in its wake.
— Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.
