ISLAMABAD, 1 March 2006 — Their vanquished eyes tell a story of horror, pain and estrangement that engulfed their existence in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Kashmir last October. Their words flow hesitantly at first but soon the burden and the worry overwhelms them. These are the widows and orphans whose lives have been completely overturned, their simple homes — that until then were their refuge — destroyed and they were left alone. Suddenly and horribly, children as young as three months and women as old as eighty were the only survivors of their families. At the Aashiana Shelter, a large housing compound on the outskirts of Islamabad, over 500 orphans and some 75 widows spend their days remembering their families and the life they had, pondering their future.
Aashiana, or “Nest”, is President Pervez Musharraf’s rehabilitation initiative for destitute women and orphans. The compound belonged to the Hubco electricity company and was offered as shelter for widows and orphans left homeless and on their own. It opened on Nov. 10 with 408 rooms, a hospital, a school, a mosque, utility stores, a kitchen and a mess hall where everyone gathers to eat three times a day. The project is being run for the most part by the Khubaib Foundation, a Pakistani independent non-profit, non-government welfare organization that serves prisoners, orphans as well as Afghan and Kashmiri refugees in Pakistan. The Turkish IHH Foundation also assists in running the project.
At Aashiana, Khubaib also provides clothing, food and medical supplies. There are 150 staff employees of Khubaib and two IHH volunteers serving there; they include a 24-hour medical team, 16 teachers for grades one to ten, a school principal, social workers and administrators. There is also a vocational training center for women and older children and an activities center. Every eight to ten children are housed together with a caretaker, boys and girls separate, and there are residence blocks for families. “We arrange visits every fifteen days to Kashmir for whoever wants to go. Relatives are allowed to visit here, too,” director Sadia Naseem told Arab news.
A five-year-old girl was brought to the hospital by a social worker; she had crushed her finger in one of the merry-go-rounds on the playground. As the nurse applied the stinging medication, the girl held her tears, not a sound came out of her even though she was obviously in pain; her face red, a look of despair in her eyes, but perhaps after so much suffering, she had no more tears left to shed. The social workers spoke about the many cases of post-traumatic stress disorders they had observed, withdrawal and other psychological problems suffered by the women and children in their care.
The boys stop their cricket game and follow us with their eyes as we walk around the compound, and become a distraction from their alienated, routine life as survivors of natural disaster.
Some of the younger children gather curiously around us like any child and pose for a picture, trying on a smile that does not reach their eyes. We stop to talk to some of the women in their two-meter by two-meter rooms with two single beds plus a smaller adjacent room divided into a storage and bathroom. Bulshad Bibi stays in one of these rooms with her mother-in-law Ein Fatima and her two children, Mariam, 3, and one-year-old Farhan. Her father and six siblings died in the earthquake; her mother is in one of the tent refugee camps and has not seen her since the earthquake and neither has her husband who is in the army. She and her husband were about to move into their new house, which was wiped out in the earthquake leaving the house which they had never lived in to be paid for. Her son was at a neighbor’s house with another child when the earthquake hit; the roof collapsed and the other child was thrown out and killed while her son survived miraculously under the rubble. Ein Fatima lost six of her children, her husband and twenty other relatives. They have some surviving relatives who chose to stay in their villages, despite the destruction and snow, in order to protect their property from unscrupulous individuals who might have taken advantage and laid claim to it. The government and relief organizations have provided them with tents and material to build shelters.
In another room, Razia, 55, who looked seventy, sits in the dark staring into the distance. She is the only survivor in her family. She lost her husband, four daughters and their husbands, three grandsons and a brother who was visiting from Muscat. “When she first came, she used to cry all the time and fight with everyone. She was severely depressed and traumatized,” said Uzma Zameer, one of the social workers. She was working in the fields when the earthquake hit early in the morning; all her family members were sleeping inside their homes and she tried to reach them to get them out but could not.
“I have no one to feed me, no one to take care of me, no one to bury me. This is my family now; they have taken good care of me. I never want to go back, I want to stay here until I die,” she said in a feeble voice.
Aashiana is supposed to be a temporary solution but it could last for ten years, according to Naseem.
Some of the orphans were taken by the Ministry of Social Affairs to greet Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah when he visited Pakistan last month. The ministry was given the responsibility of settling and rehabilitating the orphans and widows and other destitute groups.
“It’s going well. There is a survey going on which will provide actual numbers and figures,” said Zubaida Jalal, federal minister for social affairs and special education.
One of the first orders made is a ban on all adoptions because there is a fear that young girls and boys will be exploited, trafficked and abused. Aashiana and other shelters which will be set up close to the affected areas so that the women and children can be close to their homes and relatives are temporary until they are provided with homes.
“We’re setting up programs for those staying with their extended families. This amounts to financial support until they are mature enough and have some kind of education to enter a profession and support the family,” said Zubaida.
As for the children and adults who were disabled, they have been provided with artificial limbs and programs for rehabilitation and training.
“These are children who were in regular schools; to put them into a school for the disabled will have a social and psychological effect on them so the best thing is to include them and make them part of mainstream schools.
This requires some special arrangements,” said Zubaida. The most severe cases of disability are the paraplegic patients and spinal cord injuries; there are about 700 cases of amputees, 67 percent of them being women and girls as young as 13. Various organizations are providing them with therapy, rehabilitation and skills-development so that they can be independent.
The earthquake in October, lasting only a few seconds, has had consequences that will be a part of many people’s lives for as long as they live.
