Quaking Foundations

Our first full day in the area, we awoke and walked. Just walked.

Walked, that is, up the hill through the rubble, with an occasional unstable yet usable building filled with people eating or taking their morning tea. Entering the center of town as US ARMY men drive their trucks full of rubble past us, we find utter destruction to put the rest to shame. Buildings toppled on top of one another, typically with a man on top, sledgehammer in hand, pounding away at the remains of the building; which seems as though it's ready to topple inward taking him with it. Several people invite us for tea, but we wait to accept until a man with acceptable English skills emerges.

He explains, among other things, that most of the tents within the city are of people from surrounding villages. The locals from Muzaffarabad proper, he claims, have mostly left for safer havens. That is to say, those within the city are now squatting - refusing to return to their homes in valleys surrounding as the comfort provided by UN rations and support is too good to give up. Eventually, he parts ways from us to go claim his losses at some office up the street.

We see the destination of those trucks flaunting faded American Flag decals - the edge of the road. As if they've adopted the local method of trash disposal, they're simply pouring pieces of destructed buildings down a hill toward the river. Between dumps, women and children scour the rubbish to pull old metal supports out. Presumably, the piles they accumulate will be sold as scrap. They must work quickly, though, as before too long the children on watch up top yell to take cover. They flee for the sides of the ravine, just before more potentially deadly debris flies freely downward.

We meet Wazir and walk together toward the mountain that lost most of its previous form in landslides on October 8. Underneath the newly white debris covering the old brown of nature's facade, lay 100 or more people. Nearby, Wazir's house is now flat save one section teetering precariously on now diagonal supports. He shows us the bed where his uncle ceased to physically be. The bed from which he dug on that morning...that morning that means so much more here than in in the technology that flings information thousands of miles away to potential sympathizers and donors.

He demands that we come into his family's tent and join him for a meal, courtesy, of course, of Kofi Annan. Reluctant to accept the offer to take his much needed provisions, we finally give in only because to provide meals without companionship and interaction, is to provide a lonely existence. We could feel his joy beaming just from our presence there, so we partook in lentils and rice from our seats on slightly damaged couches in the more than sufficient tent. The family's faces - women who couldn't speak our language nor we theirs, yet whose joy was unprecedented - were justification enough.

We walked past his grandmother's grave, and I photographed his grandfather at its side. We walked by the ruins and up to the hill. We peered over the edge of the lookout, where down below a river shrugged off its newest diversion - and where a new lake could have been beautiful though inconvenient had the military not been overzealous in blasting nature back to the status quo. We stood there as he spoke broken Kashmiri English amidst the calming gush of the Neelum in the distance.

As he spoke, I realized that life here is no different than anywhere else. He spoke, "wars. always wars, in 1972 there was East Pakistan. And Kashmir. And 1999 again. Always war, but now it's nature and we always kill eachother but now nature does it too." Death came en masse and created the reaction. But death always comes, eventually, anyway. So now, three months later as we arrive with a subconscious expectation of sorrow, grief, agony; we find mostly life continuing on steadfastly. Even as he points to his family's homes fallen down the mountains, and speaks of the lost loved ones; even as his widowed aunt cooks rice one can feel that despite the hardships and hurdles, they continue to look ahead and not behind. As Wazir lights up when he says our names in that quirky accented way, and as he shows more concern for Jenny's upset stomach than for his own plight, we know that the sorrow we thought we'd see may linger, but it certainly does not dominate. Tonight, again, as a professor of Physics at the University that no longer exists looks at a photograph of the Internet cafe worker's niece, who also no longer physically exists; he simply smiles genuinely and says, "we all have our stories here." Quickly, he moves forward - to invite me to meet with him tomorrow night just to talk, and probably not about the tragedy.

He, as so many others here, do not understand Jenny and my purpose. They cannot comprehend that I've been a vagabond in Asia for almost seven months now, and just happened upon Azad Jammu and Kashmir. They expect that we're with an NGO or, failing that, we're journalists. Even when they realize that we're mere travelers, they act as though we're their personal saviours just for being. The fear of imposing as tourists of disaster is calmed as the simple act of observing, of coming to see their lives, seems to lift their hearts. In many ways, their responses let us believe that our role of wandering the streets waiting for people desiring company to talk to us are as important as the role of the relief workers providing tents to keep them alive. It may be a hard argument to make even to ourselves that we're accomplishing good simply by being - or rather by being open - but the faces tell otehrwise. Even while Kashmiris accept this fact - while an aid worker pleas that though we cannot find a role to help with, we should stay just to "be with them" - we question and search for a more self-fulfilling role.

And that search today brought me to the "Foreigner Registration Tent" where three soldiers did not speak English, but who hailed a UN vehicle which picked me up. I rode with the doctor direction the WHO's regional operations, who arranged access for me to get into the MASH unit of the US Army to speak with the Colonel in charge. The US guards at the inner gate (after one passes through the outer gate and the reinforced bunkers zigzagging the entryway) expressed awe that I just happened to be in Kashmir as a traveler. The officers who the Colonel sent to meet me were much more intimidating than any Asian soldier I've witnessed, and mostly marveled at the quantity of stamps in my passport before telling me that they're currently scaling operations down - no need for more help (especially completely unskilled help).

I head back to the UNICEF office, where the director of the Children's Protection Program lets me use her phone to find out that I still cannot be of use. I dodge three invites for tea, but do eat delicious Kabab, on the way back to the hotel where Jenny is sleeping off her stomach ills quietly. Later, I accept an invite from an old man across the street to join him for tea in our hotel, whereupon I meet the man in the room next door - Assistan Manager of an organization involved in registering tent camps. Tomorrow, it seems, we are to go along and see if we can't get in the way somehow.

The old man's tea quickly turns to dinner down the street, where he buys us an entire chicken to share. I don't know if it would have been so delicious had it not been a gift, but either way it hit the spot perfectly. As if it weren't enough for a man who lost his home a few months ago, and who now lives in terror that the next quake will get him soon to buy me dinner; he insists on providing a bag of fruit for my "wife" in the hotel. Again, there's no stopping him. Asia, and Kashmir, is the epitome of "giving is better than receiving," and nearly everyone lives up to the creed.

Even as we stagnate in our desire to do more, we are forced to recognize that simply caring enough to come is comforting to those who continue with their lives here. Our selfish desire to do good may not be satisfied, but despite our self-imposed criticisms we have done some good.