The Life in the Day
Thursday, 12 October 2006
Ann McFerran writes The Life in the Day that was October 8th 2005 for Shazia Abbasi, 26, when she lost both her husband, Aashiq Hussain, an office clerk, and her six year old daughter, Mehreen.
Today she lives in a tiny hamlet of Rangatai in the mountains above Muzaffarabad with her three children, Rimsha, 9, Omair, 7, and Alishba nine months who she was pregnant with at the time of the earthquake.
"Because it was Ramadan, we’d all got up very early, at 3am to eat so we could fast after sunrise for the day. I cooked lentils and parata which we ate with yoghurt, then everyone went to the mosque at 4.30am.
We returned at 6, when the children got ready for school. As usual the kids were keen to go to school, and my son Omair and my oldest daughter Rimsha were busily
polishing her shoes.
But I'll never forget how on that morning my six year-old daughter Mehreen didn’t really want to go to school.
She argued that she should stay at home because it was a holy day, but I insisted that she go, and so the children all went off to school at about 6.45am.
Now I think if only I'd let her stay at home then she'd be alive today. But I can't change what's happened.
After the children left, my husband asked me if he could bring something for dinner home. I told him it'd be good if he could buy some minced meat which we'd eat, after sunset.
Then, I swept the house and sat with my mother in law, doing the washing up from the big breakfast we'd had. As we sat, scrubbing the pots, I heard what sounded like bees swarming.
Very quickly - and everything happened so very, very quickly - the massive noise came nearer and nearer as though the bees were swarming in the same room and the
ground began to shake and vibrate.
Suddenly it became very dark, there was an enormous crash and the house collapsed all around us. For a moment it seemed as if the mountains were crashing down all around us and on top of us - and they were.
I was terrified, and falling all over the place, and I fell clutching onto the ground. "It's Doomsday, I thought, I have died and so have my children. This must be the end of the world."
As I prayed, my mother-in-law crawled to my side and we cried and held on to each other, reciting the Koran. The earth was still trembling but we knew we hadn't died because we were with each other.
When the shaking began to subside we pulled ourselves up, my mother in law said, "Don't worry about me; go and find your children. But I was so shocked I had no strength in my legs.
My children were in different schools, so my brother-in-law went to one school where he found Omair and Rimsha quite quickly, who were OK.
Not so his own daughter, my niece. When he pulled the little girl’s body out of the rubble she still had a piece of chewing gum in her mouth; she must have been eating it
when the earthquake struck.
I'm not sure how I did it but somehow I found my way to Mehreen's school where a horrifying scene lay before my eyes. What was once a school had become a graveyard.
People, mostly parents, but grandparents and relations too, were weeping and crying, grabbing at the rubble and stones, trying desperately to dig out children.
Later we would learn that out of 400 children in that school, only 50 survived. Some of the bodies still haven't been found.
I couldn't cope; my brother in law told me that he'd carry on looking while I came back home to tend to the other children; now my only memory now is of us all weeping and crying.
At 2pm my brother-in-law returned from the school, carrying a body which he laid in my arms. "I've found your daughter," he said.
It was Mahreen's body; her face was completely crushed.
I'm not sure if it was that moment, or a couple of hours later when my husband's brothers appeared carrying his body, that I went a bit crazy.
My husband had been killed outright by a falling wall as he sat in his office.
As his brothers tried to get to him in his office they knew he was in there, because the could smell the Brut aftershave that he liked to wear; I'd sprayed it on him myself that morning. His watch said 2.47pm but he'd died several hours earlier.
Something happened to my brain and my heart that afternoon.
To tell the truth I've no memory of what happened in the rest of that terrible day. Nor for most of the next four months.
Most of the time I didn't know what I was doing, or what day it was, or what time it was. I think the only way I got through the whole thing was my family who have helped me so much that eventually, I've been able to return, very very slowly, to some sort of normality.
They kept saying to me, "Shazia, you must survive, for the sake of your children."
What I know now is how hard simple day to day survival was for my family and for our community. They are all poor people who worked hard, but they'd lost everything in the earthquake - families, homes, jobs, everything we owned.
I know how much we were helped in those early days and still today, by international ngos like Concern Worldwide. They gave us food and water; with tents and mattresses.
The strange thing is that our house was one of the very few which was not completely demolished in the earthquake but all the other houses around us were.
So today most of our friends are still living in tents. So I know that many people in our community are even worse than me, in that they've lost loved ones and their homes.
On l9th January 2006, I gave birth to my youngest child - an orphan - and today, just looking after the baby helps me recover.
You see, my marriage was not arranged; it was a love match. I miss my husband so much. I always helped him get ready for the office in the morning, and in the evening after work, I'd cook for him separately, so then we’d spend time together.
Now I miss him all the time but particularly late at night and when I wake up in the morning.
Sometimes, then, for that first split second I think that he and Mehreen are still alive. Then I remember what happened.
At certain times in the last year, I wished that I'd died too in the earthquake, but my relations say to me "God has kept you alive to look after your children."
Today I am helped by my father-in-law but he has many people to provide for and only a very little money - he earns 6500 rupees a month - about £55. I worry about supporting my children, about paying for their school uniforms, about how we’ll manage in the future. What can we do?
I've cried for everyone, for the people who lost, for our friends who've lost their loved ones and homes, for myself.
But it's said that Allah checks his loved ones by putting us on trial. Perhaps now he can see the strength of our patience."
