Kashmir

Noraseri – Majlis in Noraseri

March 22, 2006 Roof top gathering Yesterday was the Chehlum, the forty day of the mourning period of the death of Imam Hussain, the third Imam of Shia Muslim sect. Farman Shah telephoned to our office and invited me to join the majlis which would be held in his house. Farman Shah lived in Noraseri, not far from our camp in the village. Farman Shah and his family were all from Shia sect, the Aliwallahs. Majlis, the speech which was held everyday during the mourning period of Muharram until Chehlum, would deliver the story of the death of Imam Hussain. And more than often, the speech brought tears to all of the audience. The Chehlum majlis, as the Ashura majlis (the death day of the Imam) was among the biggest and the most important. I departed early in the morning from Muzaffarabad together with Tajjamal (I called him Taj Mahal), a guy from Noraseri who lived in Muzaffarabad. He came early in the morning, when I was not prepared yet and was still shocked by the whole day of Chehlum self-beating and self-torturing. He rushed me, I was rushed. The transport was not easy either. There was no bus going [...]

March 22, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Chehlum

March 21, 2006 It’s real blade The mourning of the death of the Prophet’s grandson, Hazrat Hussain, who was killed in a war in Qarbala, 1400 years ago, still continued until the fortieth day after Ashura. It was 20 Safar, 40 days after 10 Muharram, the final day of all of the mourning. I had experienced the Ashura celebration in Lahore, which was an astonished experience. For Chehlum, I had it in Muzaffarabad. I came quite early in the morning, 12 noon, to the Shia mosque near the chowk of Medina Market. The mosque itself was not big, signified by the black huge flag, distinctive of Shia mosques. An attendant there said that before the earthquake, the mosque was always crowded during this time of the year. But now, many of the believers had gone. Indeed, the majlis was not crowded, the people who came was only about a quarter of the number the space can handle. The majlis speech, delivered in language more about the same as Urdu, also brought the listeners to hysteria. Ya Hussain e The mourning parade in earthquake zone I was escorted by Hamdani, claimed himself as a policeman, to go around the mosque while [...]

March 21, 2006 // 2 Comments

Noraseri – A Story from Basyir’s Family

New home, new hope March 18, 2006 After five consecutive months living in emergency tents, finally, Mr. Basyir had the chance for a celebration: a move to the new shelter. The Danish Muslim Aid, an NGO from Denmark, had provided the family with the building material, and three men from the family worked hard every day to build their new home, the new place to shelter the hopes and dreams remained after everything was devastated by the disaster. Mr. Basyir was a typical example of the suffering victims of the disaster which rocked South Asia on October 8, 2005. The family, once consisted of the parents and ten children, now was smaller. Basyir had had six sons and four daughters. Three died. All boys. And the boys were the youngest in their family. The scars of the tragedy still rooted very deep on Mrs. Basyir. Her youngest boy looked like a Chinese boy, when he was alive. That youngest son was only two years old, and he was not recovered under the rubbles of the house. Mr. Basyir said that his wife cried on the first day she saw me, due to my Oriental face which reminded her to her [...]

March 18, 2006 // 0 Comments

Gilgit – The Story of My Visa

Some tricks are needed to get a new visa extension March 9, 2006 Sorry for being snobby about visa, but I dont know why I have to be the poorest creature to be created to always have tragedies with visa, especially in this trip. From the Indian visa in Nepal, Pakistan visa in India, and now, Pakistan visa extension. As what I was believing, Pakistan visa was easy to extend, as the country is promoting tourism now. My visa was about a week left when I was in Muzaffarabad, and Rashid, the guy from our NGO, said that if that possible, than it would be very easy to extend. He just came back from Islamabad Monday 6th, and on Tuesday we started our ‘visa extension struggle’. First of all, instead of directly went to the DC Office where the extension and passport paperworks are done, we visited the Muzaffarabad SSP (I dont know what this stand for), the man with highest position in police department in Muzaffarabad. U know, in Pakistan you can go anywhere with connection. Knowing someone in the high position is always a good thing. Mr Kurshid, the Muzaffarabad SSP, is a very friendly man with very [...]

March 9, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Sea of Tents

Sea of tents March 4, 2006 The city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, sprawls along two important rivers in Pakistan, Niilam and Jhelam. The two rivers meet in the heart of the city, where the economic activities of the city concentrated. The main road stretched from the north through Chella Bandi area until the ‘Secretariat’ area, of total 4 kms of length. Muzaffarabad is hilly city, the roads are all ‘uupar niche’ (up and down), with several steep cliffs (many were collapsed due to the earthquake 5 months earlier) and ladder provided to pedestratians to up the hill. Was the main landmark and tourist attraction of the city, the historical Red Fort or Lal Qila is now a bunch of red stones. The remains of the fort, walls now not more than 2 metres tall, are still standing on the top of small hill near Chella Bandi. The shops and houses are also still showing the scars of disasters, with orphaned children beggar sleeping on the street, exhausted of waiting alms from the pedestrians. The shop owners are apparently going back to their shops, despite the risk that the shops may collapse at any single possible [...]

March 4, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – World Hartal Day

Protesters yelling “Death to America”, in front of a banner stating that help from an American fondation is highly appreciated March 3, 2006 Friday, March 3, 2006, was supposed to be the world strike day to protest the Danish cartoon. I didn’t know whether it was indeed done universally, but at least it was nation-wide in Pakistan, and included in this quake torn capital of AJ&K, Muzaffarabad. The experience of unrest in Lahore gave me a fore thinking, that anything could happen in so-called ‘peaceful protests’. The boy from the office accompanied me along the way, and I was wearing my Indonesian peci for my national identity, not to be misunderstood as Chinese and Japanese. From the information I gathered, the whole city would be under strike situation, where all shops were supposed to be closed and no public transport operating. But even though most shops were closed, those which kept doing business were not few anyway. And many restaurants were open, and food were not scarce at all (compared to total hartal in Lahore in previous experience). I have heard that the demonstration (Urdu: jurus) started from the University, but it was very quiet there. Wrong information. Series of [...]

March 3, 2006 // 2 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Farewell Party

A lavish farewell party in a ‘hotel’ (aka restaurant) in Muzaffarabad March 1, 2006 The NGO work is almost to an end. It has started since the disaster, and now everybody in the relief team was going to go back to their life. Most of the team members were temporary members, working for 1 month or so, but some like the Gillanis, were here since October last year. As today was a new day of a new month, the members were reducing again. The guys planned to have a farewell party in Muzaffarabad to say good bye to some of leaving members. The transport to go back to the province capital was not easy, and after waiting almost about an hour, we successfully ‘hijacked’ a Suzuki bus. The lunch was in Muzaffarabad Cantonment area, with splendid fried rice, roti, mutton curry, and the pink coloured Kashmiri tea. I really regretted to come very late, that the work is almost to an end. The NGO would be still in the area up till the third week of this month, and there would be still some work to do to make documentation of the shelter homes in Patikha. But for these some [...]

March 1, 2006 // 1 Comment

Noraseri – An Exhausting Day

New development in the earthquake zones February 28, 2006 Mahmood Gillani, who possesses a strange habit to only spoke Urdu when there was the sun and spoke other strange tribal languages to me in other time, just came back a night before from Islamabad. The road was open. The work of clearing the road from the blocks was done very rapidly, thanks to the heavy machine donated by ‘the people of Japan’. Electricity was supposed to come yesterday, as the weather was clear. But it came very late, so that the plan to watch porn movie with young boys from neighborhood was cancelled. And I also met a young guy who was very desperate in kissing and hugging me. I gave my palm for him to kiss, but not my face (yet). The porn watching plan was replaced by sexy gabshab (sexy talk), where the goftgu (conversation) was dominated by sex topics. The boys here not only put sexual jokes verbally, but also physically, like hugging and kissing. It was really hard to determine their sexual orientation somehow, lol. Our work is to distribute the so-called CGI sheets to the survivors As yesterday there were not many shelter homes that [...]

February 28, 2006 // 1 Comment

Noraseri – From the Rubbles

Tent school February 27, 2006 The discussion about Playboy magazine somehow had brought strange dreams to me. I dreamt of some Indonesian girls wearing traditional transparent kebaya dress, unbottomed, half-naked, and … . Hmmm …. Somehow, living too long time in Pakistan had made me more wilder in sex fantasies. Next to our camp there was a rubbles of collapsed school building. There was another blue tent with huge Chinese characters: For Disaster Emergency Use. This is the temporary school tent for the students. The students started their class at 8:45, singing a chorus outside the tent, and then got into the big blue tent. Today I started to visit the project of the NGO with Mr Ijaz Gillani and Mr Manzoor. Our NGO, an NGO from Denmark, bearing the name ‘Danish’which might be hated by the fundamentalists due to the red hot Danish cartoon issue. We prefer to spell ‘Danish’ as DUN-NISH, to avoid misunderstanding, as ‘Danish’ with this spelling is a popular Pakistani name as well. The NGO project is to build 500 shelter homes in these mountainous areas. Now some projects were finalized and our work was to make documentation of the homes. The track up the [...]

February 27, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Tent Life

Morning ritual of the volunteers February 26, 2006 The rain which was started the day before yesterday and lasted for more than 30 hours had just stopped at midnight. The sky was still dark in the morning, and I had problem with my camera lens. I don’t know how to clean the lens, and because of overusing under the rain, the lens had vapors on it, and the pictures taken were not sharp. Any input from other photographers is expected. The morning life is always hilarious in our camp. Everybody started the day by shaving the moustache (the Pakistanis prefer to use the plural form of the noun – moustaches, possibly mean the upper and lower part of the moustache, as it indeed means ‘two different parts’ – the men tend to preserver the upper and clean shave the lower), washing faces with the warm water, and brushing teeth with a stick of a certain tree. I prefer not to do anything to clean myself in this cold weather (learnt this bad habit from China), and pimples appeared in every single millimeter of my face. The rain has brought some landslides. Yes, we are living in landslide area, where the [...]

February 26, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Funeral

Haji Shahab just passed away few hours earlier February 25, 2006 Here, 17 kms away from Muzaffarabad, is hilly areas surrounded by snow-peaked mountains. From here, the glorious snowy mountains of Nanga Parbat can be seen in clear days, flying in the blue sky, towering and dominating the atmosphere. Here is the mountain area of Noraseri, where the NGO I am working with has several projects of building permanent shelters for the earthquake victims. And my work is to take documentation pictures of the projects. But the rain has started since yesterday night, not so big, but continuosly. The weather in the morning was very cold, that everybody in the camp had to halt any works. The rain has made the trekking path in the villages dangerous. And indeed, this is the best weather to just stay lazy and sleep in the tents (not intending to be lazy though… but given chance by the weather ). Gool Muhammad, the cook, who has experience of working in Greece (Urdu: Yunan, Indonesian: Yunani) was a very excellent cook, and he deserved to boast his ability. I was staying in a tent together with some ‘seniors’ of the team. Aslam Shahab, a Pakistani [...]

February 25, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Five Months after the Disaster

Muzaffarabad, 5 months after the disaster February 23, 2006 So, at last I am going to Kashmir, the earthquake affected area. The departure was with an NGO, Dannish Muslim Aid. The organization name bears the name of the country mostly infavorable in many Muslim countries. Rashid, the guy from the NGO told the driver, a Pakthan from Peshawar, to say that we were from ‘Ganesh’ instead of ‘Danish’ whenever anybody ask. Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Azad= Free), one third of Kashmir which is under Pakistan control, is a winding 4 hour journey through the Murree Road. For Rashid, the trip was extremely unbearable. He tried to make himself fall asleep instead of tortured in the “uppar-niche” – up and down journey. Murree itself is among popular place for vacation for locals, as there are several tourist buses passing the area. And the Punjab province meets its end in the border town of three provinces: Punjab, NWFP, and Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK). In Daval, the main road runs between two big rivers, on the left is the NWFP and on the right is AJK. The road goes until the end of Punjab, just before a bridge connecting [...]

February 23, 2006 // 0 Comments

Rawalpindi – Earthquake Relief

Margala Tower, destroyed by the earthquake February 4, 2006 As trusted before, my visit to Pakistan is to be a volunteer for the earthquake relief. But due to the sickness I got, I still havent started any single movement. I felt guilty myself, when my friends asked start asking, hey, when you go to the earthquake areas, or you look like also a tourists. Nobody to blame, but being late is always better than nothing. I got several contacts of NGOs working in earthquake areas since my arrival in Pakistan. And today I just got the first chance to visit Dannish Muslim Aid, which was happily received me to be a volunteer and go to Muzaffarabad. The manager, Mr Syed Abid Gilani is just a friendly and helpful man, showed me the pictures of the victims of the earthquake and the work they are doing. The happening was quite similar to that in Indonesia, the tsunami in Aceh, but the terrain here is much more difficult as it happened in the mountainous areas, while Aceh terrain is much more plain. The high mountains, those over 6000 m, just bumped into the villages, swept everything on it, and the scars are [...]

February 4, 2006 // 0 Comments

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