Moving On
by Ambreen Ali

Newsline, October 2006

Journalist, Ambreen Ali, reports from Pakistan about a woman who picks herself up after the devastating October 8 earthquake, and helps others to follow suit.

“Bring me the quilt,” Safiya Tariq instructs her seven-year-old daughter, Mishal. Mishal runs out of the room, stepping over the large crack in the floor and through the broken doorway. She enters a tin shelter and reaches under her mother's bed for the quilt. Usama, her eight-year-old brother, joins her as she returns to their mother. Safiya plants a quick kiss on both their cheeks. Usama gives her big hug, and Safiya whispers a prayer for her children's education and future. She turns her attention to the women, who are watching her closely, eager to learn. Their worn eyes and tattered clothes are witness to the week of rain that has just passed.

It is September, and it has been almost a year since they moved into the tents near Safiya's home in Muzaffarabad. Safiya uses her needle to demonstrate a new sewing technique to the women. She is less than 30 yeas old, but her tired expression makes her look much older. It's been sixth months since she has been teaching and creating handicrafts; last month she met with a buyer in Islamabad, who has placed an order for some material. She is excited about the order, but nervous and unsure of herself. Until this year, Safiya had never worked. Nor had she ever felt the burden of providing for her children.

She glances over at a framed photo of her tall, handsome husband. She had her arm around him in their photo and they were both holding a flower. They were so innocent then, she reflects. The earthquake changed their lives forever. Her husband was buried under a landslide in a market in Muzaffarabad. She was in her in-laws' village with her children, where she suffered a fractured pelvis and broken ribcage. She shudders as she thinks about how her brothers had carried her to the city on a charpai, stopping along the way to check if she was still alive.

Safiya spent two months in Abbottabad's Ayub Medical Complex, where she met Dr. Nauman Akhtar. “If it wasn't for him, I don't know where I'd be,” Safiya says. Dr. Nauman runs the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), operated by the Abbottonian Old Boys Association, and they are providing her transportation and a salary to teach local women handicrafts.

She had been at a complete loss about how she would raise her children without their father. Dr. Nauman encouraged her to use her sewing and stitching skills to make handicrafts. He made a personal promise to market her goods in Islamabad and the U.S., and followed it through.

Her in-laws have basically rejected her, and their eyes are on the money the government provided her for the loss of her husband. Her family has allowed her to stay in their home, but she feels the burden she has created for them. “The DMC cared for me more than my own family did,” she thinks, saddened by the thought. After she recovered last winter, Safiya began working with the Alfalah Welfare Society in Muzaffarabad.

Despite her troubles, she could not stand still while her city was suffering. She was amazed by the number of Pakistanis and international workers who had rushed to volunteer in the tent camps. She too wanted to do something to alleviate the suffering of her sisters in need. She visited other widows, and taught children in the tent camps. So many of them were kidnapped then, she remembers with sorrow. Men even approached Safiya with offers to “take care” of her. She is still disgusted by their boldness in pursuing a mother of two young children.

The women in her sewing class look to Safiya with both hope and admiration. They don't know how much longer they will live in tents, or when the government will provide them land to build on. Some of them have lost their husbands and wonder how they will survive with no education or assets.

As they get up to return to their tents, Safiya realises how enviable her position must be to them. “At least I have a roof over my head,” she says to herself. She has experienced life in the tents. The worst part was uncertainty about tomorrow. When would she have a home? How would she provide for herself and her children? Usama and Mishal play in the corner of the room. Safiya reaches over to the framed photo and asks her children about their father. She will never let them forget him, she has promised herself.

As tears fill her eyes, she notices her children watching her. They were the reason Safiya was teaching the women. The skills she had acquired had given her security about her children's future. Now she wanted to share that knowledge with other women, so that they could also alleviate their own suffering.

Safiya embraces Usama and Mishal, and more for herself than her children, says: “We can't die along with those who have died. Why should we look at the darkness when we can look towards the light? Your father is a shaheed. Happiness is sure to come to us again.”

NOTE: This article was originally published in October 2006 issue of Newsline magazine. It is published here with permission from the author.

Ambreen Ali is a master's candidate and McCormick Tribune Scholar at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. She immigrated to California from Pakistan at the age of five and has maintained an interest in South Asia.