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Rubble(continued) 5. It was a whirlwind: It turned out that only the Yellow Fever vaccination
was required, and they'd forego the ten-day-before-travel stipulation
because it was a humanitarian emergency. Since I was going into the
mountains, I didn't need to bring malaria meds, and my TB, typhoid,
and diphtheria were all up to date, due to my overzealous doctor last
spring when there was a TB scare on campus. Then: the passport double-checked, tickets bought, racing to Manhattan
to have travel waivers signed, a twenty-three hour flight endured (longer
than expected because of weather — Rashid trying to sleep or just
staring out the window), and Jinnah International Airport reached. Bustling,
hot, exciting. Working our way through the crowded baggage claim with its unfamiliar
noisy conversations, pungent smells, and fiery colors, Rashid was greeted
in a rapid fire exchange by his well-off Karachi cousins, two handsome
men (one wearing a gray sherwani over Western slacks, the other in an
embroidered brown prince suit) and a stunning woman in a bright yellow
kameez. Clearly, looks ran in the family. "Roy, these are my cousins — my aunt's three children. This
is Noor." I shook the hand she offered. "Like the beautiful queen."
She nearly had Rashid's smile. "And Qadir" — in gray — "and Shadaf"
— in brown. Firm handshakes. We all shared the taxi to the aunt's house. An overnight stay, with
a real bed, after such a long flight. Staring at the ceiling in my room in a house large enough to accommodate
several guests, the only word coming to me was dislocation. Even after
a few hours, nothing seemed quite familiar — the heat; the food
— tandoor-fired meats, incendiary curries, syrup-soaked sweets;
the strong tea; the often loud, in-your-face conversation. And now,
late at night, the sounds of the street crept in through the lattice
windows and the shadows of traffic swept across the walls abstractly.
Dislocation. And though we all spoke of the quake and its horrors over our dinner
in a downtown restaurant, neither the cousins nor the aunt seemed ready
to join us on our trek. Rashid didn't pursue the topic, either. Was
there something I didn't know about? Perhaps a class distinction? A
family squabble? Was there something political going on that I shouldn't
know about? I kept quiet; perhaps I'd find out. Someday. Regardless of the cause, the family's friendly (but distant) attitude
towards Rashid added to that sense of feeling unanchored, far from Long
Island. After a few hours, I finally fell into a restless sleep, only
to be awakened by a knock on the door. It was May 10. We shared a breakfast — Naan and other kinds of
breads with thick yogurt, and more of that dense tea. Before we left,
I gave the aunt a little crystal bud vase I'd brought with me from New
York as a token, which the aunt loved and which seemed to impress Rashid,
or so his tiny nod of acknowledgement seemed to say. Then we were off. Rashid and I traveled (each with a duffle bag) as
far as we could by rail before we transferred over to four-wheel transport.
That was late in the evening. There were about a dozen of us heading to the high country — squeezed
into four vehicles driven by beefy-looking men in United Nations uniforms.
We had to explain several times at different checkpoints why we were
going to Chital. At midnight we stopped. Too dangerous. Snipers. Thieves.
We stayed in a hostel along the road — dirt floors, thin mattresses,
a toothless proprietor who seemed friendly. We did this for another day. Pakistan isn't a huge country, but it
took forever to get near the northwestern frontier, and the further
in we got, the worse the roads. The lush green of the south was replaced
with the stark, gritty tones of a mountainous region. The earthquake
had completely torn the highways apart in many places — asphalt,
gravel and boulders scrabbled together, remnants of cars and trucks
mangled beneath rock slides, streams now running where a Jeep might
have just a couple of weeks ago. The last night, before the U.N. helicopters came for us, we slept in
a makeshift relief camp. Someone kept a fire going till dawn. The smell
of burning wood somehow gave me comfort. Stretched out, alone in the tent, the feelings flared up again: Here
I was, thousands of miles from my apartment; thousands of miles from
friends, students, classrooms; thousands of miles from anything familiar
— food, clothes, a bed, a sink, a toilet. This wasn't just another
camping jaunt in the Adirondacks. I was in the middle of a political
hot zone. The embassy papers described me as an American going to "provide
aid to a close friend of the family." I smiled at that: From last
October to now — from morning coffee to "close family friend"
— from animal attraction to... What? Doing a good deed half a planet
form home? Helping a fellow human being in need? What the fuck was this?
I chuckled aloud: Hell of a time to be asking. From somewhere in the mountains I swore I heard gunfire, but told myself
it was kindling popping in the fire. It was the only way I could get
myself to sleep.
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