Srinagar, October 13
On their little faces is a bewildered resilience, a stoical acceptance that belies their age. But it is a veneer that crumbles suddenly when the painkillers can no longer hold off the searing pain from broken bones. And they cry, heart-rendingly, and no one can do anything about it. They are the child victims of Saturday’s quake, lying on the beds at the Government Hospital for Bone and Joint in Srinagar.
Bibi Sughra is just three years old, and she is smiling — sketching little figurines with a green sketch pen on a notebook given by her father. She is shy and ducks your gaze. But her hip is broken.
The little girl was running out of her home in Kandi, Tangdhar, one of the worst affected areas on the Indian side of the Line of Control. She had almost managed to get out, when the wooden door fell on her. Bibi Sughra suddenly tries to get up, and her right leg does not move at all. She clutches it, and the sobbing begins.
Her father, Shakeel Ahmad Qureshi, is a driver. “My two other children escaped as they were outside when the earth shook. She was inside somewhere and we did not even know. She got scared when the shaking started and she ran out”.
Experts say that rule number one of surviving an earthquake is not to run out of the house, but duck under a heavy table or bed. Surely, she could not have known this. Even many educated persons were unaware of this precautionary step.
But then, it did not matter when the quake razed everything to the ground, burying everyone in ruble.
“In one minute verything was over. I was in the fields, and I fell down. A rolling boulder hit my hip, and when I looked back up, not a house was standing” says septuagenarian Saifulla.
In Teetwal, Karnah, 12 year-old Azra was taking care of her elder sister’s seven-month-old baby, rocking her in her hands. Says her uncle, Mohammad Arif, an Imam in Srinagar.
“The shaking was so violent, she was actually flung out of the house”. Flung? “Yes, she was thrown outside”. What about the infant in her hands? Arif replied: “She died.”
Azra now does not say anything. She suffered injuries on her jaw. She lies quietly next to the mother of the baby, her elder sister Tabassum. She is injured, too.
They were all airlifted to Srinagar by an Army chopper.
The Imam is all praise for the Army. “Without them, many more would have died. They are doing a great job. Tirelessly, they were taking out people, one after another”.
