| Can there be anything more heartbreaking in the life of a young nation than that it should have to bury its young? |
| Can anything portray more vividly the horror of the dreadful earthquake that shook almost every part of Pakistan on the 8th of October than the image of bright-faced Kashmiri children, entering their schoolrooms that morning and then being suddenly suffocated under an avalanche of concrete? |
| One death in a family is a trauma. The death of an entire family can be described as a tragedy. The decimation of entire villages becomes a statistic. And today, when the death toll mounts higher and higher as the rescue teams move higher and higher up into the northern reaches of our devastated country, the human mind cannot comprehend the enormity of the national loss in human lives. Is the roll call of the dead 40,000? Or is it 50,000? Or could it be as high as 60,000? Only Death who took the final roll call that fateful morning and God who received their souls know. We who remain can only mourn. [EXTRACT] |
| Publsihed in DAWN 18 Oct. 2005, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
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