We Care, But Can We Ever Feel Their Pain ?

Do you have a wooden, or a metal footlocker ?. How about your mother’s
jahaiz kee peti ?. OK, now go empty it out and lock yourself in it. You will
get no food, or water. We are going to dig a hole for you in the backyard
and bury you inside. You might pick-up a few words, but no one is going
to talk to you. It will be sweltering hot during the day and freezing cold at
night. Why don’t we make it interesting and bash your leg into a pulp and
throw in a dozen hungry rodents with you.

How long do you think you could take it in there ?. Suppose, you didn’t
know. Maybe never. What if you knew, you were never getting out of
that box alive ?. That you were going to slowly die in there.

That, is about as close as you or I can come, to experiencing what transpired
upon three hundred thousand people in Pakistan (estimate by Edhi). Think
about the children, tens of thousands of them, who’d normally be afraid to
touch a lil’ spider. We know they lived for days, yelling and crying out for
help from under the rubble. Nobody dug them out. They couldn’t. We all
stood around, helpless.

On BBC, they showed a dad standing near the collapsed building of the
school, where three of his children had died. His name was Ashfaq. He
had been clawing at the rubble and had found his 8 year old daughter,
Momina’s, bookbag. He rummaged through it and brought out her English
Reader Workbook. His eyes getting misty, as he announced to the world,
"My daughter was a very bright student. She always got excellent marks".
He began to leaf through it. "Look!", he pointed a page out to the reporter
and started crying, "10/10". And indeed, there on the workbook, under
the pencilled etchings of the 4rth grader, the teacher had given Momina
a perfect score marked inside a circle.

Sitting between the rubble, Momina’s dad took the notebook and began to
rub the open pages, which no doubt carried a hint of smell he longed to
share, across his face and his eyes. He rocked back and forth, sobbing
uncontrollably in remembrance of his little girl.

This week, I gave more money than I had anticipated giving, hoping that
this great weight on my chest would get a little lighter. Convince myself
that I had ’done all I could’. But it continues to grow. I have tried to find
some joy in my previous pastimes and I get nothing. It’s like chewing on
a boiled chicken: you know it’s chicken, but it tastes like... nothing.