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Mahwish Batool doesn't want to talk to me. She's a bit emotionally roughed-up at the moment, and some grinning Western idiot waving a mic in her face is the last thing she needs. I have the feeling that our (me, Nina, Laura, Umer) presence here — and our request to shadow her — comes as a bit of an unwelcome surprise. Mahwish has just gotten back from visiting her family in Islamabad. A few weeks ago, they swapped tent life here in Muzaffarabad for a friend's home and shelter in the capital. But the move separated Mahwish from her eight-month-old son, now more or less being raised by her mother and husband. Save the errant break from her job, she only sees him in digital video and photos on her cell phone. I get the sense she wants to quit her job to be with him more but I can't say for sure. She's protesting in Urdu to the gentle coaxing of Abid Aslam, the U.N. WFP public-affairs man trying to convince her that we won't get in her way. Or not to quit. As the discussion goes on inside their tent, I stand outside watching the dawn light stain the landslide scars of the Muzaffarabad mountains raw pink. It's freezing.
Mahwish still calls Muzaffarabad home, even though much of her neighborhood was leveled. Her house managed to withstand the quake that pulverized this city, but major structural damage made "refugees" of her and her family, who don't know if the place is even livable anymore. Before the disaster hit, Mahwish had been working for a small office of the U.N. WFP; Kashmir unfortunately had its own starvation problems for years. But living roughly 15 kilometers from the epicenter changed her life dramatically. In addition to now being responsible for feeding hundreds of orphans and tent-city kids through coordinating and distributing dates, biscuits, water and milk, she has also become her family's sole breadwinner, because she is the only one with a paying, post-quake job. At 24, we thought her story would make her a good interview subject. We came hoping to interview different NGO workers running the gamut of aid work — military and non-military — medical, building shelters, food, water and latrine systems. We were hoping to cobble together their stories and show what the big tasks at hand were before winter. I am happy when she reluctantly agrees.
Mahwish insists on some conditions before we roll: We let her do all of her runs in the morning to coordinate food deliveries to different tent sites. Then she will give us an interview. We shake on it and set off. As we get to know each other better, she warms up quickly, although she is still very soft-spoken and shy. After making her initial first stop, however, she has our driver wheel us around to one particularly decimated neighborhood to survey the destruction. "Can you imagine," she says, "coming down and seeing this neighborhood immediately after the quake and having no idea what the rest of the city looked like? People thought the world had ended." It looks that way even now. The most common sight is what I have come to dub the "International Pancaked" house, totally leveled sophisticated buildings whose roofs cover them daintily. Mahwish gives us a tour of town, stopping at all the places that ever meant something to her: her office, her home, the hospital where she had her son. They've all been smashed. "I hope people come back to this city," she says. "It is not the buildings but the people that make it." I try say something encouraging to her, but she looks unconvinced.
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Photo: MTV News
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Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Photo Diary
After The Storm
After The Tsunami