A Paradise Lost
A
Divine Destruction
by Aamir Ghauri is published by Xenos UK Ltd, price £25.
It is a verbal-visual narrative of the South Asian
earthquake that destroyed large
parts of
Pakistani-administered Kashmir
and Northern Pakistan.
Parts of Indian - administered Kashmir were also hit.
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On 8 October, 2005, South Asia
was rocked by a mighty earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter
scale. Its epicenter lay in the Pakistani-administered
Kashmir. In the worst natural disaster to hit the area, the
tectonic ripples shook the landscape full of mighty mountains
and glorious gorges with such ferocity that human dwellings
tumbled like autumn leaves.
Non-official death count came
close to 100,000. Millions were rendered homeless and
thousands lay amputated in the makeshift medical camps that
sprung up all over Kashmir.
Cities and towns were completely
destroyed. Their destruction of historic towns was powerfully
portrayed by The Guardian as;
Balakot looks like a town
that has been eaten alive. The convulsion buckled the earth,
chewed up buses and levelled practically every building in
sight. Nobody can provide the death toll because there is
nobody to ask. The mayor, the police chief, the magistrate –
all swallowed up by the earth.
No doubt the earthquake deleted
whole generations but it failed to crush the human spirit. The
bravery of Kashmiri and Pakistani people was evident from the
mobile phone text messages that they sent to each other within
days of their loss. One of such messages at the culmination of
the Muslim holy month of Ramadan read:
Shattered homes, shocked faces, scattered
people, stony eyes, toppled tombstones and desolation
everywhere. Anyway – Eid Greetings.
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EARTHQUAKE |
A Divine Destruction
is an attempt by journalist Aamir Ghauri and
photographer Sohail Anjum to record
permanently those moments that destroyed a paradise
on earth. But more than that, it is an attempt to
highlight the plight of the people of Kashmir and
northern Pakistan who were told by their rulers that
their destruction was an act of God.
Ghauri and Anjum tell the unfinished story of the
Kashmir earthquake, from the time the news broke to
the snows of winter. They show the reality of life
for survivors as they searched for their families,
for the thousands of children undergoing surgery,
for those who mourned loved ones and tried to get
back to some sort of normality.
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