“Pakistan is drowning.”
I’ve seen that phrase countless times this week. I rewatch the same reels and videos, over and over again. Clips that portray the vastness of the current climate crisis—buildings collpasing, folks literally swiming on what is supposed to be land while being rescued in bedframes, millions displaced, dogs being saved from massive holes in the ground, and tears. So many tears.
Pakistan is drowning, and so are its people. One thousand lives lost, because of an insurmountable climate disaster, exacerbated by rich white men and global banks. Triggered by rich people’s love of SUVs, fossil fuels, beef, and other forms of unnatural and selfishly dangerous methods of extracting natural resources. The earth has been pillaged, and innocent, poor folks continue to pay the price for it.
I remember the harrowing affects of the 2010 flooding. I was in Karachi at the time, and to some extent, flooding during the monsoon season was normalized in my mind. While in Karachi, or the few years I lived in Lahore—going to school or anywhere in a car that manouvered through at least a foot or two of brown, murky water, was the norm during the summer months. I even considered it exciting.
But I was privileged, and grew up in houses and travelled in cars that were designed to stand as solidly as possible. Not once, throughout earthquakes, bomb blasts, or flashfloods and hailstorms, did I ever think my home would collapse or be taken away from me.
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Five years before the 2010 floods was the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. I still think about it sometimes. For years after, my skin would crawl and my heart would palpitate at the feel of the ground move or shake. Even though I live in Canada now—if a snow removal truck is on my street (they tend to make the entire street vibrate), I wake up in panic. Muzaffarabad was tragically hit, as was Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Around 86,000 were killed, while millions displaced.
It’s considered the most brutal earthquake in South Asia, with a magnitude of 7.6. People in Afghanistan and Tajikstan could feel it too.
Islamabad is three and a half hours away from Muzaffarabad, the site of the where the plates had shifted. Windows cracked, paintings and other ornaments fell, and some houses had it worse than others—but all in all, me and majority of the people I knew, were safe. It was protocol to run out of the house if there was ever an earthquake, forget whether you were wearing shoes or trousers. Just run.
However, it isn’t surprising our sector E-7/F-7/F-6 homes were largely untouched and preserved. On the other hand, one of the towers of a well-known apartment building, Margalla Towers, had collapsed on itself and its residents. 78 people died and over a hundred were injured. Many people remained trapped for days. A close family friend was trapped under the rubble, and it took days to dig her out.
People used their hands to dig through the rubble, nevermind their cracked and bleeding fingers. I was asked to volunteer on behalf of SOS Villages about an hour North of Islamabad, and I brought toys and snacks for child survivors of the earthquake. I saw them in their hospital beds, bruised and bandaged, and painfully vulnerable. It was one of the first times I questioned God’s existence.
The Margalla Towers was the only structure in Islamabad—a city built by and for Pakistan’s wealthy elite—that had fallen. A structure that was highly regarded as “safe” and “prestigious” proved to be the opposite, especially when it was discovered that the reason they fell were due to substandard structural design and materials used, something only someone who is greedy and careless would do. An inquiry was made into the incident, but the details have not been released.
More than a decade later, those who were survivors of the collapse or had lost loved ones, continued to visit the site and rally for justice, which never arrived.
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That incident, while harrowing and horrific, is still a position of the privileged. What makes it so horrific is precisely that—privileged people shouldn’t have to experience these things, because of money and status. It’s similar to Noor Mukadam’s murder. Noor was a friend of mine, and I fought relentlessly for her justice, but the reason why it was amplified by us is because Noor was privileged and educated—as are we, whose voices matter the most—and Zahir Jaffer, her murderer, was from the elite class himself.
It’s just something that shouldn’t happen to people like us, right?
Another memory of trauma and violence—my own, from a privileged perspective-that comes to mind are the years I feared getting caught in a bomb blast, until eventually, I did. There was the Marriott bombing in 2008. A dumper truck detonated explosives at the entrance of the hotel, which had security checkpoints (like most other places the rich frequented, including the main roads) due to the ongoing political climate of the time.
I was sitting on a friend’s windowsill, about a kilometre or two away from the Marriott. It was so strong it felt like an Earthquake. The windows and house (mansion, rather) shook and I fell off the windowsill, but I was unharmed.
Privileged folks who lived closer to the Marriott (it is in an affluent neighbourhood, owned by the Hashwanis who are arguably one of the richest families in Pakistan) had windows shatter and suffered from glass injuries, but again, were mostly unharmed. More than 50 people died and more than 100 were injured. This happened just a year after Benzair Bhutto’s assassination, the reaction to which almost felt like a bomb had gone off. I remember I was out with friends, and we were told to come home immediately.
Leave what you’re doing, and run. Again, just get up and run.
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In December 2009, a little over a year later, I would witness the cataclysm of a suicide bombing myself. I had successfully avoided being caught in one for over two years, holding my breath while crossing through police checkpoints, going to my private all-girls school (the Taliban had threatened all-girls schools in the capital city many times), and the westernized cafes and restaurants we frequented.
It was an inexplicable kind of trauma, what I witnessed. Not only did I see the bomber himself explode and mutilate, but the naval complex guard next to him too, as well as two young school children who were run over by some c*nt’s SUV. His life was worth more than theirs, as both he and the children scrambled for their lives, yet he chose his urgency over their right to exit safely and survive.
I’ve written about it in more detail here and you can read more about the bombing on The Guardian. It took me many years to accept that this had deeply affected me and caused me to struggle with PTSD. I continue to jump at loud noises and crowds and unpredictable behaviour make me extremely uneasy.
But I survived. My driver managed to get me out of there promptly, cracked windshield and irreversible trauma or not. I was, ultimately, fine. And I spent many years growing up in Islamabad believing I was untouchable—until that.
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My privilege does not invalidate my trauma. But my privilege gave me a life that only 3% of Pakistanis can have. It is my privilege that saved me, time and time again, in the face of death—and it is my privilege that gives me the ability to talk about it, to write about it, and to have my voice heard. My existence has meaning.
But what is the value in this existence, if it places me on a pedestal, simply to watch others crumble and die before me? What kind of existence is this, to grow up around domestic workers, particularly Christian girls, who were close in age, and who should’ve been receiving an education—yet instead they were waking us up for school, ironing our uniforms, and preparing the dining table for our lunch?
What kind of existence is this, to sit back and do nothing, brush it off, because it doesn’t affect you directly? Do you know how reliant most of us are on our domestic workers, on the shopkeepers, the darzis, the chemists, the chowkidaars, and so forth? Why do we take them for granted, their loyalty (and if they’re not loyal, perhaps you should think more deeply on why) and their ghulami mindsets?
So who will save them? Money will always save us, as long as we live within a globalized, neoliberal capitalist system. Money that we were born into, or that came to us later in life. For some, through hardwork. But for most, through birth. No one asks to be born into their family or class. And it’s no one’s fault for being poor. But no one will save them, unless we decide to share our resources.
Us, with our privilege, resources, foreign degrees, and either earned or generational wealth—whatever it is, we have more than the majority of people. Every human being deserves a safe and warm home, food on the table, clothes on their back, access to medical resources, and an education. Every single person on the planet deserves their basic needs met, and I consider an education a part of it.
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The community always comes together, in an unbreakable way, when there’s a state of emergency. But that’s not sustainable. It’s wonderful to see how much aid and money is being contributed to the current humanitarian crisis caused by the floods, but it’s not a solution—it’s a big fat bandaid to a sleuth of issues: Infrastructural, classism, climate change, corruption, neo-colonalism, and so on.
What the community needs, firstly, is to be asked what they need, when there is not a pressing emergency like there is currently. Instead of us with our “education” imposing our beliefs onto them, we need to ask them what they need. Secondly, ensure everyone’s basic needs are met at all times—so that they may be better equipped to deal with unforeseeable disasters.
Thirdly, push the government to stop gobbling up money that doesn’t belong to them, and force them to allocate resources to alleviate the disturbing class gap in Pakistan. More effort needs to be placed in ending systemic violence and discrepancies. And lastly, many cultural beliefs need to evolve, too.
For example, a high percentage of women are trained doctors, yet due to the norm of marriage and birthing children, many do not pursue a career in medicine. This affects healthcare negatively, resulting in a deficit in healthcare workers, making healthcare more and more inaccessible to the poor. Everyone deserves healthcare.
Let’s start thinking about this more deeply, especially if you have the resources to allocate efficiently. I for one know I cannot grow old watching my land deteriorate and people who I feel intrinsically connected to, die. It has been so hard to watch so many tragedies unfold before me and feel helpless. I refuse to feel helpless, I do what I can, but there’s only so much one can do on their own.
They deserve to feel seen and be heard. The same way we have been.
Click here for a list of verified and legitimate local organizations working on-ground in Pakistan to provide relief and aid to survivors of the floods.
I personally donated as much as I could this week to Women Democratic Front.