Mustafa's journal-September 5th

Once again, explaining things in flashback, allow me to fill you in on what happened on August 28th and 29th. I’ll be doing it by writing down my notes from my Moleskin diary:

• Drove past a bakery shop. Driver tells us that he makes sure to drive past this shop every week to give thinks that the Taliban have gone, as they used to put decapitated heads on poles here every week.

• Shelter does not appear to be a major problem here; as the community here is quite strong, and only 5-8% of houses were destroyed, displaced people are not currently having difficulty with finding accommodation with family and friends. However, when I was talking with people, many were worried about the upcoming winter, which gets quite cold in Swat- tents won’t cut it then, and something more lasting will be necessary.

• Spoke to one of the aid workers today who admired the principles of the Taliban, “They were not good people or bad people,” he explained to me, “they just had their own way of looking at things.” That I would hear moral relativism from a Taliban supporter kind of throws me off; but most of the people that I meet here thoroughly disagree with him and strongly dislike the Taliban. Many of them, though, think that the Taliban is being supported by the Americans (as the historical record does kind of back them up), and others think that the Taliban is being funded by (big surprise) India.

• Passed Maulana Fazlullah’s madrassah. Was bombed out.

• Had interviews with a bunch of the aid recipients. Here was what they felt they needed from foreign donors:
o Education
o Rebuilding of roads/bridges
o Poverty alleviation for people incapable of earning for themselves (ie, old people, widows, disabled, etc)
o They also said that hospitals need to be staffed by better people. One man, almost tearing up, told me that he once took his wife to get an ECG that she urgently needed, but when the gatekeeper saw that it was a woman, he just slammed the door in their faces. The irony was, for me at least, it was a story of patriarchy, but the pain belonged, at least in part, to the husband

• Passed by Excelsior College, which was being held by the Taliban. Now the Pakistani military runs it. Bullet holes riddle the walls.

• Many parts of Swat remain inaccessible, but could be accessed by boats and helicopters. Other parts, where there are sharp rocks in the river bed, the villages can only be accessed by helicopters.

• 2 little girls in blue. Their faces are stained with dust, but there is a brightness in their eyes that almost brings tears to mine.

• As our truck raced on a gravel road, I suddenly saw a little girl wearing a Hannah Montana T-shirt, and I cursed McWorld not for the first, and probably not for the last time.

• Heard the story of a Talib named Shermanat Sahb, who was a butcher by profession. He used to pay money to get the opportunity to kill people. Supposedly Shermanat killed 50 000 people- his depravity was legendary (obviously, the number seems way too high, but his exploits were things of legend). He also used to chop people’s legs and hands off for no apparent reason. Finally, a Captain of the Pakistani military caught him, tied him in a car, and, from what I understand, executed him.

• Also heard another story about the Taliban. When the Taliban ran Swat, a Pakistani DSP (District Superintendent of Police) was in Swat with his wife and son and was caught by some Talibs. They took him to a public square (which we drove past), and shot the DSP’s son in front of him. Then he beheaded the DSP in front of the wife. Apparently, the wife went insane and is still in an asylum somewhere in Swat.

• Passed a house in a riverbed where a man had been stranded. With the water raging around his house, the old man had stayed on his roof for four days without food or water, holding his copy of the Qur’an, praying. Finally, on the fifth day, he was rescued.

• Today we tried to get to Tirat- a city completely cut off from the outside world as the main bridge got destroyed. So we drove up another mountain to try to get to it- it was, I assure you, much like Muhammad Fatih’s attempt to pull his ships up the mountain in the conquest of Constantinople. The road, sometimes, was a mere strip of gravel, and on the other side was a sheer drop.

• As our truck (the one thing Toyota does not make exceptionally well) battles up the slope, a bunch of little kids hop into the back of the truck for the ride up. I keep checking, and by the time we are getting near to Tirat, there must be 15 kids in the back, some of whom are barely hanging on.

• We finally reach Tirat. The entire village seems to have come out to meet us- we are immediately surrounded by almost a hundred people. We go inside the main landowner’s villa. His guards, plain-clothes, but armed, led us to a veranda where the landowner sat. It was like kind of like meeting the Don from old Mafia movies. Although I understand little of the conversation that took place, as it was in Pushto, I gather that I am one of the first, if not the first, non-Pakistani (Ameer’s edit: expatriate) to see Tirat since the flood.

• Some of the elders we met with were unhappy with the WFP bureaucratic framework, arguing that by the time food would get distributed, they wouldn’t even benefit from it.

• It is a long drive back. On our way, a truck’s engine gives out on a bridge, thus making it impossible to get out of Mangora (unless we swam). We had to wait for almost an hour until they moved it. We eventually broke our fasts with some apples that had fallen on the ground that a young child was selling us.