Survivors Gather Remnants of Their Past : Iran: Families shed the shock and grief of the disaster and begin to think about the future.

An old wire tray, a broken chandelier and some twisted blue window blinds. That’s not much for a new start. But atop a heap of bricks and plaster that was a home, those objects had been set aside by a surviving family of Iran’s killer earthquake.

In the shattered city of Manjil in hard-hit Gilan province, families were shedding the shock and grief of the past three days and beginning Sunday to think about their future. The dead have been buried in a low hillside outside the city and the seriously injured taken to hospitals in Tehran.

Scoops, shovels and men with picks and spades were sifting through the rubble for personal belongings--furniture, carpets, kitchenware--no longer with the care that followed Thursday’s massive earthquake when the people of Manjil were searching for survivors. They now know their family losses in dead and injured.

Talking to visiting reporters half an hour after another aftershock rocked the agricultural city overlooking Safid Reservoir, the townspeople showed little apprehension; there was work to be done. A pile of new yellow bricks sat by a curb, ready for rebuilding when the site is cleared.

Iraj Behnia, a 57-year-old teacher, said his was one of the few families in Manjil to escape death. “But I can’t feel happy,” said the stocky Iranian in a black felt cap. “All the other families have suffered. Their problem is my problem.”

Others felt the same. Dr. Mohammed Hussein Dehjhany bused up to Manjil from the central city of Esfahan with his students, 13 male nurses, all, like the doctor, in white medical coats, to help out. “We are doing what we can, whatever the people want,” he explained.

Earthquakes are fickle. Three houses in a row will be squashed like old tin cans and the fourth will be standing. But Thursday’s quake stomped Manjil. An estimated 80% to 90% of the homes were destroyed. The death toll among the 100,000 citizens was uncertain, but one relief worker estimated that more than 60% of the populace was killed or injured.

But the quake didn’t crush the people’s spirit. The work went on Sunday with neighbors helping neighbors, along with shovel-bearing detachments of uniformed soldiers. At other sites, some men worked alone, pulling back the sheets of tar-paper roofs to see what might be found underneath.

Alijan Mustfada, a shopkeeper who helped other men dig through the rubble of his home, said he would live nowhere else. “Our memories are here,” he said. Mustfada lost two sons in the quake.

An old woman in a light-blue chador was making tea for her remaining family in a military tent on the side of the road when reporters approached. She spoke a few words of English, enough to get her point across without an interpreter. There were 16 deaths in her extended family, five in the badly damaged city of Roudbar nearby and the rest in Manjil.

“I worry (about it),” she explained, “but I’m not upset. It happened. It happened.” Her house was demolished, her car--”German,” she lamented--was crushed, and she’s living in the street. But life goes on.

Other women were not so stoic, telling reporters in the Farsi language, which the Westerners could not understand, and in mime, which they did, what happened on Thursday. They threw arms up for the explosion of the quake and down for the fate of their city.

It’s hard to deal with the immensity of the casualties in a disaster of this dimension, perhaps 50,000 dead and hundreds of thousands injured in Gilan and Zanjan provinces in the hilly country west of the Caspian Sea.

Flying over the region in an Iranian air force Chinook helicopter, reporters saw the scars in village after village. A huddle of 30 or 40 mud-brick homes had a hole punched in the middle, but the houses on the perimeter appeared untouched. The city of Roudbar looked as if it had been shelled into rubble.

Fifty thousand lives lost in two provinces having nearly 3 million population is believable, but the towns and cities are scattered, and the countryside seems tranquil until you see the wrecked structures.

At a stop in the village of Tarem, there was nothing to see but shambles. The people are Kurds, who were moved from their homes in the northeastern corner of Iran 16 years ago by the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to suppress trouble between the Kurds and his government.

On Sunday, the colorfully dressed women were chanting in grief for their dead. They sat on a ridge at the edge of the village, which looked like an upturned box of matches. Tarem lies beside a river, and the houses were made in part of timber and reeds. The children flocked barefoot to see the helicopter set down in a field of thorn bushes.

Children, however frightened they were by the quake and the aftershocks, provide the laughter in the stricken region.

In Manjil, a small boy, his head helmeted in bandages, popped out of the family’s tent and snapped a sharp salute to the touring foreign press, a little soldier in a scene of tragedy.

WHERE TO SEND AID Here are some of the agencies accepting donations for Iranian earthquake victims: Adventist Development and Relief Agency

12501 Old Columbia Pike

Silver Spring, Md. 20904

(301) 680-6380

American Jewish World Service

1290 Avenue of the Americas

11th Floor

New York, N.Y. 10104

American Network for Service and Relief

c/o Muslim Public Affairs Council

3010 Wilshire Blvd., No 217

Los Angeles, Calif. 90010

(213) 383-3443

American Red Cross

Iran Earthquake Disaster

P.O. Box 37243

Washington, D.C. 20013

(800) 842-2200

American Red Cross (local)

2700 Wilshire Blvd.,

Los Angeles, Calif. 90057

AmeriCares

161 Cherry St.

New Canaan, Conn. 06840

(800) 486-HELP

Bank Melli Iran

Iran Quake Relief Assistance

Account No. 5000

628 Madison Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10022

Bank Melli Iran (local)

818 Wilshire Blvd.

Los Angeles, Calif. 90017

Baptist World Alliance

Iran Earthquake Fund

6733 Curran St.

McLean, Va. 22101

Catholic Relief Services

209 W. Fayette St.

Baltimore, Md. 21208

(301) 625-2220

Church World Service

Iran Emergency

P.O. Box 968

Elkhart, Ind. 46515

(212) 870-3151

Direct Relief International

2801-B De La Vina St.

Santa Barbara, Calif. 93105

(805) 687-3694

Lutheran World Relief

390 Park Ave. S.

New York, N.Y. 10016

Operation California / USA

7615 1/2 Melrose Ave.

Los Angeles, Calif. 90046

U.S. Committee for UNICEF

333 E. 38th St.

New York, N.Y. 10016

(212) 686-5522

World Concern

P.O. Box 33000

Seattle, Wash. 98133

World Vision

919 W. Huntington Drive

Monrovia, Calif. 91016

(818) 357-7979