In Pakistan Quake Zone, Echoes of New Orleans Emerge

They can smell the bodies. They haven’t found them yet, but they’re digging, heaving one rock at a time from a home that’s now a grave.

Just steps down the narrow dirt lane lined with fallen stone houses, fragrant steam rises from a battered pot: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and cilantro, boiling above a smoky wood fire.

That’s the way forward now, death and life together, after the worst earthquake here in a century shattered huge swaths of South Asia.

More than 79,000 are believed dead, and more than 3 million homeless. The scope dwarfs the U.S. disaster in August, when Hurricane Katrina swept away parts of the Gulf Coast and flooded most of New Orleans, leaving more than 1,200 dead and displacing half a million.

Still, the parallels between the catastrophes are stunning -- the shuffling step of a single dazed survivor, the murmuring pleas of mobs of thousands left helpless, the piercing smell of rotting trash, the promises and failures of government struggling to respond.

“It’s the same thing everywhere,” said Dr. Imran Taj, leading a reporter through the jammed hallways of his hospital in Abbottabad. A kitten picked through garbage in a corner. A child bawled in fear of a shot. Taj began asking about earlier disasters and talk turned to New Orleans. “Even though your country is developed, the same thing happened.... People get afraid. They get confused. They’re afraid to make decisions.”

The mountains of northern Pakistan are a world away from the United States’ Gulf Coast in more than miles. New Orleans and its dens of jazz, liquor and women seem like a far-off dream -- or, for the many devout Muslims here, a nightmare. In these mountain villages and valleys, liquor is shunned and women cover their hair, their arms, often even their faces except for a pair of huge, dark eyes.

The disasters too came from opposite ends of the elements -- Katrina from the mix of sea and sky; the earthquake from the land and the fires that burn deep beneath it.

But on the ground where men, women and children get through the day, those disasters met in the same place: misery. And the unstoppable push to move on from there.

Abdul Saboor’s not sure where that might lead. For now, he’s sitting on a fine wood chair on top of the tumbled-down rubble of his house. Below him, on the main street of his hometown Balakot, is chaos -- streams of people seeking medicine, shelter, food; loudspeakers blaring instructions; horns honking as relief trucks try to get through. The central city was leveled.

“I am just guarding my house because some money and valuables are buried beneath it,” said Saboor, who used to run a small business selling car parts. “I have no idea what I do or where I go.”

The desire of survivors to hold on to what they’ve got runs from Balakot to New Orleans. Here, most are staying near their homes and villages, living in tents or under plastic sheets.

In New Orleans, tens of thousands didn’t leave in time -- ending up in the heat, without shelter or food or water. The elements took some lives among the elderly and ill, though it was the storm and the floods that killed most in Louisiana.

Here, the earthquake killed tens of thousands, but the threat now is cold and lack of treatment. Hundreds come in each day from remote villages, their wounds turning to gangrene.

The aftermath is already much crueler than it was in Louisiana, where people were displaced or in shock, but given shelter and some kind of help. Here, the wounds from falling homes and boulders are more grievous. Amputations are widespread. Winter, just weeks away, could kill thousands more as relief crews struggle with a logistical nightmare -- damaged mountain roads, rock slides, villages only reachable by foot or helicopter.

Among the stunned evacuees, though, one desire is universal -- the need to tell what happened to them, despite the daily demands of survival, rebuilding and mourning.

A conversation with one man on the street soon turns into a crowd, where everyone needs to recount their survival and their woe. Most want help; some are just curious. “Please?” “Sir?” Others grab an arm and demand that a visitor listen.

It was the same on the teeming, debris-filled street in front of New Orleans’ convention center, where many in the crowd argued over whether a crew of cameramen and women should be allowed to photograph the body of a man who had died and been left outside. Some angrily said it was disrespectful; others said no -- “They need to tell people what’s happening here.”

At a medical tent in Muzaffarabad in Kashmir, Qamar Qurashi felt the same way. He seized a reporter’s shirt. “Listen! Listen! All the press are ignoring Leepa Valley,” he shouted. The valley -- about 25 miles closer to the Line of Control that separates the divided region from India -- had more than 1,000 people killed and many more injured -- but if help doesn’t get there within a week or two, the snow will close the roads for six months, he said.

And in both disaster zones, ties to faith ran deep.

The earthquake struck soon after the start of the monthlong observance of Ramadan. Now, before dawn and after sunset one can hear the chanted prayers over loudspeakers in larger villages and cities, floating in the air. The markets are buzzing, the stalls filled with dates, apples and deep-fried treats, as sunset nears and each day’s fast comes to an end.

Prayers abounded in New Orleans too. A group of women singing a gospel song in the first days after the storm comforted a local reporter. As National Guard troops arrived, many in the crowd cried out thanks to Jesus.

A hospital clerk there, Rachel Carey, saw New Orleans’ devastation as divine retribution for the city’s corruption and crime.

The idea of God’s will helped many here put aside crushing grief. “The quake occurred from the wish of Allah,” said Mohammed Akram, a retired Pakistani Army soldier. “We obey Allah and we bend our head for Allah because he’s our honor and we can’t blame anyone but to be thankful for Allah that we survived.”

His weathered, lined face was grim as he listed the casualties in his Kashmiri village -- about 4,000 people, including five of his children, the youngest boys 2 and 3. There were no sobs, no tears. He had come to the city for the living, not the dead. “We need tents. We are living under the sky,” he said.

Many did place blame, however, echoing complaints in the United States that government failed to help quickly.

“Is it only the wars that people can jump in as paratroopers? They use it only for war -- not to help the people?” asked the doctor in Abbottabad, Imran Taj. “The second day, the big people in government were sitting” -- he mimed a person frozen in shock -- “and helicopters were only doing surveys. The rescues were done by local people.”

In the villages, though, the farmers and laborers offered thanks to the government for its efforts, even if -- when pressed -- they acknowledged it could have been sooner. “Yes, I’m a little bit angry. But what can they do?” said Khalid Ahmed, who waited 10 days before a helicopter came to bring his 8-year-old sister, Saira Bibi, for treatment for a head wound. “They are bound to help people in every area.”

From the streets of New Orleans, a different message emerged for the local and national leaders, one that was raw, furious and more often than not unprintable.

Soon, after all the devastation, will come a push to help the people here over the longer term, with high hopes but also doubts -- about corruption, about ethnic and cultural fractures. It’s hard to miss the parallels with the efforts in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, with its legacy of racial segregation and poverty.

Those who live in the northern Pakistan region where the quake hit hardest come from a number of ethnic groups -- Pathuns, Kashmiris, Hazaras -- many of them not part of the elite power structure farther south. Signs in Kashmir call for a fight against the “Rural Poverty Trap.” Aid groups with the United Nations are in the midst of years-long efforts to build more schools.

“Government worked in the big cities. But not in the rural areas in the north,” said Temur Khan, a dentist from Islamabad who came to help. Now is the best chance to make real improvements, he said. “You’ve got to start rebuilding. Create a good infrastructure, make this place a better place than it was -- better schools, better hospitals.” If only a single airport existed, relief efforts would have been tremendously improved, he said.

Others don’t trust the government to help effectively, especially as money pours in from overseas. “It just kills me, because I’m so sure we’re not going to get a penny,” said Dr. Faiza Masoud. “Countries want to help, it’s amazing. But don’t just give money, it’s just going into their pockets. Come and help -- help with the houses, the amputated arms and legs.”

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf promised to rebuild with model cities in the earthquake-devastated areas, and transparency in spending to prevent siphoning of donated funds.

But on the ground in Battal it wasn’t the future that was on people’s minds. What mattered was right now -- dinner, and retrieving the dead, and staying dry.

Up the hill, “the whole population of children was killed,” said Ghulam Jan, 55. “They don’t have the money to rebuild their homes. Poor people live here.”

A gaggle of young boys had found entertainment: a reporter asking question after question about simple boiled potatoes.

The rain had stopped and the sun was out. One of the turquoise walls of a small mosque had fallen to pieces, but the roof -- and the dome -- still stood. Maybe it could be salvaged.

The aroma of the potato dish -- aloo -- floated along the rutted pathway. On the muddy ground were the bits and pieces of daily life torn apart: soap bottles, a woven rug, a few magazines, a Pakistani flag.

It looked just like a flood had left it behind.