No Place to Call Home

BALAKOT—When it rained today, I remembered Nargis (above). I remembered sitting in her tent and touching its thin cloth. When it rains, the water falls inside, she had said with a resigned smile. Now I watch the heavy rain and imagine her sitting in her dripping home, hoping that it will stop.

Rain has a strange role in South Asian society. Water is good for crops, and it is a comforting relief from the blistering summer heat. But water causes rivers to overflow and mountains to slide. This year, rain is causing the millions of tent dwellers hell.

In Balakot, the rain has left a river of rocks running in between the tent cities. The landsliding (right) that occurred last week has ruined people’s tents, and along with it the few belongings they had salvaged from their destroyed homes. Some who had returned to their villages came once again to the valley, homeless for a second time.

The towns of Balakot and Gurlat have been declared a “red zone” by the Pakistani government. Its proximity to the fault line and its vulnerability to further disasters make rebuilding there unsafe. Residents will shift, over the course of several years, to Bakryal, some 10 km from where they currently live. Where they will shift, how much land they will receive, what jobs they will have, and what money they’ll be given to make the move is all unclear.

“We will stay here. We don’t need Bakryal,” said Nadeem Sahib, a Balakot resident, during a press conference (below) held by local landowners at which over 70 men were present. “Our brothers across the world sent money for us. The government used Balakot to raise funds that it is now using for fancy homes and cars. Where is our money?

When pressed about whether they will move to the new location, most of the villagers present said their first priority is to stay in Balakot. They fear commercial use of their land for tourism and business upon their departure. But they are willing to move, they say, if the government will answer how land will be distributed in Bakryal.

Landowners are concerned about getting an amount of land proportional to what they had in Balakot; so far the government has announced that all residents of Bakryal will be given the same amount of land.

Inside Nargis’s tent, however, the women had a different concern. Shamaila, another tent dweller, said, “We want to move to a place where our children are safe. Our husbands are concerned with money, but we say if we are going to die what good is that money? Another earthquake can happen anytime and if this land is unsafe, we should move.”

For Nargis, the wife of a tenant who was living on his landowner’s land, there are other problems. The government is only allowing tenants to rebuild if their landowners sign a NOC, No Objection Certificate. Her landowner refuses to sign the NOC. Currently her tent is pitched on another owner’s land, and he threatens her family regularly to move.

“We would move but we have nowhere to go,” she said. She’s right. If the NOC is not signed, the government has yet to explain where Nargis can build a home for her family.

For now, she sits in the rain and watches her home flood. The winter is returning and she expects to bear another grueling season of snow without shelter.