HERAT CITY (SW) – “We Heratians no longer have a village called Zindajan, that district has become dead and is “Murdajan” now with nothing left but destruction.
His eyes are fixed on the ground and he talks to himself that “we have now become nomads.” He wraps his hands around his knees that have run and trembled in these days and nights just to survive. For a few moments, he squeezes his knees in his arms and for a few more moments, to escape from the cold, he clasps his hands together and warms them with the heat of his mouth. Most of his family members were not at home when the earthquake occurred. “Except for me and my little sister, no one was home.”
The fear that the earthquake created in his mind and psyche still remains in him. About the terror he remembers from the earthquake, he said: “Until I got to this age, I have not seen such a sound and shaking that shakes the walls, gates and windows.”
During the earthquake, Wahida her her little sister’s hand and told her not to be afraid. At first, Wahida and her sister thought that there is a suicide attack near their house, and when she got out of the window, but she heard the screams of children and women in the neighborhood, who were all running away. Wahida, with her sister, reached the end of the alley and then to the side of the street.
Wahida, with sadness that was visible in her body and voice tremors, said: “Our lives, of all the people of Herat, have become like nomads since Saturday’s suicide attack. Even the condition of the nomads is better than us. We, who are running every moment, are full of fear as if the houses are falling apart. Every minute we wander from one road to another.”
The house where Vahidah and her family lived has three floors and the walls of the third floor are leaking and the rest of the house is intact. But for fear of aftershocks and the possibility of the house collapsing, they spend their days and nights outside; all the nights are spent with sadness in cold.”
According to Wahida, these days the weather is cold in Zindajan and people are poor and needy. He said that many children have fallen ill due to the cold weather and living in tents distributed by aid agencies.
Wahida shed tears, squeezed her dry lips together and said: “What can I mention and cry about, there is so much, for my people who left and left their children and families alone, or for the houses they prepared with their blood and heart, but all got destroyed?
After Saturday of last week, Wahida can hardly walk, every time she wants to get up, her knees go weak, her head gets dizzy and she falls to the ground.
The fear of aftershocks from the earthquake caused Wahida and her family to go to a village called “Jaghara” in Anjil district of Herat and spend their days and nights in a small backyard where they are far from the house and the wall they are afraid of.
ENDS
