The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans (38 page)

Kizmet, on the other hand, is still new to VL. When I ask whether she has really found herself there, she answers, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever really find myself in VL, at least not in the same way that you and Crystal have found yourselves. It’s true that I find VL a bit surreal, but that’s not an impediment; my physical life is a bit surreal, too. What could be more surreal than the Hopi Snake Dance?” she asks. “What’s that?” I want to know. Kiz smiles and says, “I’ll tell you about it sometime…
Or maybe I can even take you there courtesy of VL
!” As for whether she considers herself an optimist or a pessimist, Kizmet relates, “I never know what will happen, and I find myself surprised and delighted by life’s diversity. But I also find modern life to be a bit tragic. Negligence is a big problem. And greed, too! Most of what we really need is in our midst. Nature is glorious, and She wants to take care of us if we will only allow her to do it. Too often, we think we are smarter than the Natural Order. That’s where we get into trouble. Most of us want far too much. We become exploitive, and in so doing, we become destructive. That’s why I live with Native Americans, in the desert. Nothing much to exploit there: in Rough Rock, it’s all about subsistence. And even that has a much different meaning than it does elsewhere. I have learned how to be in harmony with the earth and the heavens, and I am happy about that. So, I guess you could say that I am pretty pessimistic about how most people live in PL, but I am optimistic because I have found a different way of living. And, a different way of seeing…”

For Sonja, PL is a measured and satisfying existence; whereas Crystal finds VL a bit frustrating. Cassandra has more or less traded a modern PL life for one far more elemental, and she takes comfort in a more spiritual or causal lifestyle; whereas Kizmet looks at VL as another alternate reality, a sandbox in which she sometimes plays and experiments with playmates like Crystal and me.

What do I think? Is the glass half empty? Or is the glass half full? Sometimes I can’t even seem to find the glass—that’s what I think. Clearly, more research is needed to answer my own inquiry.

So off I go again, this time to Pakistan (will my search ever end?).

In the VL mountain village of Asama Bashir, I meet a woman named Edina Bassan who tells me what she went through in the massive earthquake of 2005.

“At first it was a mild shaking,” she relates, “then stones were falling from the sky. I didn’t know what to do. I stood in my house, frozen like a statue. Then the ceiling collapsed. My house was leveled, and I was buried underneath the rubble. I could not move. My eyes and ears were so full of dust that I could neither see nor hear. My shoes were torn off my feet, and my clothes were shredded. With only one finger free, I pointed to the daylight. Would I live or die? I did not know, but I begged for help. Allah heard my prayer and saved me. It took the men twelve hours to dig me out me of the rubble.”

“Weren’t you scared?” I ask.

“My first thought was that we had been bombed. Then I realized it was an earthquake. I became very upset with Allah for making such a horrible thing happen, but then I came to my senses and understood that it was Allah that had allowed me to survive. So I could struggle forward. Praise Allah!”

As we walk through the REP, Edina shows me men making coffins. Though they work day and night, they cannot hope to keep up with the demand as bodies of both young and old are brought in by the truckload.

In another part of what was once a vibrant city, thousands now live in tents. They cook over open fires. Children are malnourished and dehydrated. Some suffer from cholera. Others are simply dazed and uncommunicative. Maybe they are paralyzed from fear, or maybe they are simply so disoriented that nothing makes sense anymore beyond the arms of their mothers. Some have lost everyone, including their mothers.

“After the quake,” Edina tells me, “the rains came in torrents. It was monsoon season, but we had no adequate shelter. We had no food (other than what Islamic Relief brought us). We had little water. People fought over what food there was, but the women—especially the older ones—were helpless. When winter came we were still in tents, and we were so cold. Many died of infections and exposure. Some simply gave up. One must always have hope if life is to have any meaning at all. This is the lesson that Allah taught me through this catastrophe.”

We walk further, toward the edge of what was once the city of Asama Bashir. It is twilight now, and the horizon glows a particularly rich shade of orange. When I remark to Edina on the beauty of the sunset, she says, “It has been that way ever since the earthquake. Some say it is because of all the dust in the air, but I know it is a representation of the blood that was shed by those we lost in those twenty-eight seconds.”
 

Skip ahead five years and Pakistan is again devastated, this time by floods. The rain began in July, as it usually does when the monsoon comes to the Pakistani regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. In the wake of the flood, thousands of people have died and over a million homes have been destroyed. More than twenty-one million people were injured or made homeless as a result of the flooding, exceeding the combined total of individuals affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area is now underwater.

The flooding is attributed to unprecedented monsoon rains caused by La Niña. In June, the Pakistan Meteorological Department cautioned that urban and flash flooding could occur from July to September in the northern parts of the country. The same department recorded above-average rainfall in the months of July and August 2010, and monitored the flood wave progression. Discharge levels recorded were comparable to those seen during the floods of 1988, 1995, and 1997.

New Scientist Magazine has attributed the cause of this exceptional rainfall to the freezing of the jet stream, a phenomenon that also caused an unprecedented heat wave and wildfires in Russia.

Many towns and villages are not accessible, and communications have been disrupted. In some areas, the water level is five and a half meters high. People wait on rooftops for aid to arrive. The Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan with China, is closed after the collapse of a vital bridge. Floodwaters have destroyed much of the health care infrastructure in the worst affected areas, leaving inhabitants especially vulnerable to water-borne disease. In Sindh, the Indus River burst its banks near Sukkur, submerging the village of Mor Khan Jatoi; an absence of law and order allows looters the opportunity to ransack abandoned homes using boats.

I am with a small group of doctors from
Medecins Sans Frintieres
(Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Kristina Nesvig from Norway heads the team. We are traveling south by van to the region of Peshawar. The difficult roads make it a longer and more tiring journey than it should be. It is still the early hours of the morning and were it not for the blasting AC in the car, we would already be under severe stress from the scorching heat. We are traveling to the Village of Tangi, which is sixty kilometers north of Peshawar. Assessments have already been made and the results, we learn, are not good. People there are waiting for our arrival with great anticipation. They have been told a medical team will arrive soon.

The aftermath of the flood is unbelievable. I see the rooftop of a building just above water level. It appears to have been a hotel, but now it is all but underwater. In other areas, the level of water has receded, leaving nothing intact.

“In this region alone,” Kris tells us, “Eleven thousand people are already dead and approximately five million are homeless. People are living in graveyards, or on roadsides—anywhere they can. They have no food, no water, no shelter and no medicines.”

Though heartfelt and filled with concern, Dr. Nesvig’s words are unnecessary, for all around us the devastation is obvious and far-reaching. People wander, dazed and confused and in muddy clothes, from place to place. Everything they once owned is gone. Water and mud are everywhere, and I wonder how we will ever make it to Tangi.

Yet even as we are all but submerged in Pakistan, I am reminded of the famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘The Ancient Mariner’: “Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” Such irony is not lost on me, and I mentally concoct my own version, equally dire for a different time: “Drowning here in sultry heat, the mortal cry of children’s thirst; As fires ravage Russian peat, the Earth I fear is cursed!” Well, no poet am I, that’s for sure, but I do know one thing: we as humans proclaim our superiority and our sovereignty over nature, but our proclamation is a hollow one indeed. As I look around it is obvious that in the end it is the Earth, not man, who will have the final word. And much too soon, I fear…

Arriving in Tangi, we are directed to an abandoned building where a makeshift hospital is to be established. Dr. Nesvig immediately designates one area as a de facto triage center, and then establishes a surgery inside the cleanest area of the building. Patients begin arriving immediately, and I act as a processor. With no medical training whatsoever, it is my job to establish which patients are most in need of care. It is an impossible job, but I persist. The line is endless. As the day wears on I am drenched in sweat. My hair hangs limply over my forehead and my face. When a woman with an infant stands before me, I lead her without pause into Dr. Nesvig’s surgery. The eleven-month-old baby boy is limp and unresponsive in his mother’s arms. Dr. Nesvig tenderly takes the infant from his forlorn mother and assesses his condition.

The mother tells Dr. Nesvig that her beloved Ali has been in this horrible condition for five days. He cannot swallow, he has severe diarrhea and he is vomiting. Kris’s eyes reveal a dire prognosis.

“He is suffering from severe dehydration,” Kris tells the mother. “We will send him directly to Dr. Menendez, the pediatrician.”

I accompany baby Ali and his mother to a different room in the building where Dr. José Menendez is ministering to more than fifty other children. But baby Ali is given immediate attention, as his condition is deemed critical. He is placed on a fluid drip to hydrate and nourish him. He is also given Kaopectate to stop his diarrhea, and Imodium to stop his dry heaves. Even so, Dr. Menendez assesses his chances for survival at one in five.

On our first day alone at the Tangi Hospital, we see more than two thousand patients. To say that the numbers are overwhelming would be a ridiculous understatement; and while my own impression is no doubt given to hyperbole, I am crushed by the feeling that I am watching not only the tragedy of one village, or one country, but possibly the death of an entire race. My sleep this night is dreamless.

And as the eighteen-hour days drag on, and one humid misfortune after another passes my station begging for help and refuge, my mind goes numb and my limbs ache, my temples pulse, my feet swell. On which level of Dante’s Inferno is this tragedy manifest, I ask myself? Is mercy itself blinded by the intense reflection of an unrelenting sun upon fields and fields of water once grain? Are we as Humans not more than mere clay in the hands of the ephemeral? Need is eternal; work is my salvation.

At Dr. Nesvig’s surgery, we receive word from the mother that baby Ali is doing better. He is now conscious and he is able to take water by mouth. “Praise Allah! Praise Allah!” she prays. We, too, praise Allah…

We see a man who has lost his sight, a woman whose lower legs and feet are gangrenous, a ten-year-old child whose tongue is so swollen he cannot eat or drink. Dr. Nesvig stitches a man’s scalp back onto his head, then proceeds without a moment’s rest to treat a patient whose bowels are enflamed and blocked. We admit a woman who is having a severe diabetic reaction, and another who is in labor. No departments here, no specialists or interns or orderlies. One doctor per one thousand patients, that’s the rule at this hospital, and sleep when and where you can.

By the end of the first week, it feels like I have been here a year. By the end of the second week, it feels like a lifetime. More doctors arrive. Food arrives from Islamic Relief. Nothing glorious, of course: bulk grains, canned goods, orange juice. The doctors give away their rations to those more in need. I sometimes forget to eat. I have ceased to feel anything as I watch and administrate the parade of misery.

Then, on the eighth day (or is it the ninth?), I learn that baby Ali has died. Yes, it can even happen in VL. My throat closes and I break into tears. I go running through the village. My hysteria is barely noticed by those whose suffering is paramount to mine. When I reach the water—the blessed, cursed water—I bathe myself in my own grief.

Whoosh…
 

OMG! I need a break (maybe you do, too). To regain my balance. So I’m meeting Igloo Iceman at Dirty Nellie’s Pub. It’s nice to be back in a VL REP where buildings aren’t falling down and people aren’t dying from Cholera. Dirty Nellie’s is a sanctuary, just as VL is my personal safe haven. Even before Iggy arrives I order two pints of Guinness. I know it is his preferred brew. As for me, I don’t care (because I can’t taste it anyway).

To tell the truth, I’m still feeling weak and a bit overwhelmed by what I saw in virtual Pakistan. The devastation and human suffering—whether in VL or in PL—is more than I could have imagined. Seeing babies dying everyday of dehydration and dysentery, and even from diseases that the doctors could not easily identify, has not only taken my (physical) strength, but also exhausted my will. It’s going to take me a long time, if ever, to recover fully from what I experienced there.