Bam
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Bam I was lying in bed on Monday morning. I was celebrating my Italian heritage and taking the day to honor Columbus , or something, and I got lost in the disaster and dreams, the stories about the mudslides slid into accounts of the earthquake. The buildings were flattened. The children were in schools. I had a vivid dream that I had wrecked my son’s car, and then lost large parts of it as I carried it home to face the music. I was so muddled when I finally stumbled out to make the coffee that I still couldn’t tell the disasters apart. It was bad. The totality of it was awful, to be sure, and a couple thousand people in Guatemala were buried alive in thick viscous mud. There are a lot of people from that country in the neighborhood around Big Pink, and I could only imagine how helpless they felt, with no way to know if the village back home still existed, or would be declared a cemetery. I peered out of the unit to see if the rain was still continuing, and it was dry, but still pregnant with moisture. I decided it might be OK to go out, perhaps take in the Warhol exhibit at the Corcoran Museum if I could figure out a place to park. The famous series of Marilyn Monroe was there, in all the hysterical colors. As I drank coffee I realized that my son had been in Islamabad two weeks before, and had been stopped at a military checkpoint on the way up to the Khyber Pass by the same troops who were now trying to open the roads so that aid could begin to flow. It was a challenge. Apparently it was raining all over the world, in Arlington and Kashmir . There it was hail and rain, and the clouds shut down flight operations. There were at least 20,000 dead, and the count was sure to go higher. I listened to it, in and out of the day, and heard the Montgomery and Fairfax County Fire and Rescue units were flying out, hoping the weather would clear by the time they got there, and the French were on-site with dogs, and the US Army was trying to wheel airborne resources out of Afghanistan and get boots and food on the ground. I was going to hook up with my son later, but he called and told me he had to be in the Pentagon early bright. His agency was setting up a special task force to monitor the situation. I told him I was relieved that he was back safe, and I could almost feel the shrug over the phone. I’m OK, he said. But they are not. This is bigger than the Tsunami, when you consider how concentrated the area was. Twenty thousand dead, I said. Biggest thing since Bam got slammed in Iran in 2003. Don’t you believe the numbers, he said. This is huge. I don’t recall how many died there, but it is funny. I haven’t heard a thing about the reconstruction. You probably won’t, he said with authority. “It’s political.” I could tell he had been doing his homework as his voice intensified. They lost over 43,000 people in that one, and sixty percent of the buildings. But it was concentrated, and only a 6.6. on the Richter Scale. This thing in Pakistan arcs up from Rawalpindi to the Himalayan foothills in Kashmir . There are thousands dead and homeless on the Indian side, too. I heard the Paks turned down Indian aid. Yeah. But they are using everything they have got. They only have about three dozen military helos in the whole country. They need all they can get. There are still voices from under the concrete, but they won’t last long. I hope we can help, I said. We have at least eight Blackhawks in the area, and forty more heavy-lift birds are on the way. And the Paks are going to accept part of the aid the Indians have offered, at least the cash. That is a start, I responded, impressed by my son’s mastery of the situation. Yeah. Too soon to start with the finger pointing. It would be nice if something had fallen on bin Laden’s head. But we won’t be that lucky. The key is what happens after this. Musharef is under pressure. If he cannot deliver relief to the area, there will be consequences. Look at what happened in the Gulf. Who knows what will happen in the elections? And who might come next? I don’t know, I said. I’ll keep you posted, Old Man. Gotta run. We go twenty-four seven tonight. Copyright Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com |
