KUWAIT CITY: As he rushes to fly back home, Mohammad Azam prays desperately to God that his two sons have not died under the rubble of their school in Balakot. “But I am sure they must have gone,” the weeping 47-year-old Pakistani builder, said just before boarding the plane.
“My two boys, 12 and eight, were studying at the school which collapsed at the start of the quake,” said Mr Azam, who is from Battle village, some 40kms north of Balakot.
In Balakot, two schools and a madressah or seminary were toppled by Saturday’s earthquake, with nearly 1,000 students thought to be buried.
Mr Azam said he had so far failed to reach his relatives in Pakistan to inquire about his sons and other members of his family.
“I know nothing about my children, wife, mother and other relatives. I tried to call them many times but without any luck,” said Mr Azam, who lives alone in Kuwait.
Mohammad Azam is one of dozens of Pakistanis working in Kuwait who are worried about their families and relatives after failing to contact them.
They were all preparing to fly back home.
Farid, 35, who owns a small restaurant in Kheitan, 20kms south of Kuwait City, is also planning to leave.
“My village, Jabri, near Rawalakot, was devastated, and I am really very concerned. I tried repeatedly to call my family but no one answered,” he said.
“I have been praying to God that they are alive, but I don’t think they are because our village was almost wiped out,” Mr Farid said.
Some 110,000 Pakistanis live in Kuwait, many of them working in small businesses shared with Kuwaiti sponsors.
The Pakistani embassy on Monday launched a fund-raising campaign and called on the community and others to make generous donations for the quake victims.
In the United Arab Emirates, hundreds of Pakistani residents have already left since Sunday afternoon, Pakistani consulate’s spokesman Zafer Iqbal said.
On Sunday, the Dubai airport was crowded with Pakistanis eager to catch a flight back home or give passengers letters to pass on to their families, according to witnesses.
“Most of the people I know have decided to go back home. Some of them are already back home, but many are still awaiting to find a place on a plane bound for Pakistan,” said 25-year-old Mansur.
Mr Mansur said his village was completely devastated as it lies near Muzaffarabad, termed the disaster’s ‘ground zero’.
“I am waiting for a confirmation for a flight to Karachi from where I want to go to Muzaffarabad,” said Mr Mansur, who has been on a visit in Dubai.
“I thank God that my mother, my brothers and my uncles are unharmed. I have managed to speak with them. But other relatives have been killed in the quake which has razed my village and other nearby areas,” he said.
Mr Mansur was eager to leave for Pakistan ‘because given the size of the catastrophe, every Kashmiri should go back home to help his people’. —AFP
