October 24, 2006	Tuesday	Ramazan 30, 1427

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MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 23: Most of them have bought new clothes and almost completed other preparations to celebrate Eidul Fitr, but despondent survivors of last year’s earthquake say the eid for them will be mainly a day to remember their departed kin.

“I have got tailored new clothes but there is very little charm in the festivity. New clothes cannot take away our sadness,” said Sehrish, a survivor from Dhanni Mai Sahiba village.

“How can we rejoice when there were three casualties in our house,” said the 16-year-old girl whose mother died while cutting fodder on a mountain slope and her two young siblings were killed when their house flattened during the devastating quake on Oct 8, 2005. She now lives in a survivors’ camp here in Chehla Bandi locality with her father and a 9-year-old brother.

The camp is home to 177 families; some living in single-room shelters and some in tents and is being run by Jamiat Ahle Hadith, Pakistan, in collaboration with the AJK government’s camps management organisation (CMO).

In all around 26,000 people live in makeshift tents in Muzaffarabad district whereas another 4,000 inhabit similar camps in the neighbouring Bagh district, according to CMO commissioner Sardar Nawaz Khan.

“We used to enjoy life but all that has finished now. Life in this single room cabin is awful,” Sehrish told Dawn outside her shelter, as her brother looked on.

Hers was among many families in the camp preparing to leave for their native village — prone to landslides — to celebrate Eid.

“We will visit the graves of our mother, our sister and brother on Eid day and offer Fateha (prayers) for their deliverance,” she said.

In the nearby shelter, college student Ghazal Ismail wrote felicitation messages on cards that her young brother had brought to deliver to his friends in the camp on the eve of Eid.

On the shelter walls, the family had also affixed with sticky tapes cards they had received from friends.

“We have purchased new clothes, but every one of us is missing our mother. Obviously, it will be a dull Eid without her,” said the 18-year-old girl, who was herself wounded in the quake and spent last Eidul Fitr in a Rawalpindi hospital.

“The festivity is devoid of the cheerfulness which has been its distinctive feature,” she said.

Enjoying the sunny weather outside, Ghulam Rasool, 70, said he would go to his village where his two sons and five grandsons had been buried. “Those who were with us till yesterday are no more today. It’s difficult to put their memories behind,” he said.