IT is early. A light drizzle dampens the still smouldering ashes from which dark clouds arose the night before, obliterating the evening sky, obscuring the horizon of Islamabad the Beautiful. Some 12 hours after the inferno which took more than 50 lives, rescue workers sift through tons of mangled steel and charred wood.

The hopelessly disfigured bodies of those who could not get away were removed the night before. But a search is still on for those who may have survived the terrifying flames which engulfed the Marriott Hotel, just a stone’s throw away from the Parliament House, the Prime Minister’s House, the Presidency, the Federal Sharia Court, the Secretariat, the Foreign Office, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, Pakistan Television, the National Library, The National Art Gallery, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the Supreme Court, the Federal Bureau of Revenue, and numerous foreign missions.

Except for the recently appointed Czech ambassador, no ‘dignitaries’ died in this terrorist attack. The bodies of the injured and the dead were the bodies of ordinary citizens, some wealthy enough to afford a five-star end to the day long fast marking the month of Ramazan. Many of the dead were there to earn a living, to support large families living in small, unknown settlements and hamlets dotting the map of this, my beloved, beleaguered country.

These are the bodies of the unsung, the guards at the entrance gate of the Marriott Hotel who tried their best to extinguish the fire which the suicide bomber had set off by detonating a grenade or perhaps the explosives strapped to his chest.

These are the bodies of the handsome, liveried men, tall and dignified, who stood at attention besides the main door of the hotel, welcoming all guests, holding the door open to visitors, standing on their feet for 12 hours a shift in order to feed families living on the edge in some neglected neighbourhood.

These were the bodies of the women who cleaned the rooms occupied by those who could afford to spend more than a worker’s monthly salary on one night’s comfort. These were the waiters and the chambermaids and the drivers who sat outside in the luxury vehicles of those who had come to feast at iftar, a time when Muslim men and women are to recognise hunger, to acknowledge the gnawing of the gut, to express gratitude for the meal before them, however humble it may be.

But the meal that was served in the lawns of the Prime Minister House the same evening was not humble in the least. For many who partook of it, the message may have been lost entirely, reducing the ritual of fasting to just that.

For many who lost their lives at the Marriott, the evening meal was yet to come; in a corner of the kitchen, they were more concerned about the appetites of the guests. And that seems to have been the primary concern at the Prime Minister House dinner as well. Apparently, it was only after guests were fed and seen off that the political leadership made itself present at the site of devastation.

It is distressing that a national security official actually admitted this at a press conference the next day. The entire cabinet, the military’s top brass, the prime minister himself, the newly elected president, almost all members of parliament, the chief ministers of the four provinces, the president and prime minister of Azad Kashmir and other guests who were present at the dinner heard the blast at 7:49 pm and continued to enjoy their meal, and only after ushering out the last guest did the said official leave for the hospital where the injured and the dead had been transferred.

It appears that for these VIPs finishing dinner was of paramount importance in an emergency. Declaring that no VIP died in the inferno due to the “president’s prescient vision” was as tasteless as it was heartless, as if the deaths of those who expect to be led by competent and sincere leaders is inconsequential.

The greatest irony of all is that the young men who are willing to be recruited into the ranks of countless suicide bombers blow themselves up for the mere fact that perhaps that is a death preferable to the one brought on by hunger.

In a country where hunger has mounted, where the granary of the land of five rivers does not yield enough to feed its citizens, where the water in its rivers has been replaced by effluents, where able-bodied men and women seek meaningful work in vain, trudging the streets on empty stomachs, there cannot be a deadlier harvest than the one we are now reaping.

Decades after we were allied to the United States in its hegemonic struggle against the Soviet “infidel”, we are still harvesting the fruit of that war. The difference this time is that the graves being dug are for our own people, caught between the greatest contradictions of an unjust world, that of hunger stalking a land of plenty. Certainly the harvest this autumn is one stained with blood, surely those we bury next to the gnarled roots which clutch this earth shall remind us that we are the enemy of those we do not know, and those we do not know are amongst us, ploughing our land, ripping up the soil which barely conceals the scars of our lost kingdom.

The writer is the author of No Space for Further Burials.

PEOPLE who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, England, who led the research, said: “green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image.

But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights.”

Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.

Only a very small number of citizens matched their eco-friendly behaviour at home by refusing to fly abroad, Barr told a climate change conference at Exeter University Tuesday.

The research team questioned 200 people on their environmental attitudes and split them into three groups, based on a commitment to green living.

They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.

Questioned on their heavy use of flying, one respondent said: “I recycle 100 per cent of what I can, there’s not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do.”

Barr said “green” lifestyles at home and frequent flying were linked to income, with wealthier people more likely to be engaged in both activities.

He said: “The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts.”

The team says the research is one of the first attempts to analyse how green intentions alter depending on context. It says the results reveal the scale of the challenge faced by policymakers who are trying to alter public behaviour to help tackle global warming.

The study concludes: “The notion that we can treat what we do in the home differently from what we do on holiday denies the existence of clearly related and complex lifestyle choices and practices.

Yet even a focus on lifestyle groups who may be most likely to change their views will require both time and political will. The addiction to cheap flights and holidays will be very difficult to break.”

The frequent flyers said they expected new technology to make aviation greener, echoing comments made by Tony Blair last year, who said it was “impractical” to expect people to take holidays closer to home. He said the solution was “to look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less.”

— The Guardian, London