Noraseri – The Doctor Shahab Family

Doctor Shahab with my Indonesian cap

The NGO camp was emptied already today. The scars of the tents left another scars in people in neighborhood. It was Doctor Shahab, born as Khani Zaman, among those who used to come at least one time in a day to our camp area. He was an old man in his sixties, and everybody called him as Mister Doctor, or Doctor Shahab. I believed he was a doctor, until Hafizah told me that he never been a doctor. It turned out to be that he was a pharmacist, and used to be a driver of an ambulance of Edhi Foundation. His work was not that far from doctor anyway.

The first time I knew Doctor Shahab was the same date when the Hajji Shahab passed away. The two occasions still made me confusing the two names many of the times. Doctor Shahab was there in the funeral day of Hajji Shahab, claiming that he was a friend of President Soekarno in school time, and asked me to send a dozen of Indonesian caps. He was humorous, he was optimistic, and he was intelligent. He lost his wife in the earthquake, but the pastime seemed had passed. He asked me to get a visa to go to Indonesia that he wanted to marry an Indonesian woman. I knew he was only joking. Doctor Shahab was a brother of Mr. Bashir, whose story had been featured in previous post. I didn’t know before today.

Because of security reason, every family has gun

Today, I had no shelter. The camp where I used to stay was emptied. Everybody had moved out of Noraseri, and it was only me left from the NGO in this village. I chose to keep staying here as I had plan to go to Kandar (see the next post). And Doctor Shahab offered me to come to his house.

Since the chehlum of Mister Hajji, the electricity had not come yet. It was a problem. Doctor Shahab wanted to show me Chinese TV stations from his satellite dish. His house was big. He had two houses actually, one was completely flattened, the other was cracked, too dangerous to live in. His wife was in the demolished house. The helpless woman passed away. The absence of Doctor’s wife made Faizah, the daughter-in-law, to give up her job and instead staying in home serving the family. Faizah’s husband was working in Dubai, and they had a daughter, the cute Laiba, two years old. The pastime of the family was glorious. Except the two houses and the satellite dish, Doctor Shahab also owned a car. But now the life, as everywhere else, had to be reduced to the most basic standard. They were starting a new life in the tiny shelter homes and tents.

I was surprised by the huge dinner Faizah made for me. The chicken curry she made seemed had included quite a number of population of the chicken in the house. Later on I found that merely to welcome me, they had slaughtered all of the chickens, except the one which laid eggs everyday. Doctor Shahab himself didn’t eat the chicken. I didn’t know about Faizah. She ate in the next room.

Doctor Shahab had four sons, one was staying together here. A young boy of 20 years old, Junaid. One son had a shop in Pattika, one worked in Dubai (Faizah’s husband), and the other one worked as cameraman for BBC in Muzaffarabad. Initially I thought that Faizah was Junaid’s wife, can asked him how could he had a daughter at such a young age. Actually Junaid was studying computer, and he even offered me to make me a website.

Faizah and Laiba

Faizah came after dinner. She talked quite a lot. She said that normally she didn’t come to meet the guests and had such conversation. She just came for me. She told me about her hometown in India border, about her childhood that was full of fear. The armies of Pakistan and India fought in her village. That day she was alone in her house. She was a young girl at that time. And war just happened. Now the area was comparatively quiet. Indian army was visible just next to the border. But close in sight, far to reach. Indian Kashmir was unreachable anyway.

I stayed in Doctor Shahab house for two nights. The second night was after my return from Kandar (see the next post). He had warned me that Farman might not take me to Kandar and instead to somewhere else. He had his point.

Today the electricity came, and I was so excited to see the televisions from China and Hong Kong. The news from Phoenix TV was about the scandals in Thailand presidential election, about the contract between China to buy Australian uranium, about Iranian earthquake (sigh, another earthquake) and about the sentenced-to-death Al Qaeda terrorist planner. There was no news about Indonesia, except one of the BBC stating that the inflation in Indonesia was going to an alert. Since coming to Noraseri, I had stopped relation with outside world. I didn’t know earlier that I could watch news from Doctor Shahab satellite dish. And Doctor Shahab shelter was so close from our tents anyway.

Junaid with his father’s gun

Junaid was showing his AK-47 and asked me to make a photo. It turned to be a photography day when all family members asked to be photographed in the cracked house.