Kashmiri Fable - An Old Soldier

It was a warm and dry October in 2005. Pakistan-administered Kashmir was reeling from a devastating earthquake that had flattened Muzaffarabad, the capital of “Azad Kashmir.” The city lay in ruins, with mass graves appearing by the dozens around its outskirts. Thousands of bodies, pulled from collapsed buildings, filled these seemingly bottomless pits. Hundreds more remained trapped under debris, and in still air, the stench made breathing nearly impossible. In the river valley just above the city, Pakistani army sappers worked tirelessly, blasting through mountains of rubble to clear a path for water that was dangerously pooling behind a massive landslide. The landslide had buried a village along with its 500 residents, who were declared dead and buried without much investigation or ceremony.

The UN camp was set up on a school stadium on the city’s edge. Only the grass remained intact; the stands were cracked wide open, and the two- to three-story buildings around the perimeter were cordoned off with orange tape reading, “Do Not Enter – Collapse Risk.” Aftershocks, though less intense, continued, and early one morning, one of those buildings finally gave way, collapsing in a cloud of dust and startling our tented camp. That same day, American military engineers arrived with bulldozers and swiftly demolished the remaining structures.
Despite the dire circumstances, life in Muzaffarabad persisted. A humanitarian airbridge was in full operation, delivering vast amounts of aid by helicopters. Our equipment, vehicles, communication devices, clothing, food, water, doctors, and medical supplies were also airlifted to accessible landing zones and a military airfield 20 kilometers away, once engineers cleared the landslide-blocked road. The aid was promptly transported to warehouses under Pakistani army guard, then distributed to villages in the earthquake zone using all available means.

The situation in the villages grew increasingly desperate. People slept outdoors, fearing their damaged homes would collapse. Cut off by landslides and destroyed roads, they rapidly depleted their meager supplies, leading to hunger. Without fuel or warmth, children caught colds and died. The injured, often waiting a week or more for help, succumbed to simple complications in droves. The scale of the disaster was staggering, and despite global attention, aid arrived too slowly. In one remote village, a crowd of desperate locals stormed a helicopter delivering aid right after it landed, snatching rice sacks from each other at the door. The crew, attempting to restore order, was roughed up by the men. After that, aid deliveries became military operations: a platoon of soldiers would secure the landing site before the helicopter arrived with supplies.

I decided to scout the road up the Neelum Valley. My driver took me as far as he could in our sturdy Nissan Patrol, but we soon hit a pile of rocks, forcing me to continue on foot. With a backpack, radio, and sleeping bag, I walked along the debris-strewn road, passing dozens, then hundreds, of refugees. They carried children, elderly parents, or hobbled on crutches and sticks, wrapped in bloodied, rotting rags. The scene was apocalyptic. I, along with a couple of Pakistanis carrying sacks and bundles, headed deeper into the valley, while a stream of humanity limped toward me, navigating unstable landslide patches, flinching at every tremor that might trigger another collapse, and carrying their pain and suffering toward the city where they hoped for safety and aid. I didn’t have the heart—or the will—to tell them that Muzaffarabad, once a grand, clean city in their eyes, was now a dusty ruin filled with hundreds of decomposing bodies under the rubble. They would face that shock soon enough without me bearing the bad news.

After walking about ten kilometers up the valley, I decided it was time to turn back. It was around 2 p.m., and I wanted to return that day. I packed away my camera and joined the flow of people heading down. My radio had long lost contact with Muzaffarabad, so I turned on my satellite phone and clipped it to my backpack. I was swept along in a sparse stream of people, surrounded by their smells, unshaven faces, exhaustion, crying children, and silently suffering wounded. The ground shook beneath us, and everyone crouched, clutching their burdens—children, sacks, whatever they carried. The tremor was long and strong, making it impossible to stand. We sat on the cracked, boulder-strewn road, waiting patiently for the shaking to stop. Then, from about 500 meters below, a chorus of screams echoed up the valley, followed by a rumble and roar as a mass of earth slid down the slope. I grabbed my camera but only managed to capture the landslide as it swept through trees, crossed the road, and reached the river at the valley’s bottom, spreading a yellow, dusty plume over the water. People on the road froze, peering ahead, scanning the slopes with terror in their eyes for signs of falling rocks or another landslide. Some instinctively backed up the road, but after a few minutes, the crowd, like water pooling behind a dam, resignedly flowed downward toward the city they longed for. We crossed the fresh landslide—a thick, sticky mound of soil, sand, and rocks that sank underfoot like a swamp. People grabbed my clothes and backpack for balance, and I, now part of this weary, dirty, sweat- and pus-scented stream, helped them, offering a hand to those who fell and couldn’t get up.

No one noticed I was a foreigner anymore—a white man in a blue UN vest, with a large backpack, phones, and radios dangling at my sides. They didn’t thank me or acknowledge my difference, simply taking my dirty hand to stand and move on without a glance. I blended into the exhausted crowd, sharing its smells, the clatter of pots, groans, and constant fear of new tremors. Like them, I looked up for rolling rocks, froze at the hint of shaking, and crouched on the road when it came. We all endured the quakes, clinging to the ground. The elderly, children, and sick, too weak to call for help or warn others, sat on the road, staring resignedly at the slopes or into the void, nursing their private pain.
I reached our stadium camp after dark. After quickly drafting a report for my superiors about the day’s findings—mostly on road accessibility and communication conditions—I took a cold shower in the bath tent, climbed into my sleeping bag, and fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, I was woken by a Pakistani lieutenant from a border militia unit sent from Quetta to assist in the earthquake zone.
“Sir!” he said, saluting sharply. “There’s a situation at the gate…”
There was indeed a “situation” at the gate. An elderly man, so ancient I didn’t even try to guess his age, sat on a small stool. In Asia, hardship ages people quickly—a fifty-year-old can look like an ancient elder. The man had brought a donkey, tied up nearby. His faded jacket, three sizes too large, vaguely resembled a military uniform but looked more like a museum piece on him. The lieutenant led me to the man, explaining that he had been asking for someone in charge.
“And you brought me?” I asked the border guard.
“Sir! I think he’s looking for you specifically…” the lieutenant replied, a bit sheepishly.

I asked the lieutenant to translate and greeted the man.
“Salaam!” I said, placing my hand on my chest. “I’m in charge of UN security in the city. How can I help you?”
The old man began speaking, but his speech was so unclear—or perhaps the lieutenant from Balochistan simply didn’t understand his language—that the lieutenant listened silently, nodding but not translating a word. After a lengthy preamble, the man started unloading a sack from his donkey. With arthritic fingers, he struggled to untie the knot, opened the sack, rummaged inside, and finally pulled out a long cardboard box wrapped in a yellow, nearly disintegrated cloth. He handed it to me. I glanced at the lieutenant.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked the old man, and the lieutenant relayed the question in his language.

The man gestured with his hands: open it!
I carefully unwrapped the tattered cloth and took out the cardboard box. It was secured with a simple but intricately patterned brass hook. After examining it and figuring out how to unlatch it, I opened the box slowly with both hands to avoid spilling its contents. Inside, beneath another cloth, lay a worn medal.
Unusually large, with a rectangular green loop, it looked odd to my Soviet-trained eyes and was clearly old, having sat in the box for decades. A short black ribbon peeked out from the box’s bottom, hinting at something more. I pulled the ribbon, lifting the false bottom like a book page, revealing a faded yellow-gray photograph. I looked at the old man, seeking permission to take it out. He nodded eagerly, clearly expecting my request. Careful not to damage it, I lifted the bottom and extracted the photo. The black-and-white image showed a young soldier standing proudly, chest puffed out, a fierce expression on his mustached face. He wore a British colonial military uniform, a turban on his head, a curved saber in his hands, breeches tucked into high gaiters, and heavy, blunt-toed boots.

I studied the old man’s cataract-clouded eyes. At least sixty years had passed since the photo was taken, but it was impossible not to recognize the frail elder as the spirited soldier in the picture. His jacket, mimicking an old British military tunic, wasn’t the same as in the photo, but he had clearly dressed up for the meeting.
“He says,” the Balochistani lieutenant finally translated, “that he was an English soldier. He’s asking if a British officer could help him today.”
“A British officer?” I repeated. “He thinks I’m a British officer?”
The lieutenant tried to clarify who the old man actually wanted to meet. After a few minutes, he turned to me and said, “Someone told him the UN security chief in the city is an officer who speaks English. I think,” the lieutenant ventured, “he assumes all foreigners in Kashmir are British.”
“Tell him,” I instructed the lieutenant, “that I’m not British. I’m a major in the Russian army.”

The lieutenant spoke to the old man, who listened intently. It was hard to tell how much he understood, but when the word “major” came up, the old man’s cataract-filled eyes turned to me. He raised a trembling hand to his head, standing at attention, holding his sack with his left hand. Reflexively, despite all protocols and with my head uncovered, I returned a Soviet-style salute. Only when I lowered my hand did he slap his right hand against his thigh.
We stood there, looking at each other.

“Did he understand I’m not British?” I asked the lieutenant after a pause.
“I’m not sure, sir,” he replied hesitantly. “I don’t think so… To them, all foreigners are British. This area was closed off before the earthquake—no foreigners had been here for fifty years, except those at the Indian border, but they don’t come here. They just fly in and out by helicopter.”
I sat the old man back on his stool and asked the lieutenant to find out what he needed. After a lengthy exchange, the lieutenant turned to me.
“He and his family live here in Muzaffarabad. Humanitarian convoys pass by his house every day, but neither he nor his family have received anything. He has children and grandchildren—they’re nearly starving, and they have no water.”
After a moment’s thought, I asked him to wait at the gate and went to the tent of the senior World Food Programme officer in the city. I explained the situation.
“We can’t provide aid to just one family,” he said. “If they haven’t received help, someone assessed their needs and deemed them non-critical.”
“Fine,” I replied. “Then let me take a couple of rice sacks and deliver them to his home myself, in my vehicle.”

“That’s not really allowed,” the officer hesitated, scratching his head, “but for you, I’ll make an exception.”
I told the old man to wait at the gate, got into my vehicle, and drove to the warehouse. They were expecting me. I was given two 32-kilogram sacks of rice, a hefty sack of beans, several cans of sunflower oil, ten kilograms of flour, and a bag of essentials like matches, salt, and even plastic spoons and forks. On my way back, I stopped at a water distribution point and loaded about 40 liters of bottled drinking water into the car.

The old man was still at the gate, patiently holding a small water bottle someone had given him. When I stepped out of the vehicle, he jumped up and tried to salute again, but fumbled, his hands occupied with the bottle and sack. I gestured for him to relax and pointed to the car: “Get in!”

We drove slowly through Muzaffarabad’s narrow streets, navigating around piles of debris from collapsed buildings. The old man sat in the front passenger seat by the open window, clutching a rope as his donkey trotted behind us, struggling to keep up. When we finally reached his home, I opened the trunk, and for the first time, he saw the supplies I’d gathered for him. His cloudy eyes took a moment to register the bounty, but when he did, he threw up his hands and began speaking, interspersing his words with “Allah” and “Alhamdulillah.” His entire family rushed out—men and boys spilling into the yard to unload the aid.

The old man stayed close to me, standing as straight as he could, his cataract-covered eyes brimming with tears, perhaps from overwhelming joy, perhaps simply from age.

We carried the sacks and water into the house, and it was time for me to leave. The old man directed his family like a military unit. The men invited me to stay for dinner, offering me bottles of the water I’d brought, along with some flatbreads. I took one bottle and a flatbread but declined to stay. The boys ran after me for a few minutes down the narrow road, shouting, “Major! Major!” until I reached the paved road, sped up, and they finally fell behind.
In Kashmir, nearly 100,000 people perished.