'Don't send money. Send engineers'

When Shamima spoke to rediff.com, she wasn't crying.

Her father died a long time ago, during cross-border shelling along the Line of Control when India and Pakistan were fighting a low-intensity war. When the earthquake struck, her mother and brother's two young daughters died under the debris when their home collapsed. Everyone in her village now says, 'It was Allah's wish. He wanted to remind us that we should never forget him.'

She says, "For the first two days, I cried. Now, I have to support my two young brothers. I don't think I have understood what has stuck me yet." She complains that her village and 14 other villages are on steep slopes. There are no roads built around them. It takes 30 minutes to climb down to Kamalkote. As cars don't reach her village, journalists write about Kamalkote alone. "Politicians only visit places their vehicles can reach. No one visited my village for the first three days. We were all alone. Every home had a casualty, so no one could help anyone else. In some homes where all the men had died, there was no one to help bury the dead. Some bodies lay for five days, waiting for burial."

She points to her home on the mountain. "After 30 years, we had received photographs of our uncle living in Muzzaffarabad. He sent them to us after the bus service started. I now wonder if he is alive. It would have been much better if we hadn't revived our relationship. At least we wouldn't have worried today."

Shamina with her aunt showing her home in the mountains on slopes.

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