Page 326 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

people didn’t get shelter within weeks, hundreds of thousands
more lives would be at risk.
I couldn’t get the images out of my head. How can you have
three million people homeless? What will happen to them? How
do you cope with that? Who’s capable of burying the dead? All
week I was restless. I felt I wanted to do something and on the
Saturday, a week after the earthquake, I decided I had to go to
Kashmir. I told Aisha what I was about to do, and from the look
on her face it was clear she thought I’d lost it again.
Apart from Aisha, I didn’t tell anyone in London what I was
doing because I knew they would all tell me not to go. Either
they’d tell me I’d get in the way or that the Foreign Office was
telling people not to travel there because it wasn’t safe. I didn’t
need to hear those things so I packed a bag with a few of my
warmest clothes, and Stephen, my butler, drove me out to
Heathrow. While I was in the car I booked a flight, then I called
my cousin, a couple of ministers I had got to know quite well and
someone from the army I had met at an official function. In a
country run by generals, getting to know the politicians automat-
ically introduces you to the military. I told them that I wanted to
see what had happened first-hand and find out how I could help.
I knew I needed to understand the issues before I could understand
possible solutions.
I flew to Islamabad, where I was met by a contact at the Human
Development Organization. As ever, I didn’t have a plan, but I’m
not the kind of person who needs to know too much in advance:
whatever I found on the ground I knew I would deal with. It’s just
about going back to my favourite question: what’s the worst that
could happen? Would I need to hire a car? I didn’t know, but I
knew that if I needed to buy a car it wouldn’t have been a problem
that I couldn’t have solved.
As we travelled from the airport to my hotel, the guy from the
HDO tried to persuade me not to go. ‘It’s really terrible there. You

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