Page 330 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

British Pakistani community, and I was able to arrange to get the
tents on the aid flight. I had done something, but it was the
proverbial drop in the ocean.
The more I talked to officials and the army, the more I
understood just how chaotic things were, and the immensity of the
task ahead. It was becoming clear that they just didn’t have the
resources to reach everyone by winter and so they developed a
strategy that would concentrate on the towns in the low-lying
areas. At least there they could get aid in and help the greatest
number of people. I understood why they would do that, but I
couldn’t stop thinking about the people in the isolated villages we
had flown over the day before.
Muzaffarabad is surrounded by mountains, and from where we
stood we could see villages that we now knew wouldn’t be helped.
I had to do something. We – that’s me and my two banker friends
– drove as far as we could and then got out and walked. I needed
to get into the villages so that we could assess what needed to be
done. We walked for about an hour before we reached the first
village. Buildings either side of the path we were following had
collapsed, and it was evident that the damage in the villages was
much worse: the steep terrain meant the ground had simply slipped
down the mountainside, taking everything with it. The villages had
been densely populated – up to fifteen people lived in each house
– but now the only ones left were those who couldn’t move – the
elderly, those with young children, or in many cases the young
children who now found themselves alone and utterly lost in the
world.
I spoke to the villagers and heard heartbreaking stories. The
Punjabi and Urdu I had learned as a child had become much more
fluent since I’d been making regular trips to Pakistan, and I was
able to make myself understood. I met one man who had lost his
wife and three children, another woman who had six kids to look
after and no food to offer them; in one village the children had

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