Page 331 - James Caan - The Real Deal

32 · Kashmir

gone off to school in the morning and not come back: everyone we
spoke to was grieving. I talked to one man who described the
moment when the earthquake struck. His house started to tremble,
so he made his way to the room where he knew his wife and
children were. Then the shaking became more violent and
although he could see them at the other end of the room he
couldn’t move to reach them. Then a crack appeared in the floor
and he was left standing in one half of the room as his entire family
slipped away as the other half their house fell down the mountain-
side.
‘All I can hear is my daughter screaming,’ he told me.
I looked at him and wondered what could be done for him. He
had his pride, he didn’t want handouts, but with no job, no food
and no shelter he had no way of supporting himself. I looked
across at the valley and saw other ruined villages in the distance
and knew that the stories I had just heard would be repeated in
every place we went to. It was too much to bear, and I just had to
leave. I was struggling to take it all in and I was exhausted and I
was angry: Why do these disasters always happen to the poor?
Why are the people most affected by natural disasters always
the most helpless? Leaving was a luxury few people had, but I
knew I would be back. I just had to work out how on earth I could
help.
On the plane back to the UK, I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t positive
and confident that there was anything I could do: I was really quite
bruised by everything I had seen and for the first days back at my
desk I didn’t have any enthusiasm for work. All I could think
about was Kashmir.
I rang my friend Seema Aziz who had been so helpful when I
had been setting up my school. ‘What can we do?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, but we have to do something.’
I told her about what I had seen and together we came up with
a plan that would see us build 100 homes in the valley where I had

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