We walk further, toward the edge of what was once the city of Asama Bashir. It is twilight now, and the horizon glows a particularly rich shade of orange. When I remark to Edina on the beauty of the sunset, she says, “It has been that way ever since the earthquake. Some say it is because of all the dust in the air, but I know it is a representation of the blood that was shed by those we lost in those twenty-eight seconds.”
Skip ahead five years and Pakistan is again devastated, this time by floods. The rain began in July, as it usually does when the monsoon comes to the Pakistani regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. In the wake of the flood, thousands of people have died and over a million homes have been destroyed. More than twenty-one million people were injured or made homeless as a result of the flooding, exceeding the combined total of individuals affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area is now underwater.
The flooding is attributed to unprecedented monsoon rains caused by La Niña. In June, the Pakistan Meteorological Department cautioned that urban and flash flooding could occur from July to September in the northern parts of the country. The same department recorded above-average rainfall in the months of July and August 2010, and monitored the flood wave progression. Discharge levels recorded were comparable to those seen during the floods of 1988, 1995, and 1997.
New Scientist Magazine has attributed the cause of this exceptional rainfall to the freezing of the jet stream, a phenomenon that also caused an unprecedented heat wave and wildfires in Russia.
Many towns and villages are not accessible, and communications have been disrupted. In some areas, the water level is five and a half meters high. People wait on rooftops for aid to arrive. The Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan with China, is closed after the collapse of a vital bridge. Floodwaters have destroyed much of the health care infrastructure in the worst affected areas, leaving inhabitants especially vulnerable to water-borne disease. In Sindh, the Indus River burst its banks near Sukkur, submerging the village of Mor Khan Jatoi; an absence of law and order allows looters the opportunity to ransack abandoned homes using boats.
I am with a small group of doctors from Medecins Sans Frintieres (Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Kristina Nesvig from Norway heads the team. We are traveling south by van to the region of Peshawar. The difficult roads make it a longer and more tiring journey than it should be. It is still the early hours of the morning and were it not for the blasting AC in the car, we would already be under severe stress from the scorching heat. We are traveling to the Village of Tangi, which is sixty kilometers north of Peshawar. Assessments have already been made and the results, we learn, are not good. People there are waiting for our arrival with great anticipation. They have been told a medical team will arrive soon.
The aftermath of the flood is unbelievable. I see the rooftop of a building just above water level. It appears to have been a hotel, but now it is all but underwater. In other areas, the level of water has receded, leaving nothing intact.
“In this region alone,” Kris tells us, “Eleven thousand people are already dead and approximately five million are homeless. People are living in graveyards, or on roadsides—anywhere they can. They have no food, no water, no shelter and no medicines.”
Though heartfelt and filled with concern, Dr. Nesvig’s words are unnecessary, for all around us the devastation is obvious and far-reaching. People wander, dazed and confused and in muddy clothes, from place to place. Everything they once owned is gone. Water and mud are everywhere, and I wonder how we will ever make it to Tangi.
Yet even as we are all but submerged in Pakistan, I am reminded of the famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘The Ancient Mariner’: “Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” Such irony is not lost on me, and I mentally concoct my own version, equally dire for a different time: “Drowning here in sultry heat, the mortal cry of children’s thirst; As fires ravage Russian peat, the Earth I fear is cursed!” Well, no poet am I, that’s for sure, but I do know one thing: we as humans proclaim our superiority and our sovereignty over nature, but our proclamation is a hollow one indeed. As I look around it is obvious that in the end it is the Earth, not man, who will have the final word. And much too soon, I fear…
Arriving in Tangi, we are directed to an abandoned building where a makeshift hospital is to be established. Dr. Nesvig immediately designates one area as a de facto triage center, and then establishes a surgery inside the cleanest area of the building. Patients begin arriving immediately, and I act as a processor. With no medical training whatsoever, it is my job to establish which patients are most in need of care. It is an impossible job, but I persist. The line is endless. As the day wears on I am drenched in sweat. My hair hangs limply over my forehead and my face. When a woman with an infant stands before me, I lead her without pause into Dr. Nesvig’s surgery. The eleven-month-old baby boy is limp and unresponsive in his mother’s arms. Dr. Nesvig tenderly takes the infant from his forlorn mother and assesses his condition.
The mother tells Dr. Nesvig that her beloved Ali has been in this horrible condition for five days. He cannot swallow, he has severe diarrhea and he is vomiting. Kris’s eyes reveal a dire prognosis.
“He is suffering from severe dehydration,” Kris tells the mother. “We will send him directly to Dr. Menendez, the pediatrician.”
I accompany baby Ali and his mother to a different room in the building where Dr. José Menendez is ministering to more than fifty other children. But baby Ali is given immediate attention, as his condition is deemed critical. He is placed on a fluid drip to hydrate and nourish him. He is also given Kaopectate to stop his diarrhea, and Imodium to stop his dry heaves. Even so, Dr. Menendez assesses his chances for survival at one in five.
On our first day alone at the Tangi Hospital, we see more than two thousand patients. To say that the numbers are overwhelming would be a ridiculous understatement; and while my own impression is no doubt given to hyperbole, I am crushed by the feeling that I am watching not only the tragedy of one village, or one country, but possibly the death of an entire race. My sleep this night is dreamless.
And as the eighteen-hour days drag on, and one humid misfortune after another passes my station begging for help and refuge, my mind goes numb and my limbs ache, my temples pulse, my feet swell. On which level of Dante’s Inferno is this tragedy manifest, I ask myself? Is mercy itself blinded by the intense reflection of an unrelenting sun upon fields and fields of water once grain? Are we as Humans not more than mere clay in the hands of the ephemeral? Need is eternal; work is my salvation.
At Dr. Nesvig’s surgery, we receive word from the mother that baby Ali is doing better. He is now conscious and he is able to take water by mouth. “Praise Allah! Praise Allah!” she prays. We, too, praise Allah…
We see a man who has lost his sight, a woman whose lower legs and feet are gangrenous, a ten-year-old child whose tongue is so swollen he cannot eat or drink. Dr. Nesvig stitches a man’s scalp back onto his head, then proceeds without a moment’s rest to treat a patient whose bowels are enflamed and blocked. We admit a woman who is having a severe diabetic reaction, and another who is in labor. No departments here, no specialists or interns or orderlies. One doctor per one thousand patients, that’s the rule at this hospital, and sleep when and where you can.
By the end of the first week, it feels like I have been here a year. By the end of the second week, it feels like a lifetime. More doctors arrive. Food arrives from Islamic Relief. Nothing glorious, of course: bulk grains, canned goods, orange juice. The doctors give away their rations to those more in need. I sometimes forget to eat. I have ceased to feel anything as I watch and administrate the parade of misery.
Then, on the eighth day (or is it the ninth?), I learn that baby Ali has died. Yes, it can even happen in VL. My throat closes and I break into tears.
I go running through the village. My hysteria is barely noticed by those whose suffering is paramount to mine. When I reach the water—the blessed, cursed water—I bathe myself in my own grief.
Whoosh…
OMG! I need a break (maybe you do, too). To regain my balance. So I’m meeting Igloo Iceman at Dirty Nellie’s Pub. It’s nice to be back in a VL REP where buildings aren’t falling down and people aren’t dying from Cholera. Dirty Nellie’s is a sanctuary, just as VL is my personal safe haven. Even before Iggy arrives I order two pints of Guinness. I know it is his preferred brew. As for me, I don’t care (because I can’t taste it anyway).
To tell the truth, I’m still feeling weak and a bit overwhelmed by what I saw in virtual Pakistan. The devastation and human suffering—whether in VL or in PL—is more than I could have imagined. Seeing babies dying everyday of dehydration and dysentery, and even from diseases that the doctors could not easily identify, has not only taken my (physical) strength, but also exhausted my will. It’s going to take me a long time, if ever, to recover fully from what I experienced there.
When Iggy drops into Dirty Nellie’s I am very happy to see him. That’s the way it is with old friends. And Iggy is one of my oldest and best friends here in VL. We have known one another since the beginning—at least since shortly after I arrived in VL—and we have always felt a unique connection. Not because we are alike (after all, he lives in Greenland on a melting glacier, and I live in Seattle and work at a stinking fish market) but because we see the world in a similar way. And that’s what’s really important, isn’t it?
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I tell him as he maneuvers his giant body into a seat at the table.
“You don’t say?” he smiles.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through during the past forty years…” Of course I’m referring not only to the time I spent in Pakistan but also the time I spent in the Sinai with the Jews, and in the Holy Land with Jesus, not to mention the time I spent in India with Gandhi, and with the Dalai Llama, and in Turkey with the Dervishes; then, of course, there was Gettysburg!
“In VL, time goes by in the wink of an eye,” Iggy concedes.
“Or maybe there is no such thing as time,” I offer.
“I see you’ve ordered the Guinness,” he says.
“It’s on me,” I tell him.
“Thanks.” He takes a long pull of the black beer then wipes froth from his mouth.
“How’s the Ark coming along?” I ask.
“Almost ready,” he says.
“So you’re really going to do it. You’re going to leave Greenland and sail that thing into forever…”
“Sail it right off a cliff, so to speak,” he confirms.
“Why not?” I say. “The world is going to hell anyway.”
“Or melting away, in my case.”
“Right.”
As we talk I’m looking at Iggy’s hands. They appear rough and calloused. No doubt the result of his carpentry. Similarly, all the muscles of his upper body seem even more developed than when I last saw him. In his eyes I see a far-away look, but of course Greenland is a far-away place, and Iggy has always been a dreamer.
“I got the IMs you sent from the Middle East,” he says.
“I had to share what I was going through with someone,” I tell him.
“What about Crystal and Kiz? Are they aware of your ‘travels’?”
“Yeah, they know all about it.”
“Most people I know in VL see it as a ‘future’ experience,” he relates, “but you have taken a step back in time, Fizzy. Don’t you think it’s a little risky to be walking through history?”
“Mostly, I’ve just been an observer,” I explain. “Just along for the ride, if you know what I mean.”
Iggy shrugs as he drains half a glassful of beer. “I can’t say that I—or any of us here in VL—actually have a grasp of time anymore. Who’s to say what’s past, present or future? Not me, that’s for sure.”
“There are just too many questions in my mind,” I try to explain. “Things I just have to find out. Things I feel I have to know…”
“Right now, my gig is the unknown,” he admits.
“But here in VL, even the unknown can be experienced.”
“If you have the courage…”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of that. Too much, probably.”
“I know,” he says. “I was thinking about inviting you to be First Mate on the Ark.”
I smile at the suggestion. “I’m no sailor,” I beg off. “I get sea sick in my own bathtub.”
“Just a suggestion,” he says. “No worries, I have somebody else in mind for the job.”
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Are you kidding me, Fiz? You know everybody in VL.”
“Hardly,” I dismiss. “VL is a big place. And getting bigger every day.”
“No doubt thanks to enthusiasts like you. And like Crystal…” Iggy finishes off his beer and settles back in his chair. “So, what’s next for you?”
“I’ve got a few more adventures of my own planned before I settle down,” I tell him.
“You don’t say?”
“I’m just taking a little break to rest up. Then I’m back on the road,” I confirm. “I know I still have so much to see, so much to learn…”
“Where to next?” Iggy asks.
“North Africa, I think. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Please do,” he says.
“Then I think I’m off to Iowa,” I add.
“Iowa?”
“To research soil contamination,” I tell him.
Iggy smiles and shakes his head in wonderment. “You’re one of a kind, Fizzy Oceans,” he says. “Nothing will stop you here in VL.”
I know that Iggy is right; I have a grander purpose to fulfill here in virtual reality. And time grows short…
Note: It’s 4:00 a.m. in Seattle and I (Amy Birkenstock) have just finished listening to a radio interview with a guy named Texe Marrs, and he says that the BP oilrig explosion in the Gulf was no accident. (Here we go again; the Mother of all conspiracy theories.) But wait! Maybe this guy, Texe, has a point. He says that the derrick was purposely blown up to keep world oil prices artificially high. Can it be? He says that a month after President Obama took office he ordered laws to be changed to exempt BP from certain environmental regulations. Can it be? He says that in the late thirties oilrigs were purposely blown up and destroyed for all time in Azerbaijan by the then new (Communist) Russian government for the same reason. He also says that the three main entities involved in that drilling venture were the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds and the Nobel family, and that because they knew that development of what was then the world’s largest untapped oil reserve would plummet oil prices, they blew the thing to Kingdom Come. And that is what he says happened in the Gulf, too. He says that the oil field underneath the Gulf is the largest known reserve in the world. And that there’s plenty more underground beneath the Dakotas and Wyoming and Montana. And if those reserves were developed, the world would be awash in cheap oil. So why would the American government not want to exploit its own reserves? Simple, says Texe Marrs. It’s because now that the US has gained control of the Iraqi oil fields (the world’s second largest reserve already under development), they want to ensure the price set by the oil cartel because they are shipping the oil (through northern Israeli ports and southern Lebanese ports) to China, a country without any significant oil reserves. So of course they want the price of oil to remain high. And this guy, Texe Marrs, also says that an underwater explosive device—not one like was used in WWII—washed up on the beach in Alabama. Some of the BP clean-up crew found it there, and the area was immediately sealed off by security personnel. Even the TV stations could not gain access to the area to report the incident. But Texe Marrs says he has film of the thing. Imagine that! And now that the rupture has been capped, and the clean-up is nearly done, he says that the chemical used to disperse the sludgy mess, COREXI
T, is so toxic that people in the Gulf States are throwing up blood, and all sorts of other unspeakable things… Can it be? He says that in New Orleans it is literally raining oil. Can it be? He has documentation that the levels of toxicity caused by COREXIT are some three thousand to five thousand times the acceptable limit established by the EPA. Can it be? And that the sludge is just sitting at the bottom of the Gulf (along with dead dolphins and whales and fish), and that it is only a matter of time before the current carries it around the tip of Florida and across the northern Atlantic all the way to the fjords of Norway. And God knows, those folks up there like their Halibut!
Whoosh???
My arrival in VL Darfur, Sudan is like touching down on another planet. Or maybe it is similar to landing on the moon, except that there are homeless, starving people everywhere, bombs are going off (or just lying around unexploded), villages have been pillaged and then burned to the ground, most of the men have gone to war, many of the women have been raped, and virtually all the children are sick—especially the babies. The first woman I encounter lives on a bundle of straw—no roof over her head, but she is alive. Her family has perished, she tells me.
By prior arrangement, I am supposed to meet a man called Dr. Deng. But how will I ever locate him? I type his name into my VL search bar, but for some reason the system cannot locate him. But I’m sure he is here somewhere. I ask several people if they know where I might find him, but I am met only with blank stares. Such expressions disarm me, because I know that they are the expression of hope’s retreat. I make my way through this camp of refugees living in huts constructed of twigs and mud. Women cook what they have (mostly bulk grains and dried beans—maybe a few onions or other roots) over pitiful open fires. Water is scarce. It never rains in this desert. The current drought has lasted forty years or so, and many believe it will be permanent. The few animals that survive—goats, sheep, chickens and dogs—are little more than skeletons. They are not worth killing for their meat. There aren’t even any birds flying overhead.
The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans Page 31
