KARACHI: There is an active buzz surrounding the newly reconstructed apartments on both sides of Abbas Town as shopkeepers and residents were seen moving about on Sunday to get settled.
A few steps inside the main junction between the two apartment blocks leading towards Abbas Town and busy shopkeepers fixing planks, electricity wires and bulbs can be seen. Busy putting in order their shops, and lives, they try not to bring up the all too obvious incident that occurred last year.
A year from now, the street was a haunting reminder of the bomb explosion that took place on March 3. The ruined front of Iqra and Rabia Flower apartments is replaced with coffee coloured galleries with just two or three of them yet occupied by residents.
Now in her new home, she is all smiles. The white walls of the apartment shine.
Inside Iqra Apartments, Azra Imran, 30, has already moved into her newly built apartment. The squawking of little parrots in a cage outside her apartment is the only sound in an otherwise empty block.
Now, in her new home, she is all smiles. The white walls of the apartment shine in the afternoon light. The kitchen counter has a bright orange shirt waiting to be ironed. Apart from that, the house is almost empty. She is among the first two families to move in, as she says she had nowhere else to go.
“I was thrown out of my rented apartment a night before Ramazan,” she says, sitting in a chair. “It was just at the back of Abbas Town. The landlord over there threw my clothes and whatever furniture I had on the road and told me to leave,” she narrates in a matter-of-fact manner. In the same breath, she says: “I understand why he did that. No one would tolerate a family living without paying rent for five months.”
Taking a deep breath, she recalls the evening of March 3, adding, “We lost everything in a moment.”
Azra was praying in a room facing the terrace and her three children were in the opposite direction playing outside their apartment when the explosion occurred. “My right leg was almost out in open air as I struggled to get back up on the remaining concrete and look for my children. It was completely dark and silent as I tried to look for them amid the debris,” she says.
Azra and her children came out of the rubble without any major injury. “I sat down and dragged myself down slowly, holding two of my kids in my arms. My eldest kid, who was seven at the time, helped me find the way as best as he could.” After getting out, Azra sat in a ground for two hours with her children, and looked around her in “horror and disbelief”.
Her husband who was not in town that night was traced with the help of volunteers and informed of the tragedy. “I was given Rs36,000 the very next day by a volunteering group. I was asked to move to Rizvia Society, but I refused as it was quite far. My father died when I was five, and my mother had to struggle a lot in bringing me up so I didn’t go to her either. I arranged for a small apartment on rent behind Abbas Town from the money I had received. From that day on there came no more help,” she smiles looking embarrassed.
Speaking further, she adds: “I feel really grateful right now. I had not imagined I would come back to my home. With my husband’s earnings, we would have never been able to buy ourselves a flat. I’m glad, that at least for now, the worst is over.”
She adds that most people have decided to move in after Eid, including some of her old friends in the neighbourhood. “We all lost touch this past one year as all of us were involved in our own problems. It’d be relieving to meet some of them as speaking to one another might help ease the pain.”
Right outside her gallery is Mohsin Ali’s Pasha Nimko and Pakwan Store. Cleaning a huge pan, as workers behind him fixed up the shop’s banner, he refused to speak much, saying: “No one can understand what I have gone through in the past one year. I was almost on the road. I don’t want to dwell on what happened. I’m happy that I got back my shop, thankfully.”
Listening to the conversation, another shopkeeper, introducing himself as Aijaz Ali Sheikh said: “I had a medical store here for 15 years and I saw it turn into rubble. I saw one of my closest friends Barkat Bhai die before the ambulances came in. We got our shops back, but we can’t get back those whom we lost that night.”
Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2014