In pictures: Quake's ruinous legacy
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Bad dream
Khwaja Mohallah was once a premier locality of Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, inhabited by the city's financial elite. I first came here three days after the earthquake.
There was death everywhere. Some of the survivors were still digging for their dead while others were leaving.
It was like a nightmare but those living it had no hope of waking up.
Three months later, is life returning to Khwaja Mohallah?
Text & pictures by Aamer Ahmed Khan -
Monuments
Very little, it seems, has changed over the past three months.
These multi-storeyed houses tell the tales of generations.
A son grows up, marries and builds himself a separate floor on the top.
The house keeps growing upwards, every new storey a sign of a flourishing family.
Most of these mutilated structures now stand as monuments to the quake's indiscriminate cruelty. -
Compensation
Let alone the far-flung areas of the region, there are many streets in Khwaja Mohallah that are still not accessible - choked with piles of rubble.
Authorities have done little to help people remove the rubble, leaving owners to do it themselves.
Just removing the rubble costs many times the 25,000 rupees ($440) compensation paid by the government for every collapsed house. -
Earthquake proof
People rush towards me everywhere I go. As a journalist, they think maybe I know what the government has in mind for them.
Has the government made a policy on private housing? What kind of structures should they build now? How do they make them earthquake proof?
The questions keep coming. Why isn't the government helping them rebuild their lives?
Why was the compensation a paltry 25,000 rupees when a typical house in Khwaja Mohallah cost 100 times as much? -
Middle class
Parveen Rashid was the first woman to return.
Her family had fled to Abbotabad after losing three of their members in the tragedy.
"I came back two weeks after the earthquake simply because I couldn't believe that our life here was over," she says.
"It had taken our family several generations to become a comfortable middle class household.
"I just could not believe it was all gone in a mere 15 seconds." -
Chapattis
Local baker Aftab Bhatti says only one out of 20 people have returned.
His bread, especially chapatti, was once the locality's favourite.
"I had a clientele that read like a who's who of Muzaffarabad," he says.
"Now I am baking mostly for the labourers who are removing rubble from the area.
"Every day, I hear that a dead body has been pulled out and most of the time I know the poor family. Will this thing ever end?" -
Daily Siasat
Everyone has a tale to tell.
The Sheikh family owned a printing press which produced, among other things, the Daily Siasat (politics) - a very popular evening paper from Muzaffarabad.
They estimate their losses in the quake at about $150,000.
They have managed to get their printing press going again and are now busy clearing the rubble from their house.
Two of their three cars have been recovered from the garage. The third is still stuck. -
Writing desk
Bashir Ahmed Mir points to the room where his brother, Arif Mir, died.
"He was sitting at his writing desk," he says pointing to a corner of his destroyed house.
"You can still see bits of his computer, the desk and his bed."
It has taken Mr Mir over two weeks and about $600 to clear the two top floors. Another two weeks and they would get to the ground floor.
"After that, I just don't know. I haven't thought about it," he says. -
Mehran Hotel
Mehran Hotel was a very popular eating joint in Khwaja Mohallah.
In one month, its owner has managed to strip the ruins down to the ground floor. He now has two basements to reach.
This was one of the few places in the area where there were no casualties.
The restaurant was closed at the time of the quake because of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
"Everything I earned from this place, it has taken back with a huge mark up," says its rueful owner. -
Heavy machinery
Scrap dealers are crawling all over the place.
They offer to clear the rubble free of charge if they can keep all the steel recovered from it.
A typical four-storey house can yield steel worth up to $2,000.
They are professionals but even for them, the task of removing the rubble is a painfully slow one.
One contractor said he was willing to hire heavy machinery to help speed up the task but none is available in Muzaffarabad. -
Military hospital
This is the site of the Combined Military Hospital, a few hundred metres from Khwaja Mohallah.
The army has cleared the rubble and the site has been made ready for reconstruction.
Angry residents ask why the government could not have done the same for them.
"They could have charged us for it," says one irate resident.
"At least it would have speeded up the work." -
Brick by brick
There is little likelihood of the government coming to the assistance of the residents of Khwaja Mohallah.
It will probably take this once elite locality several months to return to some semblance of its past.
Those removing the rubble are doomed, it seems, to relive the horror of 8 October as they peel away at its ruinous legacy, brick by brick, stone by stone.