A
soft light shines through the green canvas. The sun is high
in the sky, but Masoomeh Shoja Heidary is waiting for night
to fall.
She is waiting to take her pills. The pills that promise her
a few hours sleep - a short time during which she can forget.
“I cannot believe my mother is dead. I pray for her the
whole day,” the 23-year old says in a low voice.
She talks about the days after the earthquake. How she found
the body of her uncle and wanted to bury him next to the fresh
grave of her mother. She even tried to carry the body on her
own, but it was too heavy for her. Then she got a vehicle to
transport it: a pick-up loaded with other dead bodies.
Massomeh Shoja Heidary jumped on the platform, so she could
stay together with her uncle.
Psychiatrist Dr Saeed Moustafa Arfa listens to the young woman’s
story, a tragedy long after the earthquake. He thinks about
those 12 seconds early on the morning of 26 December, those
few seconds that transformed Bam into an expanse of rubble and
cost the lives of 41,000 human beings.
The special Iranian Red Crescent (IRCS) psychosocial support
teams for which Dr Arfa works, began helping the traumatized
population very quickly, just two days after the earthquake.
Up to 50 IRCS volunteers and staff are currently working in
teams, to help the population come to terms with their grief
and overcome the trauma of the catastrophe. They organize individual
and group counselling sessions with adults, and games for the
children. The Danish and Icelandic Red Cross are supporting
the strengthening of the IRCS programme.
Sometimes Dr Arfa feels that he has to carry a very heavy burden.
The 20-year-old Red Crescent volunteer sitting next to him is
fighting back tears. There is silence in the tent.
The psychiatrist tries to find the right words. Comforting someone
can be a very hard task, but Massomeh Shoja Heidary’s
strong religious belief will help her.
Dr Arfa is a good listener, the young woman starts to trust
him. He wants to prevent her from isolating herself and getting
lost in a world that collapsed over one month ago.
“We have to give her a perspective. We must keep her busy.
Pills are no solution,” the Red Crescent psychiatrist
says.
“Join us as a volunteer”, he suggests to the young
woman.
Masoomeh looks down at the carpet on the tent floor and shakes
her head. “I am afraid I am too weak now. Sometimes my
whole body trembles”, she says.
“We understand,” says the volunteer. The psychiatrists
and the volunteer will visit the 23-year-old again. The Red
Crescent is providing group and individual therapy to thousands
of traumatized earth-quake victims. The screening process is
still going on.
Many of them are children like Alireza. The two-year-old boy
has lost both his parents. Now he presses his little body against
his grandmother. If a stranger comes in, he starts to cry. Sometimes
he becomes angry. And today he throws the tin-cup in the corner
of the tent.
Little Alireza cannot understand what happened to his mother
and father and to the house he used to live in. At night he
cries until he falls asleep, explains his grandmother.
Behind the tarpaulins and thin walls of the prefabricated units
in the camps and in the streets there is deep sadness. The aid-workers
can only imagine the extent.
“It is unbelievable how much the city is destroyed. All
that is left is a heap of rubble. Nearly half of the population
lost its life in the earthquake. It is hard to understand the
consequences, how everyone’s life has changed. At least
we can provide some valuable support with our health services.
Together with our partners from the Red Crescent and the governmental
organizations we are building up long-lasting structures,”
says Thomas Moch, who works as a German Red Cross delegate.
Surrounded by ruins is one of the two German basic health care
centres. In front a barber creates a sense of normality. He
has rescued his old barber’s-chair from the ruins. Now
he hopes that some of the patients at the clinic or their companions
will require his services. There are a lot of them coming day
by day.
Around three kilometres away is a Japanese Red Cross basic health
care centre, a little tented clinic amongst the palms of a date
garden. The palms paint shadows on the grass. Dr Akira Miyata
lends some colour to the scene in his blue Red Cross uniform.
He is in conversation with an Iranian. Dr. Miyata is nodding
with a serious face and then shakes the man’s hand. “We
have been invited to a mourning ceremony. It is an honour. It
shows us that people trust us as aid-workers and as friends”,
he explains.
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Over
a month after the disaster, Massomeh Shoja Heidary still
cannot believe that her mother died. She can only sleep
with the help of pills (p11135)
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Sometimes
it is hard even for Red Crescent aid workers to hear the
sad stories recounted by the traumatized victims of Bam
(p11136)
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It
is difficult for childen to express their grief. The Red
Crescent psycho-social team tries to help them come to
terms with what has happened through games and drawing
(p11140)
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| Two-year
old Alireza lost his sister, mother and father to the
earthquake. Every night, deeply traumatised and confused,
he cries himself to sleep (p11138)
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