Mansehra, Pakistan, 8 July 2006

Dear friends,

The old man seemed barely able to walk as he ambled across the cracked floor of the what passes for a restaurant in the earthquake-ravaged village of Paras, high in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan. The hundreds of flies that buzzed over our table swarmed around him as he sat slowly down beside me. "Salaam alaikum" – peace be with you – I said to him, and he smiled an almost toothless grin at the sweaty foreigner and responded "Wa alaikum salaam" – and peace be with you. He shook my hand with both his hands, savoring the contact, and then slowly removed his sandals. He spent a minute scratching the skin on his arms, then climbed ever so slowly up onto a raised platform beside our table. He then slowly unfolded a dirty old piece of cloth that had obviously been a simple but beautiful work of embroidery at one time. He laid it carefully on the platform and then stood and prepared himself. To pray.

In the next few minutes, I watched with fascination as the old man, who had seemed barely able to move across the uneven floor, now repeatedly knelt and stood as he went through the prayers that devout Muslims offer five times each day. What must have been the many aches of growing old in the harsh mountain environment disappeared as he steadily sought to listen to the divine.

I had come to the village to visit a clinic run by Church World Service for earthquake survivors, and after photographing their work and interviewing some local residents about their experience since last October's quake, the CWS staff took me to lunch in the restaurant, one of the few buildings to survive the quake, though its cracked walls, collapsed roof and buckled floor testified to the earthquake's intensity.

I was also accompanied by four members of the special forces branch of Pakistan's police. This is a very conservative region of Pakistan, and several fundamentalist preachers in the area have criticized some relief groups for seeking to assure that women are respected and their needs addressed in the recovery and reconstruction phase. The fundamentalist groups – which got their first funding from the billions of dollars that the CIA gave the Pakistani secret police for anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan – have carried out their own relief and reconstruction projects, making an important contribution to helping people survive in the quake's aftermath. Because of their political agenda, several have been banned by Pakistan's government, but here in the mountains they operate openly.
Their mounting criticism of foreign NGOs (Oxfam and CWS have been particularly singled out in recent weeks in the area around Balakot) led the government to assign protection for foreign aid workers entering the most remote zones of the Northwest Frontier Province. So the four soldiers and their AK-47s stayed beside me as I hiked in the mountains and tried to do my work. They took their jobs seriously. When we stayed in a hotel in the rugged Kaghan Valley, high up in the Himalayas, they checked my bed in the evening to make sure no one had placed a bomb there. I felt well protected, but also well-watched.

The food finally came, spicy chicken korai with roti, and we swished away the flies to eat heartily as the old man finished his prayers, carefully folded up his threadbare prayer rug, climbed down and put on his shoes before walking slowly out the door.

Many days I find myself too busy to pray. I get so caught up in work and worries about my teenagers and the world in general that I forget to return to the source, to listen in the quiet for God's voice. Or when I do pray it's one more thing on my "to do" list, something to be got through quickly so I can cross it off and tackle another chore.

It's impossible to escape from religion here. This is an Islamic republic, and from well before sunrise when the first prayers are sung over the speakers atop the mosques, religion is part of the air. I see men praying publicly all day long (women are supposed to pray privately in the home, where they spend all their time in this part of the country). But the image of that old man, who could barely walk, being transformed as he moved his body through the ritual of prayer has stayed with me these last few days. Does prayer feel that liberating for me? Is prayer woven so seamlessly into the fabric of my daily life?

I commend to you that old man and his prayerful faith. As we stumble through the uneven places of our lives, may we also find moments when we can feel calm and steady, when our many disabilities disappear into God's deep care, and we can rise refreshed and empowered to be instruments of God's peace. Salaam alaikum.

Paul

Paul Jeffrey
pauljeffrey@earthlink.net
www.kairosphotos.com/pauljeffrey