Pakistan Journal: Our Welcome to Bisham

Upon arriving in Bisham, our first order of business was locating the hospital where the rest of our team was. All we knew is that there were eight other Americans in Bisham at a Christian hospital that had been shut down. Ready--set--go!

Our first stop was the Cuban Military camp. I'm not sure what the Cuban military was up to in Pakistan--most likely the same thing we were. Obviously this wasn't the correct place so we were on the road again. The Cubans must have given our taxi driver directions to the hospital because the next door that we knocked opened to a large Pakistani man with a big smile and eyes that said, "You've made it to the correct place!"

We dumped off our gear, checked in with the director at that base camp and took off with Faizel to grab some dinner. He was so pleased that we had accepted his invitation for dinner. He thought he was pleased! I was so excited. I make it a point, everywhere that I go, to eat the food of that particular area (as you could no doubt tell from my chai encounter). The thought of eating more authentic Pakistani cuisine was certainly an enticing one, especially as we hadn't eaten now in some time. No doubt Jeff was hungry!

Faizel led us right to his favorite restaurant--a simple place with a pleasant smell and a welcoming host. I looked around to find nine other men seated around several small tables eating chicken and rice and drinking chai or water. Faizel took the liberty to order for all of us which I was fine with because none of us could read the menu anyway.

We were talking about food that we had eaten up until that point when IT began to happen.

I live in a place where earthquakes happen and happen frequently. San Francisco has had its fair share of intense earthquakes--nothing like the 7.6 that shook Pakistan. I will admit that in my two-plus years of living on the West Coast, I can't say with certainty that I have ever experienced one of these frequent little tremors.

I did experience one that night in a little restaurant in northern Pakistan and I wouldn't mind if I never had to ever again!

It started with the sound of thunder under my feet that slowly worked its way up my body into my very soul. My mind was trying to understand that sensation when all of a sudden I felt that thunder begin to shake my body. It all happened so suddenly that it seemed like it was going in slow motion. As soon as I realized that we were experiencing an earthquake--and a fairly significant one at that--I began to look to the other men in the restaurant to see what they would do. I figured that I would do exactly what I saw them do. Before I knew it, they were throwing their tables and chairs out of the way and sprinting out of the restaurant. I did likewise while Jeff (older and more experienced with earthquakes than I) decided to look for a support beam. Faizel told him not to trust it and to run instead.

I can honestly say that I have never seen terror in someone's eyes before. Fear--yes. Terror--no. I now know what terror looks like. When this 5.6 earthquake hit, it reminded these men of the quake exactly two months to the night prior that had destroyed northern Pakistan. They also knew that the reason 88,000 people died was because buildings crashed down on people inside. We were now those people inside and the building we were in wasn't necessarily earthquake-proof!

Let me try to explain what the earthquake felt like. The 7.6 and the 5.6 that we rode out that night were verticle earthquakes meaning that the earth rises up and crashes back down to normal serveral times in a row. The 7.6 forced the earth up six to seven feet in some places before it crashed back down and lasted one minute and two seconds. That must have felt like a lifetime! The best way that I can describe the feeling is by explaining something from my past.

When I was a little boy, I had a swingset in my backyard. This swingset was one of those metal pipe structures that sat on top of the sod. After years of use, the ends of the pipe would settle three to four inches below the surface. My favorite swinging experience was to pump as hard as I could until the entire structure would lift up out of their impressions and thump back down into them. As I swung, I would feel the rise and the thump of that swingset. Perhaps you had a similar experience as you were growing up. The 5.6 quake that we rode out that night felt like the rise and thump of my swingset years prior for five or six seconds (just enough to lose our appetites).

We thanked Faizel for dinner and made the walk back to our new headquarters. None of us really wanted to eat anything and we were all too freaked out to talk much more. Bisham was our team's headquarters for pipe-bending and we were told that we would need to have 1,000 pipes bent by the end of the next day. To bed we went!

Oh--did I mention that Bisham was also the headquarters for Pakistan's Al Queda training camps?