I visited Bam on 26 Dec 2004 – exactly one year after the earthquake. My friend there told me how he didn’t know how long he had lain under the rubble after the big quake – he said it was worse than being in a food blender: going sideways in all directions, and up and down, and in all possible directions. Maybe he laid for five minutes, maybe five hours, maybe much longer, he didn’t know.
When he got himself out (he wasn’t under very much debris), he tried to go and help his family. But he didn’t know where anything or anybody was – there were no roads any more, there were no buildings to know where you were, just piles and piles of rubble to climb over. He dug and dug – first with his hands, then with the nearest things to shovels he could make. It was cold, especially at night, so they all worried about people freezing to death under the rubble. He told me how he tried to dig two of his cousins out. It was four days after the quake and when they got down to them, they were still warm. But dead. The boys had, he told me, must only have died a few hours before they were unearthed.
And the worst thing was that, as he told me this, he had no emotion in his eyes at all. No-one in Bam did: I couldn’t decide if all the opium openly on sale was the cause or result of this.
That was my second visit to Bam – I first saw the Arg in all its UNESCO-recognised beauty before the earthquake. Here’s a 3 minute home video of what used to be like; and a 5 minute Press TV video showing how far they’ve got with the reconstruction (Aug 2014).
Payvand have just done a photo review of the current state of the citadel – and here are some other before and after images:
- Citadel before the earthquake. wiki image
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