Chapter 2 of 17
Pakistan Earthquake, 2000
I remember that I was sitting in the Lahore Fort World Heritage site because I was acting as... I was there as UNESCO's national advisor, and the news came... and there was just no way that I could get to the earthquake area fast enough; because I just packed up from Lahore Fort, I came to Karachi and I said to my husband "I've got to go there". And he thought I was a bit crazy because I'd never done that kind of work before, and nobody knew what an architect could do in such circumstances. We needed doctors, obviously, because you know, we had people who were injured, and there were people... the lifesavers were to lift people out of debris and so on. But what could an architect do? And I had no idea, but I just felt compelled to be there. And so my husband said "OK this is five hundred thousand rupees, and, and just see what you can do with it". Even at that time it was not such a lot of money, but that was all that he thought I should really go with. He thought I'll just come back in about a week or ten days, and that was it.