Kabul (dpa) – The bomb triggered an earthquake and five families were buried under the rubble of their mud huts.
“America must help us to rebuild our house,” said Ahmed Shah who lives in a poverty-stricken district near the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul. The area took a direct hit at the start of the U.S. bombing nearly two months ago and Ahmed’s old house was destroyed.“Do Saraki Maidan Hawai,” which means two streets at the airport in Afghan, is the name given to this dilapidated part of Kabul. One person was killed when the bomb struck and another 11 were injured, say residents.The weapon slammed several metres into the ground in a tiny courtyard of one of the houses before exploding. The blast set off a chain reaction and five other houses tumbled to the ground. They were all single-storeyed and built of simple unfired bricks with a lightweight roof – that saved lives.“Everything came crashing down but somehow we managed to get out of here,” said 12-year-old Sabiullah. “After that I didn’t want to go home again. I was frightened. Then Mum said the Taliban had gone and that I had nothing to fear in coming back. Nothing would happen,” said the young Afghan.He has two brothers and a sister. Sabiullah’s father is dead. At school he didn’t learn much, just religion, he said, but now he’s keen to catch up. “My mother wants me to be a pilot or a doctor,” said the boy. Now the Taliban have been sent packing he is rediscovering hope.“Things are better, nobody gets beaten and my mother can go out of the house on her own,” said Sabiullah.Tadshwar Nauroso is 50 years old and unlike most women in Kabul, she does not wear a veil. Her house is still standing but her livelihood has been shattered.“I used to have a bakery, now it’s all smashed up,” she said. The “bakery” was actually a house with a large clay bowl inside. Clay bowls like this are used as ovens in Afghanistan. A fire is lit on the floor and the bakers paste the pitta bread onto the hot walls.Nauruso used to sell bread and was able to finance herself and five daughters. Her husband is dead too, killed at the beginning of the 1990s when Kabul was the scene of bitter fighting between mujahedin factions.“I think God and America should help me out,” said Nauruso.Mardina lives in what was once a house but is now a ruin. She is 15 years old but can neither read nor write.“I couldn’t got to school because under the Taliban there wasn’t one,” she said. She wants to make up for lost time now. She has no father either. And what if the school she attends has boy pupils too? Mardina just laughs: “Well so what, why not?”Ten kilometres from the airport is Deraraban district, an almost self-contained community in the middle of the city. The streets are narrow here and the courtyards lined with tall mud walls. The quarter is home to 2,000 people.No bombs fell here but the detonations at the nearby military base shattered windows and even blew down some walls.During the conflict, U.S. jets pounded Taliban positions nearby and hit an ammunition dump. There was a series of huge blasts that sent chunks of rock flying through the air like cannonballs.The house where Abdul Ghani lives had all its windows broken and in a bid to banish the winter chill he has hung up strips of plastic sheeting handed out by the Red Cross.“Why were we punished just because the Taliban had a base here?” he asks.
