A bent, green signboard on one side of the Quetta-Karachi highway directs us towards Gongo Goth Piperani in Bela town of Lasbela district, which has been battered by unprecedented torrential rains and floods.

Lasbela is one of the worst hit districts in Balochistan. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) put the death toll at 27, while data obtained from the Deputy Commissioner’s Office suggests six people have been injured, 5,000 to 8000 houses damaged, 87,345 livestock lost and 57,450 acres of crops have been damaged so far. The towns of Bela, Uthal, Hub and Durreji, among others, have suffered massive destruction.

From the highway, an unpaved road snakes through lush green fields — mostly of cotton and vegetables — dotted with shrubs and trees. Gongo Goth Piperani, like other villages across Lasbela has been washed away; the mud and hut houses left standing are few and far between.

After a 15-minute drive, a mud house appears. It belongs to a family mourning the death of four loved ones: Yar Mohammad Sabira, 40, drowned, along with his wife Naz Jan, in her 30s, and two children, eight-year-old Zainab and seven-year-old Yousaf.

One of the hardest hit by the recent flash floods, Lasbela District has produced many influential politicians. But remains lacking in governance

The grief-stricken family is not new to such loss. Some 15 years ago, the mother and sister of Yar Mohammad both drowned in Karachi’s Lyari river. But the fresh pain of losing Yar Mohammad, his wife and kids has multiplied to envelop the whole of the district, which is on the brink of collapse due to floods.

A neighbouring district of Karachi, Lasbela is a kind of “mini Balochistan”, where coast, mountains, plains and rivers meet, and deposits of various minerals are found. Agriculture is one of the main forms of subsistence here.

Situated at a distance of around 10 hours drive from Quetta on the N-25 highway, Lasbela district is home to Balochistan’s former chief minister Jam Kamal, whose family has produced a line of chief ministers. Though it is home to such an influential political family, like other parts of Balochistan, governance exists only in name here. According to the locals in Piperani, there is still no electricity in the villages here. After the floods, it is no more than a wasteland.

I offer fateha (funeral prayers) for Yar Mohammad and afterwards talk to Atta Mohammad, his elder brother. We go to his father’s house, where he begins to tearfully recall the day when the floodwaters took away his brother and his family. “It was four o’clock in the morning,” he tells Eos, while his father and children sit with us in a sombre mood. “The entire area was inundated, while the rain continued to pour on July 25. We were all awake through the night. We were afraid our mud houses and roofs would not withstand the heavy downpour.”

Yar Mohammad, who lived in a separate shanty mud house, one kilometre away, had said that he would go to his father’s place in the morning.

“When morning came and the rain and flood subsided a little, I came out looking for my brother, like others searching for their loved ones in the submerged fields and rivers,” says Atta Mohammad. He walks me to his brother’s house, retracing his steps from that fateful day. When he came to check on him that day, there was no one home. In fact, he found no trace of the family.

Walking around the damaged fields around his brother’s house, Atta’s anxieties grew and his heart began to pound harder. Finally, he saw signs that turned his worst fears into reality: footprints that sent a chill down his spine. “After spotting the footsteps near the running floodwater that was roaring near his house, I knew they had drowned. Nevertheless, I prayed for the family to be found alive.”

Judging by the footprints, Atta inferred that the water took first Naz Jan and her son Yousaf. “We think Yousaf might have slipped out of her hands, so she went along after him, trying to save him,” he says. Yar Mohammad’s bigger footprints showed he had rushed after them to save them. The daughter, like mother and father, followed suit. Nobody survived.

The flood has eroded the cotton fields and left them empty and wide open. A tree here and there rises up from the horizon flattened by the deluge. In such desolate places, dead bodies have been found trapped in the trees. “In our Baloch tradition, people come out to stand with grieving families,” says Atta Mohammad. “When news spread of Yar Mohammad’s disappearance, the villagers came out to help find the family. We finally found the dead bodies of them all, trapped in these trees, separately,” he says, motioning towards the trees near us.

Back in the guestroom, Atta’s father Ahmed, in his 70s, tells me he has never witnessed such floods in his hometown. “It was a kind of a sea all around Bela,” he says.

Ahmed tells Eos that he and his family all work in the fields for daily wages. “We are each paid 500 rupees [a day],” he says. In reply to a query as to what will happen now after the fields have been lost, he says, “We were poor, we are poor and we will remain poor but we will never stretch out our hands for alms.”

Ghulam Farid, also in his 70s, has been more fortunate. Even though his house in Bela is damaged, his family is safe, as he had moved them to another relative’s house before the merciless rains began.

He worked at a scrap shop for over 35 years and had recently built a pakka (concrete) house on the Porali riverbank. Standing in front of his damaged 120 sq ft house in Bizenjo Pada, Farid is grateful for his family to have survived but wistfully adds, “If it takes me another 35 years to rebuild my house, I am sure I will not be alive to see it.”

But that is the onus of the survivors of the flood, to put their lives back together. Yar Mohammad’s father has the resolve to do so even at his age. “We will work hard again, starting over from scratch.”

The writer is a member of staff. He tweets @Akbar_notezai

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 4th, 2022