“We’ll never get on!” one man shouted, while a group of woman protested that the gates should be opened to allow one little boy who, after being buffeted and crushed by the women towering above him, had fainted and fallen onto the road. When an Army officer instructed the boy’s mother to take the boy to the back of the line to recover, rather than let her and her son into the airport, even the Gilgiti policemen providing security on the outside of the airport building began shouting it was a clear case of the predominantly ethnic Punjabi officers’ preferential treatment for ‘entitled persons’ and their exclusionary treatment of locals. Turning to the Police SP standing beside him inside the gate, a Major sternly ordered the SP’s men to get better control of the civilians outside. The SP retorted angrily that the gates should be opened to let the civilians inside; that the heat was too much, that children were falling ill, that civilians should have a chance to go as well. With his teeth gritted, the Major said, “You let us do our job inside, and you do your job outside.” Because the SP refused to listen, and demanded the keys, he was escorted out of the gate by the major while policemen yelled insults, threatening to either “fight or walk away and leave this all for the Army to handle.” The SP, who stood at the gates and was still working to calm himself, started yelling at his men to contain themselves, to show respect, to cease and desist any butameez behaviour. Because this fight – which was sustained by the dissonance that normally characterises inter-ethnic relations in Pakistan – had the potential to escalate so quickly and so badly, even the women began trying to intervene, declaring in strained and raised voices that they were fine, they could wait inside aram, aram sey (in a relaxed way).

Encouraged by the women, and perhaps also my own fervent shouts not to fight and to calm things down so we could get inside, the SP moved to the side and another senior Army officer came to the gates, shouting that “If you try to come in without a boarding pass, you will not come inside! Each passenger must have their own boarding pass!” With nods of hurried assent, and promises to behave, awaiting passengers stood expectantly, hoping the gates would be opened. But, once again, it became clear that even more ‘entitled persons’ were still boarding through the Army’s reserve entrance. It wasn’t for another very hot and raucous 10 minutes that slowly, and with great difficulty, the gate was opened slightly and we began to squeeze individually through the small gap allowed in the gate and hand over our boarding passes for approval. The crush to push the door completely open was so strong that, on more than one occasion, lathi sticks were used to strike at the heads and hands of those trying to force their way inside, while Rangers shouted “Women and children first! Women and children first!” Even after I had managed, somehow, to get my sons and me inside the main gate, I had to divert my attention back to the crowd outside where my husband still waited, holding our four-year-old daughter, whose head was lolling about, her eyes glazed over from the heat. Finally, he made his way to the main gate, but it was only after my fervent protests to the Rangers and Army officers guarding the gate that Wadood, a Gilgiti, was truly my husband that he and my daughter were allowed through.

Once inside the main gate, pandemonium continued as luggage was thrown over the gate by family members to the outstretched arms of women and children passengers now standing inside the terminal. Heavier bags fell hard onto women’s heads; one child caught a bag only to fall back hard on her backside on the concrete, her eyes welling up with tears. Some bags split open, the contents rolling around dangerously underfoot. Counting and recounting our bags, and grasping the hand of each child tightly, we ran into the terminal – well aware that there were now fewer seats reserved for civilians than we’d originally thought. After hurriedly scanning our baggage through the airports one X-ray machine and, after I fought away the attentions of a female security guard who wanted to search and re-search me again, I joined Wadood and the children and, with bags hanging off each shoulder and children in-tow, sweat streaming down our faces, necks and backs, we ran onto the tarmac. An airport employee indicated we should proceed past a group of Army officers and the attaché who had helped us earlier in the day. After reaching the group, where it was clear the SP was now being reprimanded in full sight by the major with whom he’d fought an hour before, the attaché said, “Where were you? You were late!” Astounded and uncertain of what this meant, I turned to see one of the C-130 crew members running toward us, gesturing with his arms, ‘No more!’ guaranteed

Exhausted and frustrated, I began to cry – turning to the attaché and asking, “How can we be late? We were among the first in line?” With a remorseful look on his face, he then pointed to a senior Army officer behind me, to whom I began pleading, “Please, we’ve been here for two days, and it took me many days to get this boarding pass – this is the only flight today, I know, please let us on?” Without a pause, he nodded and we ran toward the plane where it sat approximately 400 feet down the tarmac. Along the way, Wadood shouted to me, “I don’t think I want to do this – what if they overload the plane?” This caused a trickle of fear to run down my spine.

At the plane, and as it had been in the line outside, men and women were separated from each other. Women were helped up the steep metal stairs into the interior of the plane, while men waited impatiently to get on. I stayed behind the men’s line, preferring to stay beside Wadood lest we be separated and he get left behind. It had now become obvious that the majority of ‘non-entitled’ men who’d waited with us to board the plane had been stopped from walking to the plane by Army personnel behind us on the tarmac. I could only imagine how many women and children already on the plane would now be flying to Rawalpindi without their husbands, fathers, brothers or sons. One of the C-130 pilots stepped forward to reassure me that Wadood wouldn’t be left behind and, encouraged, I took the children with me into the plane, which was dark and stifling hot. Small squares of plywood were lined along the floor, which was itself covered with rollers in order to quickly push out transport supplies in times of emergency – such as this. One row of canvas seats had been arranged along each side of the flight for women to sit on. The majority of women, children and men found places to sit on the floor.

Once the plane had been fully loaded, only a few minutes after I had settled the children and I into a dark corner, the door was shut and locked and one by one, the engines roared into life. At the front of the plane stood three air crew members; another six or seven stood at the back of the plane near where our extra luggage had been thrown. The children – smiling excitedly at the sound of the plane preparing for take-off – didn’t exhibit any of the fear that had begun to paralyse a number of passengers, many of whom were well aware of the dangers of the route south over the confluence of the Karakoram, Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. Women and men pulled tasbih from their pockets as the plane taxied to the end of the runway; prayers were uttered with lips moving silently. The young woman sitting beside me reached over to clasp my forearm and we smiled lightly at each other. The heat inside was intense; suddenly, a burst of white vapour began pouring from two ducts above our heads. After realising it was a form of air-conditioning, there was nervous laughter among the passengers. At the same time, a number of exhausted travelers began to break their daily roza, asking fellow passengers to please share their water, or their juice, or their food….

The plane groaned as it lumbered down the runway. As the wheels lifted off the tarmac, the plywood sheets on which we sat rolled sharply several inches to the back of the plane. Some women screamed and others braced their feet against the walls and floors to try to stop the rolling. The plane climbed, and climbed, and climbed. After nearly fifteen minutes we could tell, by the pull of gravity beneath us and the dipping and weaving of the plane’s wings, that we were approaching and then flying around Nanga Parbat’s massive peak. During this time there was very little discussion among passengers. Twenty minutes later, though, we all began looking around us to see how our neighbours were doing, to ask – in voices raised above the din of the engines - what had brought us to Gilgit, or was leading us away from it, to compare our experiences managing the floods’ fallouts, and to discuss how long it might take before regular road access was restored to this already isolated part of Pakistan. The region’s multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic character resonated in each small discussion. At different times, I recognized Shina, Burushaski, Khower, Balti and Uigyr being spoken, in addition to Pakistan’s lingua franca, Urdu.

As the plane began its heavy descent, people once again began to whisper prayers and reach out to hold strangers’ hands. With our ears popping, some of us tried to guess if bad weather near Islamabad was causing the plane to buffet and dip and rise so sharply; we remembered the Airblue crash in Islamabad in late July. Finally, the loud whine of the landing gear being lowered heralded our arrival to Chaklala Air Base in Rawalpindi. The landing was smooth, but as the plane braked to a halt the plywood sheets on which we sat rolled again sharply toward the front of the plane. Relieved and now chatting happily, passengers disembarked. The flight had lasted an hour.

After passenger busses left us at a small terminal building near where the plane landed, and where another American C-130 was taking off with a load of relief supplies, we gathered our things and prepared to take the long walk to the air base’s main entrance in search of a taxi. At the first of several exit gates, a small car pulled up and, from inside and without even asking where we were planning to go, an Air Force pilot called out that he would provide us a lift. After offering our profuse thanks and then climbing into the car, I recognised the pilot as being the same who had reassured me Wadood wouldn’t be left behind on the tarmac in Gilgit.

‘Nadir’ (name changed) provided us the happiest end to an otherwise bleak, frightening day. He confirmed the perils of mountain flying in Gilgit-Baltistan, told us that the Air Force had lost a number of C-130s in the region, and said that the pilots selected for the Gilgit-Islamabad run receive ‘the highest possible training’ with additional expertise in high-altitude flying. When I asked if the route was really as dangerous as we’d heard, he said, “Yes, but only if you lose an engine or the weather changes suddenly. At those altitudes, and with the mountains all around, you have very little in the way of leverage in case of an emergency.’ As he dropped us off at our hotel in Islamabad, I thanked Nadir for all his help, saying that we were certainly among the lucky ones this awful summer. Smiling slightly and while looking at our wrinkled clothes, the beads of sweat rolling down our faces, our dirty hands and faces, my dupatta askew, our hair tousled and our eyes red and bleary, Nadir said, ‘Well you’re very welcome, but I don’t think you’re quite done with being among those ‘affected’ by the floods just yet….’

Click here to read Evacuation from Gilgit - I

Dr Emma Varley is a Killam Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Bioethics (Dalhousie University) and a visiting professor, Dept. of Humanities & Social Sciences (LUMS).

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