KARACHI: “My father had been missing since the first day of Ramazan. On Friday he had gone to his scrap shop but didn’t come back home. Today we found him here,” cried Mohammad Faisal outside the Edhi morgue at Sohrab Goth on Monday while telling Dawn about his father, Mohammad Salim.

The boy’s father was quite obviously suffering from heatstroke. “Looking for him all over town, we got news from certain sources about a man matching his description was seen roaming about in a confused state while muttering to himself and scratching his head. The heat must have gone to his head,” the son said.

Mohammad Salim was just one of the 400 dead bodies brought to the morgue in the past two days. “In the last 24 hours we have received 200 dead and if you include the day before that then we got 400 dead bodies in the past 48 hours when the mercury hit 45 degrees [Celsius] here,” said Mohammad Bilal, in charge of the Edhi morgue.

“Many people also bring their dead here from hospital mortuaries as there isn’t much space there for storing bodies and they need to keep them somewhere till they can make burial arrangements for them. They can’t keep them at home during that time as it is just too hot and in many places there is also no electricity.

“We are also running out of space and when many people can’t get a grave at a graveyard they are turning to us for that as well so we are also burying their loved ones at our graveyard,” added the morgue in-charge.

“My father only passed away from the heatwave, power or no power had nothing to do with it. He was old, almost 80. The doors of hell opened to swallow up people in this region of the world. My poor father just couldn’t withstand the heat that escaped from hell,” said another young man Mohammad Qasim, who had brought his father, Mohammad Nawaz’s remains to the morgue.

In one corner on a bench were sitting a couple of women who had brought Yasmin, their younger sister-in-law’s body for bathing. “We recently lost our brother, a heart patient, and our sister-in-law was observing her mourning period when tragedy struck us again. This morning around the time of sahar and during a prolonged power failure she started complaining of difficulty in breathing. We took her to a hospital but she was pronounced dead on arrival there,” shared one of the women wiping moisture from her face which could have either been tears or sweat.

“Now we have brought her here as due to no electricity, there is also no water at her place. God alone knows what is going on as even the graveyards are short. With great difficulty we got the 61st grave today at the graveyard at New Karachi No 6,” she said.

“You tell us, sister, when the power utility fails to provide you power and even if they do it is accompanied with those Rs40,000 plus bills, why wouldn’t poor folk like us resort to the kunda system?” She said. “Our sister-in-law had five young children. What’s to become of them now? For what did she have to die like this?”

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2015

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