Gerald Martone, MS, RN, director of humanitarian affairs at the International Rescue Committee, photographed Akber Khan playing his flute in a displacement camp outside Islamabad, Pakistan, after a massive earthquake on October 2005 destroyed much of his village in the Muzaffarabad district of Kashmir.
Martone traveled to Pakistan and Kashmir in February to help assess relief efforts by United Nations agencies that are currently underway. Although the earthquake killed as many as 87,000 people and left more than 3 million homeless, swift humanitarian aid coupled with a mild winter helped avert thousands of casualties from such causes as the spread of disease and a lack of food and water. A dozen of Martone's photographs from his February trip, with accompanying text by AJN senior editor James M. Stubenrauch, are featured in this month's Correspondence from Abroad (page 52).
"Mr. Khan was playing a nostalgic and mournful song about the natural beauty of the remote mountains and rivers of his home in Kashmir," Martone says. "He has no idea when or if his family can go back to their home, since so much was destroyed by the earthquake." For a video of Akber Khan's flute playing, see http://www.nursingcenter.com/AJNpakistan.