Counting the Dead

"The earth vomited up the bones of the dead and a village with its inhabitants was suspended between heaven and earth during half a day; then it was swallowed up." So wrote the Arab historian Jellal As-Soyuti about an earthquake in medieval Persia. Last week his apocalyptic description again became reality for the people of the lush Qir valley 560 miles south of Teheran.

At 5:38 one morning, 58 villages were destroyed and more than 5,000 of their inhabitants were killed by a massive earthquake. In addition, 2,000 were seriously injured and 20,000 left homeless. The tremor, registering seven points (out of ten) on the Richter scale, was Iran's worst since 1968, when nearly 12,000 perished in the northeastern province of Khurasan.

Most of the victims died in their sleep. In the town of Qir, 37 early morning worshipers were killed when a mosque collapsed. "I was saying my prayers when a slight tremor shook me," recalled Safar Keshtkar, a 41-year-old farmer. "I had hardly finished when the whole roof collapsed with a shock like a bomb explosion." Keshtkar's wife and four children were buried beneath the ruins of their mud-brick home.

The Shah of Iran dispatched his brother, Prince Mahmoud, and Prime Minister Amir Abass Hoveida to supervise rescue operations. Within four hours of the disaster, Iran's Red Cross, the Red Lion and Sun, was administering to the injured.

Iranian air force C-130s and helicopters were soon ferrying food, medicine, blankets and tents to the site. Even as soldiers and volunteers carried on the grim process of exhuming and then burying the dead, the disaster was becoming fixed as a terrible memory for the people of the valley. Roghieh Salari was one of several village women who gave birth shortly after the holocaust. The name of her newborn son: Zelzelleh (Earthquake).

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