when the earth shakes

the build up to saturday’s very belated eid celebration is taking a lot of work. and i’m finding it extremely difficult to explain why we are having this all-in-one celebration. but i just persuaded someone else to come so i’m still hopeful about the whole process.

i’m wondering how people would feel if i suggest that the money we raise goes to the victims of today’s earthquake instead of the ones from the last one. does it sound awful? i hope not... i was just affected by the tragedy of it all so the proposal is very much a reaction to that.

to think that we have the power to create a society where we can reduce the number ofvictims of such natural disasters really does trouble me. i’m certainly not going to rant about how can god let this happen to innocent people. i think that’s the wrong kind of reasoning. in today’s world where we know exactly where the fault lines are, and we have the ability to build structures to withstand earthquakes, we really can’t shift the blame to anyone else. iran is arguably one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world and experiences a minor tremor almost everyday since it lies on top of the intersection of three tectonic plates. and yet nothing seriously is done about it. people are just waiting for the big earthquake that will hit tehran and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. there is little incentive for people to follow the building regulations or to move away from the capital... i wonder if it’s their desire to live in the moment. or perhaps they somehow think that they are invincible. to mere it’s sheer insanity but for the millions who live there it’s just life.