She is that angry with her own government and tells me my money will go to corrupt officials in her country:"Why donate when it's only going to line the pockets of the military and rogues? You are only placating your own Westernised guilt, don't tell me it is of any use. An American abroad, a "liberal", confesses: "The only shock I felt was my own lack of feeling. Maybe if these people did not cheer for suicide bombers things would be different today." A white Briton says the dead and dying are just bleeding "Pakis" who breed too much anyway and that we should look after our own.Even more upsetting is that my friend Rehana, herself a Pakistani citizen, one of the kindest most generous women I know, has sent nothing. Jan Egeland the UN humanitarian co-ordinator agrees the challenge is "unique". Although the West was initially lethargic, Britain and the US have picked up the challenge and are now delivering.
Other nations less so.When you log on to public debates on the crisis, some of the cruel coldness and bigotry is repulsive. A Sikh believes his donation would only go on weapons and sponsorship of terrorism. These are self-indulgent mediations, immoral even when millions of people - old, young, newborn, able, disabled, sick and fit - wait out in the wintry mountains of Kashmir, their still faces turned to the probability that death will get them after they miraculously survived the violence of the tremor that blew down their world four weeks ago. But in many of these tent cities, typhoid and tetanus is spreading.Pervez Musharraf made an accusatory speech this week, criticising the West for its inadequate response to the disaster in his country. As there were few Westerners caught up in the earthquake, he said, indifference has settled rapidly over the initial shock: "I would say the damage here is much more than the tsunami - the magnitude of the calamity is much more."Only £74m has been received, yet 15,000 villages have been devastated. Old men walk for miles carrying injured relatives, trying to get to places where they can get help.
Many never even got to bury their loved ones and still they struggle to live, as their hearts break and psychological terror consumes them. And now this. An Indian journalist contact who interviewed some marooned sufferers says they still fasted through Ramadan, knowing that there would be hardly anything at sundown to ease their hunger and thirst I fasted, too, for as many days as I could, and it was hard The stoicism and faith of these victims is awesome. When I was young and in love with my ex-husband, I imagined going to a houseboat in Kashmir for our honeymoon. This was paradise, in its way, though not since India and Pakistan turned the region into a battleground.