When stones fell from the sky: The night an Afghan village was destroyed

A fewer metres distant from the piles of stones that were erstwhile the archetypal homes arsenic you entered their tiny village, three men sat connected a accepted woven bed.

One of them was Hayat’s cousin, Mehboob.

“When the earthquake happened, my 13-year-old lad Nasib Ullah was sleeping adjacent to me. I woke up, got retired of bed, and started looking for the torch. Then, suddenly, the full country moved from the falling rocks. When I tried to scope my son, the partition and the level slid down, and I couldn’t drawback him,” the 36-year-old explained.

“[It was] worse than the time of judgement.”

“Houses collapsed, boulders from the upland came crumbling down; you couldn’t spot anything, we couldn’t spot each other.”

Everyone was injured, helium explained. Some had breached ribs and breached legs.

“In the dark, we took our kids who were inactive live to the farmland below, wherever it was safer from the boulders.”

Children's apparel near connected the crushed pursuing the earthquake [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

That night, helium counted much than 250 tremors, helium said: aftershocks that proceed to shingle the vale adjacent weeks aft the earthquake.

When daylight came, helium tried to excavation done the rubble to find his loved ones. “But my assemblage didn’t privation to work,” helium said.

“I could spot my son’s foot, but the remainder of his assemblage had disappeared nether the rubble.”

His 10-year-old daughter, Aisha, had besides been killed.

“It was the worst infinitesimal of my life,” helium said.

It took 2 days for villagers and volunteers to retrieve the bodies.

When Hayat’s brother, Rahmat Gul, received a connection from his member telling him that the full colony was gone, helium instantly rushed determination from his location successful Parwan province, immoderate 300km (185 miles) away.

When helium yet reached Aurak Dandila, the surviving villagers asked him to wrapper Mehboob’s dormant lad successful a blanket.

“Mehboob asked maine to amusement him the look of his son, but I could not bash it,” Rahmat Gul explained arsenic Mehboob, sitting beside him, looked retired implicit the farmland successful the vale below.

Hayat Khan mislaid 4 members of his household during the earthquake [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

Nearby, Hayat stood up and began pacing.

“God has taken my sons from me, and present I consciousness similar I person near this satellite arsenic well,” helium said.

In Aurak Dandila, a tiny cornfield has go a graveyard. “Here is wherever we buried our loved ones,” Hayat said. The graves are marked by stones.

He remembers however helium had urged Abdul Haq to enactment successful the village. “The adjacent day, everything was gone, and helium mislaid his life.”

Now, Hayat believes, “there is thing near to unrecorded present for”.

“How tin I proceed surviving here?” helium asked, pointing astatine the debris of what was erstwhile his home.

“The stones are coming from above; however tin anyone unrecorded successful this village?"

"We volition settee determination else, and we volition look for the mercy of God. If helium has nary mercy connected us, past we volition besides die.”