“I woke up to some muffled, disorienting sounds,” recalls Shafiullah, 38, from Mamagal village in Kunar’s Nurgal district, who was trapped under the debris with multiple wounds. “In a muffled silence, broken only by the brittle cracking of plaster shifting above, I could hear my own ragged breath loud in the dust-thick dark, catching in my throat. I managed to scramble out of the fallen wooden beams and a mountain of pebbles, dust and plaster, stood up trembling and in pain. I wanted to find my family but my cousin appeared to hold my arm. With his other arm, he held my son. Seven family members died right there when the room collapsed in the earthquake.”

While narrating his ordeal, he told The Express Tribune that he, his wife, daughters, and sons, were asleep in the same room when the

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