It is a breathtaking and, at points, pretty perilous journey through the remote mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan.
We’re trying to reach the Mazar Dara valley, where an earthquake wiped out whole villages. The force of the quake ripped apart roads, cut off communities and buried multiple generations.
It’s slow going – navigating around sheer drops on a road scattered with rocks and boulders. But after three hours, we start to see the first signs of the disaster that, within minutes, plunged this region into darkness.
We are driving into Wadir, a village in Nurgal District, where everyone we meet has lost someone. The earthquake, which struck around midnight, killed many in their sleep here, especially women and children.
Standing by a makeshift graveyard peppered with white flags and gravestones, we meet little Rahmanullah. He’s eight but looks much younger, and his glassy eyes look heavy with grief.
His fragile, tiny hands point to the grave where his six-year-old brother Abouzar is buried. He was sleeping alongside him.
The earthquake struck around midnight and killed many in their sleep
The only reason Rahmanullah survived was because his older sibling, Saied Rahman, was able to pull him out.
“I was asleep when I heard a crash,” Rahmanullah tells me. “My brother said ‘it’s an earthquake, get up, or the building will fall on you’.
“He took my hand and pulled me out, put me on some wood, and said, ‘get out quick’.”
Saied Rahman pulled Rahmanullah from his home during the quake
Rahmanullah takes us up a steep hill to show us what remains of his home.
On the edge of a vast drop, it is now a mound of rubble – only a broken bed and shoes left behind.
Rahmanullah (pictured) lost his younger brother Abouzar after the earthquake in Wadir
The earthquake killed some 2,000 people and was one of the worst Afghanistan has seen. And it came at an already desperate time for Afghans – with an economic crisis, rising unemployment, drought and malnutrition.
The quake’s epicentre was near the city of Jalalabad
In Afghanistan, there has been a seemingly endless cycle of hunger and displacement. Compounding those problems since the Taliban took control in 2021, aid has dropped off a cliff.
This year, the US cut almost all of its funding to the country, and it’s had a massive impact.
The demise of the US Agency for International Development this year has forced the closure of 400 health facilities and left hundreds of thousands of Afghans without consistent access to food.
Nearly everyone we spoke to in this region praised the speed and effectiveness of the Taliban response – the government sending in helicopters to evacuate the injured and the dead.
White tents have sprouted up next to each affected village too – a sign international aid was able to get to these far-flung communities against the odds.
But winter is coming, and sickness is starting to spread. In Andarlackhak, we meet Ajeebah. She’s keen to speak to us in private, in the tent she now calls home.
She married at 10 years old and went on to have 10 children. But five of them died in the quake – three-year-old Shabhana, seven-year-old Wali Khan, nine-year-old twins Razimah and Nasreen, and 13-year-old Saleha.
Ajeebah, with her niece Zarmina, 22, daughter Asiya, 8, and son Abdul Raziq, 11
Their mother is clearly still processing the immense, almost unimaginable loss.
“I don’t want to bury them. What could I do?” she says. “I can’t keep them outside. But I don’t want to put them in a graveyard.”
Outside, dozens of children are playing, many orphaned by the disaster.
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Children, many of whom are orphaned, are living in tents
Malnutrition is a major issue in Afghanistan and keeping these children fed will be an overwhelming burden in the months ahead.
With women unable to work under the Taliban and a struggling economy, families were already in dire straits.
Mohammad Salem, who’s 45, has injured his foot. And he’s deeply worried about the months ahead.
“We don’t have anything for winter,” he said. “The snow is coming, and our children are living in tents.
“They’re lying in the dirt. We don’t have any shelter for the future. Everything we had is destroyed.”
Mohammad Salem injured his foot and is deeply worried about the months ahead
The Taliban forbids physical contact between men and women who are not family members, even in emergencies. That raised fears some women would be left without help.
However, the villagers we spoke to praised the rescue efforts and said female aid workers were able to reach them.
But what hangs over every community in these deep and now scarred valleys is the fear of the hardships to come and the realisation that their communities, their families, have been changed forever.
