Sometimes miracles do happen, even in earthquake-devastated Kashmir, writes Graham Usher in Muzaffarabad According to medical tests Naqsha Bibi is 40 years old. She looks 60. She should also be dead. Curled up like a foetus on a hospital bed, she wears a skeletal face shrouded by a white veil. But her blue eyes are very much alive. They follow you when you enter her room, first with alarm, then with a smile. "Yes, whenever she sees a new face she gets frightened," says Mariam Bashir, a Danish volunteer doctor working at the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) hospital in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan- administered Kashmir. She looks at her "miraculous" patient through thick black-rimmed glasses. "You can see in her eyes she has seen a lot of things and been through a lot of pain," says Mariam. That at least is for sure. Last week Naqsha was brought to the hospital after being found in a cavity in her ruined home in a Kashmiri refugee camp near Muzaffarabad -- 63 days after South Asia's worst ever earthquake wrecked the camp, Muzaffarabad and much else of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. An estimated 87,000 people perished in the destruction, most of them Kashmiris. How on earth did Naqsha survive? "We assume she stayed in her kitchen and lived off old vegetables, maybe a sack of rice and rainwater," says Mariam. "It has rained 10 times since the earthquake and those who found her said she was living in a wet place. When we started to feed her she responded immediately, which suggests her stomach was used to at least little intakes of food and water. But, even so, she's pretty amazing. I heard about someone being rescued alive six weeks after the 1998 earthquake in Turkey. Maybe Naqsha has broken the world record?" As remarkable is the speed of her recovery, says Hafeez Rahman, a Pakistani doctor at PIMA hospital. "When she arrived she was semi-conscious and in shock. She was cold and severely dehydrated, with 80 per cent of her muscles wasting. She was so thin the intra-venous line kept slipping off her ankle. Really she looked like a famine child from Somalia rather than a 40-year-old woman from Kashmir. But with fluid foods and warmth she recovered. I guess she must have lived on something. With a little food you can survive for months. But without fluids it's impossible." As we speak, Naqsha coos with pleasure, smiling again at a steaming plate of porridge, mashed banana and milk that has been put before her. "She is still too weak to speak -- she can only whisper," says Dr Rahman. "Until she does speak we really don't know much about her except her name." What is known is that her Cumsir camp was established near Muzaffarabad in the 1990s to receive refugees fleeing from the Kashmir nationalist insurgency raging then -- and still -- in Indian- controlled Kashmir. Of the camp's 1500 residents, 550 were killed in the earthquake on 8 October, say locals. By the end of October all rescue operations in the camp were called off -- it was assumed no one was left alive. By the end of November relief operations also came to a halt: most of the camp had by then decanted to Muzaffarabad. The only thing happening in the camp in December was reconstruction. "That's how the people found her," says Dr Rahman. "It was an accident. They were clearing away rubble in readiness to build now homes in the spring." Still, the fog surrounding Naqsha and how she endured so long remains. Some other survivors from the camp say Naqsa lost her mother, father and brothers in the earthquake. Others say that her father is alive in a Pakistani hospital after having had his leg amputated. Still others -- claiming to be her relatives -- say the whole thing is an elaborate hoax, that Naqsa remained in her home "by choice" after the earthquake refusing all offers to leave. Doctors, nurses and patients at the PIMA hospital shrug their shoulders. For them Naqsa's survival is a small beacon of warmth in a country ravaged by winter, destruction and death. She is also a kind of hope, as Danish volunteers, Pakistani doctors, Kashmiri refugees and Islamist fighters bury their differences in a united effort to keep her and Kashmir alive. "She has become an inspiration in the hospital," says Mariam. "People think if Naqsa can make it through the earthquake, they can make it through the winter." Whether Naqsa will make it through the winter is another question. "Until someone comes forward to claim her, she remains our responsibility," says Dr Rahman. "We hope she can eventually return to her home -- except she has no home. The guy who brought her to us made only two requests: 'if she lives, send her back' and 'if she dies, send her body'."
