IRAN: Aid agencies hope the visit will inspire international donors to help get this devastated city back on its feet, writes Caitriona Palmer in Bam
As bewildered residents looked on, the heir to the British throne alighted from a bullet-proof Range Rover in Bam yesterday and picked his way through a rubble-torn street to visit a date farm on the outskirts of the town. In his capacity as president of the British Red Cross, Prince Charles made an unprecedented visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran to raise awareness about the survivors of an earthquake that levelled the ancient city of Bam on December 2003, killing 42,000 people and injuring 30,000 others.
Dressed in a beige suit, pinstripe shirt and striped tie, the prince looked very out of place compared to the bedraggled clusters of homeless Bam residents who watched in confusion as his bustling entourage swept by their makeshift tents. A gaggle of foreign journalists, security personnel and excited children followed in his wake.
"I wish we could do more," the prince told a woman outside her tent. She alone lost over 200 family members when their roofs and lives came crashing down on December 26th.
As the royal convoy swept through the devastated streets, many residents seemed too caught up in a cycle of grief and anguish to care much about the VIP in their midst.
"I think it's the French president," said one man when asked whether he knew the identity of the well-dressed foreigner.
With over 75,000 people now homeless, this is a city of utter desolation. Six weeks following the disaster, families are still living on the side of the road in drab canvas tents donated by international aid agencies. Most have pitched their tents next to their former houses, unable to tear themselves away from the heap of rubble they once called home.
The stuff of daily lives lie next to the tents - plastic bottles, gas canisters, dirty dishes, a child's pink tricycle. A woman washes clothes over an open filthy gutter. Improvised washing lines hang everywhere. Cars, flattened to the ground by falling debris, lie where they were parked hours before the disaster.
But here and there, some normality has returned. Makeshift grocery and fruit stalls serve roadside customers. An enterprising merchant operates a bicycle repair shop out of his tent.
And some children are back in school, albeit in tents with few schoolbooks or pencils.
With night-time temperatures below freezing, the relief focus has now shifted to securing more permanent housing for the homeless.
"People have been living in tents for over six weeks now," said Sir Nicholas Young, chief executive of the British Red Cross. "It's crucial that we get prefabricated units in as soon as possible".
At the roadside entrance to a Red Cross medical facility across town, a family stare impassively from inside their tent as Prince Charles arrives.
Hossein and his wife Masumand lost three children aged 23, 15 and 10 in the earthquake. Sitting on a green blanket next to a child's purple pillow, his wife is inconsolable. She rocks gently back and forth as Hossein tells how their youngest daughter died in her arms.
"When I came to, I saw our daughter dead in my wife's arms," he said. "My wife was screaming, asking for help from God or anyone. I didn't know what to do, whether I should save my wife first or my child. I just didn't know what to do".
Hossein doesn't think there is anything that could happen now to make his life any easier.
"You could give me the world but it's no use because I've lost my children," he sobbed. "I just wish my children were here with me. I don't want anything else."
In the midst of such grief and sadness, it is not easy to find optimism. But in the tent next to Hossein and Masumand, Ali Panjeseri is determined that life must go on.
Despite losing his entire guesthouse and a British guest in the earthquake, three days later Ali set up two tents and got right back to business.
"I had two guests last night and another two the night before," he said enthusiastically. "I'm not going to sit in the corner of the tent and say that this is going to be the end of it all. While there is life there is hope. Where there is life you must struggle and do something. If not, then you might as well be dead".
With international interest in Bam fading fast, aid agencies here are hoping that Prince Charles's visit yesterday will inspire similar enthusiasm for more international donors to pitch in their tents and help people like Ali get this devastated city back on its feet.