JAN 12 - Farzana and Salman Naqvi found signs of life returning to normal in a remote, cold corner of quake-stricken Pakistan last month.

In the small village of Bhogermang, at an altitude of 4,500 feet, near the Siran River, where more than 90 percent of the homes were either destroyed or damaged in an Oct. 8 earthquake, two sets of brides and grooms were getting ready to marry.

The families were living in tents. The dowry and some rations for the wedding stashed in their damaged homes were lost in a fire unrelated to the 7.6-magnitude quake that killed thousands in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the country's northwestern region.

A family snapshot shows Doctor pair Salman and Farzana Naqvi with residents of the Bhogermang village they adopted.

Yet the couples were to wed, with a relief agency - for whom the Naqvis are volunteering - providing funds and new homes for the families of the brides.

The Naqvis also saw village children with backpacks returning home from a tent school with smiles on their faces.

"Those are signs of people trying to deal with life," Farzana Naqvi said.

The Pakistan-born Naqvis, whose relatives in the south of the country were not affected by the quake, want to nurture such moments - and they want the world to help.

Both physicians and residents of Irvine, they have traveled to the villages of the northwest frontier and provided medical aid. Farzana Naqvi has helped get shoes to needy Pakistani children through Los Angeles-based Relief International, a non-profit agency that provides emergency relief and development services worldwide.

And later this month, Salman Naqvi will help a documentary team, including actor Ben Kingsley and producer Chip Duncan, to follow a few families on their road to recovery.

For Salman Naqvi, 43, a pulmonary and critical care doctor, it all began with a feeling of helplessness. He had watched quake coverage on television and felt guilty. He witnessed the death and the destruction and wanted to help.

"I was feeling that I am a physician and I can help and I really need to do something (but) I really didn't have a way to," he said.

Then came an opportunity: a doctor friend in the San Francisco Bay area called to say Pakistan could use doctors immediately.

On Oct. 17, leaving his wife and two children behind, Naqvi headed for Islamabad and from there to Battagram, a remote village in the northwest frontier province, where a regional hospital had collapsed.

With other relief agencies and three other doctors from the United States, Naqvi set up a tent hospital.

The injured were carried there from miles away on makeshift stretchers. For eight days Naqvi treated wounds. He saw people whose body parts had been crushed, patients who had lost their legs and many whose feet needed amputations. Women with crushed pelvises gave birth to premature children.
 

In December, the Naqvis returned to Bhogermang, Pakistan, and said they were happy to see rebuilding.

"It was like a war zone," he said.

That was in October.

By November, when Farzana Naqvi came to help, the acute injury patients were gone. The team saw up to 200 patients a day, many with diarrhea, upper respiratory infections and scabies blamed on temporary shelter with insufficient hygiene.

Their medical stints convinced the Naqvis that they needed to do more. That's when they and others helped Relief International launch its Adopt a Village program.

With the help of an army of friends, they raised $180,000 in November, enough to help build about 120 semi-fabricated homes in Bhogermang.

In December, the Naqvis returned to the village for a couple of days. They said they were happy to see new homes springing up next to ones that had been reduced to rubble.

The Naqvis fear more death will come if the world forgets.

"We need to keep this alive and we need to get (victims) the help they need. It's not over as yet," said Farzana Naqvi, 43, an endocrinologist.


(Courtesy: By VIK JOLLY, The Orange County Register)