Photo: K2 copyright Nazir Sabir 2009Sixteen people kneel in the main hall, hands cupped toward the sky. Children, their mothers, and their grandparents whisper a prayer. Nazir Sabir, one of the toughest mountaineers alive, weeps. From this village below a glacier, two men left for K2 and never returned. Karim Meherban and Jehan Baig were carpenters, men who climbed not because they wanted to but because their families needed the money. Their deaths and nine others splashed across television screens from Kansas to Karachi and made the cover of the New York Times. In the disaster, six children in Pakistan and three in Nepal lost their fathers. The Gerard McDonnell Memorial Fund is helping ensure these children get an education. Donors, many who have never worn crampons, contributed. The Meherban and Baigs' prayer was also for them.
Nazir stands. He thinks of his brother, buried beneath an avalanche thirty years ago. He passes donations into the hands of two widows and promises to return. The children watch him in silence, too young to understand contained within those envelopes is a future.
A. Padoan
Hunza, April 2009
Click HERE to learn more about the Gerard McDonnell Memorial Fund, a sponsor of these families.
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