Three years ago, Umraiz Khan was figuring out how he would pick up his son’s body parts. Irfan, then just 17, was stuck in a cable car hanging by a wire 900ft above ground in the Allai valley near Battagram, northern Pakistan. He was travelling to school when the rope suddenly gave out.
Along with seven other boys, he spent hours waiting and praying for rescue. A rescue that was made complicated by a lack of resources and strong winds.
‘I had no choice but to think about how to best pick up my son’s body parts’
Speaking to Metro, Umraiz said: ‘I had no choice but to think about how to best pick up my son’s body parts from the ground below. How will I know which are his? How will I take them back home? ‘That reality was right in front of me as the cable car was dangling.’
Just sitting down with Metro to speak about that day gives the dad the same sense of fear. Umraiz, a government office worker, knew something was going on after hearing shouting outside. But what he assumed were shouts from watching a street fight became pleas for god to help.
Walking to the source of the commotion, he saw the cable car and was told his son was inside. He was able to speak to him on the phone.
‘I had to pretend I was calm’
Shakily, Umraiz said: ‘I had to pretend I was calm. I had to pretend I was confident help was going to come.’ But as time passed on and night began to fall, doubts over the boys’ rescue began to rise. No one could get close to the cable car, which began shaking violently if more weight was placed on the wire.
All hope was placed on a helicopter, which at first was forced to fly away as the cable car once again began to shake violently.
‘Seeing it move away from the cable car without having been able to rescue any of the boys confirmed to me that my son is going to die,’ Umraiz said.
‘I had enough of crying’
Inside the cable car, the boys had been praying. Believing they were near death, they recited the relevant passages from the Qur’an and cried. They could see the large crowd gathering to watch the tried and failed attempts by rescuers to reach them.
‘We even began trying to come up with our own ideas,’ Irfan said. ‘We imagined being able to cross the rope ourselves.’
When the helicopter approached the second time, the cable car shook violently once again. So much so that the boys were too scared to get into the harness being held. But Irfan said he ‘had enough of crying’, and stepped into the harness. He was the first to be rescued from the cable car. The rest of the group were rescued hours later with a zip line and a chair lift.
The cable car is still broken
Both Irfan, now nearly 21, and his dad have said they will never be brave enough to use a cable car again. But to this day, it is still broken, leaving the community cut off.
For children to get to school and for women to visit the doctor, they have to use the river to get across the valley. But during periods of heavy rain, it is unusable.
Umraiz said: ‘We have not been able to cross for weeks because it is too dangerous. We have asked for three years for a bridge, but no one is listening.’ The documentary Hanging by A Wire will be released in the UK and New York on August 28.
