When the Tsunami is coming…

We were returning to our hotel after a day at The Mall of the Emirates when our Pakistani-born driver Muhammad Sadiq drove past the Burg Khalifa. It was then under construction and known as Burj Dubai. This was December 2006. Like so many drivers and tour guides in Dubai at the time, Sadiq couldn’t wait […]

We were returning to our hotel after a day at The Mall of the Emirates when our Pakistani-born driver Muhammad Sadiq drove past the Burg Khalifa. It was then under construction and known as Burj Dubai. This was December 2006. Like so many drivers and tour guides in Dubai at the time, Sadiq couldn’t wait to tell us that the building will be the tallest in the world when completed in 2008. But almost in disgust he added ‘When the Tsunami is coming, it is going.’

That was exactly two years after the first Asian Tsunami which swept across continents and caused unprecedented destruction and deaths. Coming as he did from a country close enough to the Sumatran Trench, whose movement caused that earthquake and the accompanying Tsunami, Sadiq perhaps had a good reason to worry about a Tsunami reaching Dubai and washing away the Burj. And geologists will probably try to tell him that an earthquake and a Tsunami are not possible in the Arabian Gulf, so he had no need to fear. But since when did these natural disasters remain predictable?

When I sat glued to my TV screen watching that monumental Japanese Tsunami sweeping everything in its wake two weeks ago, I couldn’t help agreeing with the clerics who say that every earthquake is a manifestation of Almighty God’s wrath. The speed and propensity were horrifying. All those who died in this quake and Tsunami will no doubt believe they had witnessed the world’s end. The scriptural description is certainly very similar to the horror that claimed them. The Bible did talk about earthquake and flood being two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and in the Holy Quran we read about the final earthquake of the hour of Doom in Suratul Zilzal.

But as I watched whole towns and villages being washed away by those giant Tsunami tides, I had to remember the words of the ancient Arabian poet who said ‘All else is vanity save God’. Indeed when my youngest daughter Bilkisu joined me to watch the horrific breaking news of that Friday, her first comment was that the cars and buses being hurled over and swept away by giant waves looked like toy cars. Compared to the raging Tsunami, the buildings and the vehicles did indeed look small and toy-like.

So with their high-tech meteorology and sophisticated anti earthquake architecture, the Japanese couldn’t   foresee the magnitude of the quake, and the buildings couldn’t withstand it? Yes a Tsunami can surely wash away the Burj Khalifa, and all of Dubai’s other skyscrapers as well as their phenomenal shopping malls and parks and resorts. The humbling lesson here is there is no armour against Almighty God’s fury or nature’s wrath as the secular community chooses to put it.

The unfortunate thing in Japan is that while it is trying hard to come to grips which the scale of the catastrophe and human loss, it also has to worry about nuclear radiation and the looming nuclear disaster that could erupt at on a larger scale; if all preventive measures failed. With a First World economy and infrastructure, Japan never envisaged anything putting its nuclear arsenal in jeopardy, except may be a full scale war with another power. Yet today it is in a pitiable dilemma over it.

While they planned and plotted in the Club of G-8, deciding which country should have nuclear power and which should not, or which country is a rogue state and which is not, they never reckoned with a Higher Super Power Who can do and undo at the blink of an eye. The Holy Quran says, ‘Wa makaru wa makarallah, wallahu khairul makiriin.’ (They plan and Allah plans and the Best of planners is Allah.) Yet, though the rest of the world is humbled by the devastation in Japan, her co-travellers in the world of global power and high finance seem only too willing to proceed on their regular paths. The US for instance does not only continue on its chosen mission of troops surge to Afghanistan, it even has the energy to embark on an allied offensive against Libya. After propping up the insurgency in Libya and actually aiding them with attacks on Ghaddafi’s armoury, the Allied nations are also known to be actively behind the regime change chorus echoing from Bahrain to Yemen and other parts of the Arab World. The Tsunami lesson is certainly lost on those we wish will be most moved by it.

For now while Japan is trying to cope with humanitarian and nuclear emergencies, environmental destruction and pollution, the rest of us have to continue praying we would never get to see a Tsunami of our own. Last year the seasonal rains led to floods in many parts of the country with resultants deaths and destruction in all of them. But we must admit that our mini tsunami is small mercy compared to the Japanese brand. Still we pray never to see that again too, especially if our leaders will take a lesson from it and provide the necessary drainages and good roads that could prevent future occurrence.

Driver Sadiq’s prophecy is scary, but it will be good if it can be heeded by those oil rich sheikhs who are now into an excessive love of superlative architecture. Dubai, Doha, Bahrain as well as the other rich Gulf cities are living proofs of this age of excess. And though it is a heritage of the Arabs to have great architecture, especially in mosques and palaces dating from the great Islamic empires of the past, one would have expected the current leaders to see the folly of such extravagance. For where are the owners of those architectural wonders? Haven’t they all gone with the passage of time?

Yes when the Tsunami is coming, great buildings are going. But then so will all those living around them be washed away. This is why we must learn from these catastrophes and invest less in this transitory world.