"Bam reaches out to tsunami survivors"

A 6 Jan piece I wrote on the tsunami (here) cited this story (here) as one of the most remarkable I happened to have come across coming from that catastrophe.

Najmeh Bozorgmehr's article in the Financial Times (published 20:57 on 19 Jan) is also worth a look:

In the main square of the ancient Iranian city, a large placard signed by the “Blossoms of Bam” expresses sympathy with survivors of the tsunamis. Bam's residents have responded to the Indian Ocean disaster by donating 50 tons of dates, their main source of income.

A year to the day before waves devastated coastal communities from Sri Lanka to Somalia, an earthquake levelled much of the 2,000-year-old mud brick citadel and killed about 32,000 of its inhabitants.

“We can go to the graves of our dear ones and cry. How about tsunami survivors? They must suffer even more than us,” says Marzieh, a 21-year-old who lost 70 relatives in the 12-second Bam earthquake...