Sleepless in Karachi

“I can’t sleep at all. Back home, I used to work at a restaurant. That kept me busy. But now everything is ruined.”

KARACHI: Barkat Ali’s sleepless nights are far from romantic. The 58-year-old was successful in leaving Jacobabad with his wife and five children after the flood warning and arriving safely in Karachi. But he has failed to snooze for the last five days.

“I can’t sleep at all. Back home, I used to work at a restaurant. That used to keep me busy. But now everything is ruined,” Ali says grimly.

He suffers from insomnia: a sleeping disorder in which one cannot fall asleep or cannot maintain sleep for long. There are many causes of the disorder, but the reason why Barkat is suffering is obvious - fear, trauma and stress.

At the Musharraf Colony Relief Camp, Hawke’s Bay, he spends his nights roaming about the camp aimlessly trying to achieve any sense of drowsiness. But he has not been able to do so for five days.

With the lack of sleep, insomnia obviously results in functional impairment while awake.

Doctors believe that the only way out of his disorder is moving forward towards a normal life.

Barkat’s other luckier campmates are not deprived of sleep, but describe their sleep as one “on a bed of nails.”

“We do get food here but there is no place like home,” says Kazim Ali, another flood survivor at the camp. “The water took away everything with it. Everything.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2010.