Morocco earthquake killed young boy

Hamid ben Henna
had just asked his young son Marouane to fetch a knife to cut a
melon for the family’s evening meal when Morocco’s earthquake
hit on Friday night.
With the weekend beginning, they had been enjoying a lamb
and vegetable tagine stew and Marouane had been telling his
father what materials he would need for the coming school year.
“That’s when it struck,” Ben Henna said. The room began to
shake, the lights went out and rubble started falling from the
ceiling of their traditional house in a remote village of the
High Atlas mountains.
The earthquake was Morocco’s most powerful since at least
1900 and it killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in small
mountain villages like Tafeghaghte where the Ben Henna family
live.
Ben Henna and his other son, Mouad, staggered out of the
open door into the alleyway as their house began to collapse.
They managed to free his wife Amina and small daughter Meryem.
But as the dust settled they saw that Marouane had not made it.
The eight-year-old had run further into the house and was
lying under a meter of rubble.
His little body was only recovered the next day, after Ben
Henna’s brothers arrived by car from Casablanca, five hours
away, to help lift the rubble.
Marouane, described by his father as an enthusiastic boy who
loved school, was buried on Saturday morning.
DESTITUTION
The family is now not only grieving but destitute. All their
belongings lie in the wreckage of their fallen house and they
face a third night sleeping outside in the bitter mountain cold.
Ben Henna’s source of livelihood, the three-wheel moped he
used to ferry goods around the neighbourhood for a small fee,
was buried in falling debris and no longer works. The alleyway
leading to the ruins of their house is covered in fallen rocks.
The family still have a donkey and a goat that survived the
quake. But their animal feed was buried in a collapsed storeroom
and there is little point slaughtering the animals because they
cannot refrigerate the meat.
Barely a house in Tafeghaghte seems unscathed by the
disaster. Of the roughly 400 villagers, nearly 80 are dead,
according to survivors. Large piles of rubble dot the village.
One family Ben Henna knew lost seven members.
Families have gathered under olive trees in a small field to
pitch shelters where survivors can spend the night, safe from
aftershocks even if their damaged homes stayed mostly erect.
Fatima Boujdig sat with her husband in the shade of their
large red truck, badly damaged by falling rubble, as a donkey
grazed nearby. They borrowed money to buy the truck and do not
know how they can now repay it.
“We were in darkness and covered in dust. We heard the
earthquake and the rocks and walls falling… now you can see
the village is reduced to rubble,” she said.