August 1, 2004 In late March of 2004, I was in Bam, the southwestern Iranian city flattened by a powerful earthquake three months before. Besides heaps of rubble that covered the residential area there were sprawling rows of tents _ erected as temporary housing for quake victims. Walking down a path made by continual treading by people who walk through the ruins, I was invited by a farming couple in their late sixties to their tent. The instant I stepped into their tent through its vinyl entrance, beads of sweat started trickling down my forehead. Heat was trapped in the fragile, ill-ventilated tent of about 10 square meters. The tent was clogged with things the couple had taken from their completely destroyed house, such as mats, some furniture and kitchen appliances. As I sat down on the carpet, the couple offered me a cup of tea, despite their destitute condition. It was their gesture of welcome and respect to the guest, so I took the cup, thanking them for the tea. Then we struck up a conversation. "We are old and don't have much time left. We have no strength at all to rebuild our life." The quake killed some 200 of their relatives. Three months since the disaster, their hearts are still broken. Despite their brave effort to pull themselves together, words of sorrow and hopelessness, some a little too depressing, gushed out of their mouths from time to time. In another district of the city, I encountered a lovely old woman of about 80 who introduced herself saying, "I'm Fateme, a daughter of Alijan." She had five grandchildren. At a glance, she looked cheerful. As we talked about the quake, however, she spoke slowly and haltingly of her gnawing anxiety about future life. The parents of her grandchildren are all dead, and she had no source of income. Her expression got darker and darker as she talked about her plight, until she finally said, "I don't know how I can survive. I just want to die" and drooped her shoulders in despair in front of her grandchildren. Just like the killer earthquake that hit Kobe in 1995, the tremor that rocked the southwestern parts of Iran in December 2003 left many old people in crushing despair. With no hope for the future, many old quake survivors in Iran even tried to kill themselves, breaking the precepts of Islam. The survivors who tended to keep to their tents, especially the old ones, apparently needed special mental care. (Published in EMERGENCY NURSING, August 2004 issue)