NAHRIN, Afghanistan – Sixty-two-year-old Afghan Shailla has only one possession left, a faded red carpet on which she forlornly sits until the earth suddenly starts to shake. Then Shailla cowers under the rug for protection as a new cloud of dust chokes the air from an aftershock of the killer earthquake that levelled her home town of Nahrin. The carpets — and homeless people sitting on them them — dot mounds around Nahrin, a town where Alexander the Great once walked in his conquest of the Hindu Kush region.

On Wednesday, the scene in the foothills of the Hindu Kush resembled a moonscape, with dust storms set off by frequent tremors and the arrival of aid vehicles and helicopters. Cattle, sheep, goats and people wandered desolately through the devastation which Afghan officials estimate killed over 2,000 people in Nahrin and about 40 surrounding villages, some not even visited yet. For victims like Shailla, all they could recover when their mud houses collapsed were a carpet here, a pot there, a pair of sandals. The houses in which they lived had mud walls up to two feet thick and roofs of the same material and thickness slapped on tree trunks as beams. When they came tumbling down, the weight was far more than a western suburban home.

During a visit of several hours by interim President Hami Karzai, at least three significant tremors shook the town anew causing officials to cluster apprehensively around him. A Pakistani seismic centre said one of the tremors, at 1.53 p.m., measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, powerful enough to cause heavy damage in a populated area and of a similar magnitude to those which struck Nahrin on Monday and Tuesday.

A weeping woman rushed up to kiss the hand of Afghanistan‘s new leader as he promised to do everything he could to help the quake victims. But even in the devastation there was the stoicism and hardiness for which Afghans are famed – particularly in this area known for its wrestlers and buzkashi players who have won national titles in both sports over the years. This is mainly farming land and there is a stark contrast between the hundreds of fallen brown buildings in the town and the signs of nature‘s new spring birth just outside, where almond, peach and other fruit trees are starting to bloom.

Reuters