Surviving

Rag trade Pushed up through the roof like fish reeled in from a hole in the ice. Pulled, dragged and chivied through eight floors concertina-ed below. Finally out in the open, survivors of the collapsed garment factory speeding down a makeshift slide of unrolled cloth, held taut by the crowd. Rushed to safety, hospital, oxygen. Cloth they would have pinned into place, cut and stitched into bargain brand clothes; the same cloth now clothes corpses too. Rolled up in it, lined up in neat rows, ready for sewing into the ground. The body count rises – 150, 343, 477, 501: this factory’s final batch. A small contribution, soon overlooked, to an assembly line worth $20 million; 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s annual exports; and four million jobs. On the other side of the world, I rise from my sick-bed (bronchitis) and put on bargain brand clothes made in Dhaka last year, woven from heat and dust and drudgery; already hemmed with death and destruction, always going to happen there someday. But wait a minute: have you been asked to feel guilty; still less make a display of it? Donning a hair shirt does nothing for the living or the dead.