The earthquake of 2005 ravaged Pakistan�s North-West Frontier Province, destroyed millions of homes and killed tens of thousands. Its aftermath gave women a glimpse of a different life. A special report by Sunday Herald editor Richard Walker and photographer Stewart Attwood

Reeham is too overcome to speak. How can she explain what it felt like to lose a husband, two daughters, a son and a daughter-in-law in one terrible day more than two years ago? Her life had changed forever, along with thousands of other lives in the mountains of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, when nature's might had brought the mountains crashing down.

Today Reeham sits sheltered in the shade and surrounded by women from her village and their children. She weeps for a loss that is as raw today as it was on the day the earthquake struck.

It happened early in the morning, just before 9am, on October 8, 2005. You can still see the gashes running through the land and mountains, which look as if they have been sliced apart as cleanly as when a knife cuts through butter. The landslides at the time had covered whole villages in rubble and dust. Children who had just arrived at school were buried as the world caved in. It was like doomsday, people in the province say when asked about it now. More than 80,000 people died in the earthquake and 3.3 million were made homeless.

Like almost everyone in this village, Reeham's husband was a farmer. The last time she saw him was when he left their house that morning to work his land. She had remained at home, as most of the village women did virtually every morning. This was a society in which women were rarely allowed contact with the world outside the family circle. The boundaries of their lives were dictated by husbands who were reluctant to give permission for them to leave the house. The earthquake has loosened those rules. Today, if families are to survive in this society, the women have to work.

"The fact that you are sitting here today talking to us shows how much things have changed," one woman tells me.

The village of Shohal Mazullah in the Mansehra district's Siran Valley is a six-hour drive from Islamabad and a million miles from the sophisticated streets and upmarket restaurants of the Pakistani capital. Getting here involves a drive that winds its way through bustling market villages, to which men flock from the surrounding countryside, and then continues through the narrow streets and beyond the vegetable stalls; past vans crammed with people and garishly decorated lorries; around crazy scooters and small donkeys pulling carts overloaded with building materials; past the nomads who take flocks of sheep across the country, stopping only to sleep by the roadside. It then continues through chaotic crowds and along empty roads, onwards up high into the lush, green mountains.

Today, Shohal Mazullah is a peaceful, haphazard collection of dwellings where life for its inhabitants is focused simply on growing enough to keep their families alive. These people are farmers, but since the land can not provide enough food to meet their needs, they have to work part of the year in the towns and cities.

It is a hard existence. Yet somehow, life following the earthquake has become almost bearable again for residents. Two years ago, the scene in this area would have been one of utter devastation with homes and lives wrecked. These people would have fled the mountains to live in tented cities, mourn their loved ones and pray for survival. There are just 348 households in Shohal Mazullah. Of the 2436 villagers, 27 died in the earthquake, while 340 homes were completely destroyed.

Shohal Mazullah and its people still bear the scars of the devastation. The tents that were erected in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake are mostly gone now. The sun glints on the corrugated roofing of temporary shelters, where families are living until construction of better quality housing, which would prove safer in the event of another quake, is completed.

There are complaints the government funds allocated for the new housing is not enough. The temporary shelters are also not large enough for Pakistani households, which often consist of large families with up to 10 children, and some families are still using tents to accommodate the overspill.

But the few original shops have reopened, children are back at school, and if life can never really be "normal" again it has at least emerged from the chaos that dominated everything during those terrible months - a time when aid workers battled to provide food and shelter before winter brought rain, snow and the risk of countless more deaths.

Because of these efforts, the worst did not happen and thousands of lives were saved. In Shohal Mazullah, the Rural Development Project (RDP) - a partner of Concern Worldwide, with whom the Sunday Herald collaborated to raise money for the earthquake's victims - has worked to repair the access road to the village, build irrigation channels to transport vital water supplies to areas throughout the village, help families keep livestock, and rebuild communities.

Reeham was fortunate in that her surviving family was able to take her in and care for her. Today, she and the other women are taking a break from working the land. We had been warned we would most likely not be able to speak with the women; that the men of the village, who still dominate and proscribe their lives, would not give permission. But in the event, it turns out they are happy to let them talk.

Before the earthquake, most of these women would not have tended the crops, or taken the embroidery classes that have since helped create a network of support none of them had known before. Now, economic factors have loosened the old dogmas, although it's hard to imagine what circumstances would be necessary to wipe them away entirely.

"We hope we can learn new skills and participate in income generation," says Samina, the most vocal of the small group gathered underneath the trees. "We can use the money to create a better future for our children and we participate in this side by side with the men."

Most of the women here are still living in makeshift shelters or tents. "It is still terrible for us," says one. "It is very hard to cook and when there is a storm, the rain is blown into the shelters."

"Before the earthquake, we would rarely have been allowed outside the door," says Samina. "Now the men have changed their thinking and say that we can do this work and skills training. It is no longer possible that one man can provide everything for the household. Now that we are facing financial problems, women feel they should participate and we are happy to do so."

Deeper into the mountains, in the village of Dadar, Malka Khadoon sits in the semi-darkness of her father-in-law's home and tells, in a quiet and dignified voice, of the tragedy the earthquake brought into her life. She is still a young woman, but she must now bring up her daughter and two sons without her husband, who was another victim of the earthquake.

"My life was very good before," says Malka. "I was staying in my own house with my own family and we lived very happily. But the earthquake destroyed my home and I lost my husband, who was working in Karachi when he was killed."

RDP reached Malka's village and began piecing it back together. With its help, Malka was able to re-open a small shop, which she runs with the help of her 12-year-old son. She and her children now live with her father-in-law, who took the family in.

Women here are being trained to play a wider role. In Malka's village, a council was set up to help manage the aid schemes and 50 women play an active role on it. But getting to this point has not been an easy journey. Immediately after the earthquake, the men in the village refused to allow any of the women to take part in training and they refused again the following year. It was only in 2008 that they relented. "It was very good that the men agreed to this," says Malka, showing us the small, dark shop that sells the peculiar assortment of soap and sweets that helps bolster the family's income. "The women were very happy."

Malka's gratitude may seem infuriating to those of us who live in a world where women can work and live as they wish, start and end relationships as they choose, have families or not, and need no permission from men to do anything they wish. But this is not Malka's world. This is not a world any of the women we speak to would recognise. Women and Islam ... to some Western eyes, it's a crazy, dysfunctional relationship - one that defies logical analysis. On the one hand, women are "respected" and therefore play a role at the heart of the household. On the other, they have the responsibility of protecting the good name of the family and consequently have to modify their behaviour accordingly. In a strange way, aid workers travelling from across the globe to help ease the suffering from the earthquake provided the women of the North-West Frontier Province with their first glimpse of a different world. It's not difficult to imagine the reaction of the religious leaders to the sight of young, female aid workers wearing short skirts and tight T-shirts. There were suspicions the aid workers were there not just to help those in desperate need and possibly not even to help them, but instead to impose Western attitudes - to act as missionaries for a culture alien to Islam.

Compromise on both sides allowed the relationship to settle down. Women dressed more modestly and all but the most extreme religious leaders found an accommodation. The newcomers have left a legacy: a glimpse of a world that offers possibilities of a different life. When we ask a group of children in the village of Basu Mera what they want to be when they grow up, a young girl replies that she hopes to be a doctor. Aid workers admit the chances of that dream coming true are as so slight as to be virtually non-existent, but not so long ago, that same girl would never have conceived it was possible for a woman to train for and hold such a position. However, there are still pressures resisting social change. The women we meet are keen to talk away from the nearby road because if women from neighbouring villages see them, they would disapprove.

One of the villages worst-hit by the earthquake was Basu Mera, a small settlement on the banks of the river Siren, which is surrounded by lush vegetation but offers a harsh life for the 200 families that make their homes here. Some 27 villagers also died here during the disaster, and almost 90% of the homes were destroyed.

With the help of Hashaar, another organisation working in partnership with Concern Worldwide, the village is being rebuilt and innovative work is being carried out to hold back the landslides that threaten to wreak further serious damage on the village.

Today the local women are studying at an embroidery class. Before the earthquake, these women would have met only at weddings or other special occasions. Now they see each other regularly, contact that, they say, has enriched their lives.

Two of their teachers, Saba Saed and Nadia Pervaiz, sit in a tent surrounded by the men of the village. Aged 20 and 21 respectively, they are dressed in colourful traditional dress with their heads and lower faces covered, giggling at our questions and trying to explain their lives. Though both represent the first generation of women in their families to work as teachers, neither would recognise themselves as trailblazers - far less standard-bearers - for women's rights.

"We heard on the radio that teachers were needed for this area after the earthquake. We were happy to undertake the training so that we could contribute more," says Nadia. "The people's lives here are very difficult."

These women travel every day from their homes in the city of Mansehra, getting up at 5am to begin the four-hour journey to work. They hold classes in embroidery, sewing and tailoring until just after 1pm, before heading off on the return journey. When they arrive home at around 5pm, they are still expected to complete some domestic chores, although these are less demanding than they would be if they were not teaching. Even after a day's work and travel, Saba and Nadia seem genuinely happy to fulfil these responsibilities. "We are grateful for the support of our families," they tell an interpreter. They find their jobs fulfilling but don't have any concept of a career path. When asked about their ambitions, they fall silent. "They have no words ..." says the interpreter.

In Islamabad, a new upmarket spa has opened at which rich Pakistani and European women can enjoy beauty treatments and a spot of lunch away from the baking heat. In that city, more and more women choose to walk outside without covering their heads. In one Westernised hotel, teenage girls in jeans meet their boyfriends unchaperoned. Amid the wide streets, huge mansions and palatial government buildings of the modern city, the strictures of Islam are generally interpreted more liberally. This is a different Pakistan.

Many insist, in fact, that it is hardly Pakistan at all. There is a saying that the real Pakistan starts two miles in any direction from Islamabad, where change is slow and traditions dominate and bond communities for whom our modern world might as well be another planet. In this Pakistan, it takes momentous events - events such as the earth moving and destroying old certainties with the same terrible power as it destroys homes and families and lives - to show that change is possible.

What that means for the women of the mountains is impossible to say. But while the change may be slight, as surely as the crops watered by the new irrigation channels bring life to once-ruined land, it will grow.