While Vohra has been serving in Islamabad for over a year-and-a-half, Zdarek arrived only last month and was living in the Marriott. “He was quite cheerful,” Vohra told The Indian Express, recalling the dinner at his home. “He was looking for a house and a cook. This is tragic.” On Tuesday, the Indian High Commission cancelled an Iftar reception it was hosting on September 25 as a mark of respect for those killed and wounded in the attack.

Investigations into the attack have made little progress even as a little-known Islamic group called the Fidayeen Islam claimed responsibility late Monday night. But at ‘Ground Zero’ — the name in some sections of the Pakistani media for the site of what has been called the country’s own 9/11 — progress seems to be the key as dozens of workers busy themselves in clearing the debris and repairing the building, which was the only legal watering hole for foreigners in the Pakistani capital.

With Sadruddin Hashwani, the owner of the hotel, saying he aimed to resume operations in four months, there is little time to lose, says one supervisor. Dumpers, cranes and tractors work to clear debris and level the ground outside while workers carry shattered, damaged and burnt property from inside and even pull out decorative plants and small trees that lined the compound.

More than a dozen cars, most of them wrecked beyond repair, are neatly lined one behind the other on the opposite lane. Painters got down to work on Monday itself and began coating the burnt and soot-covered decorative cement frames that formed the front facade of the squat building.

... contd.