„Salaam aleikum va rahmatu Llahi va barakatuh (n.n. Peace to you all, may the Mercy of Allah and All of His Blessings be with you always), my dear Muslim sisters. It is now the right time to continue the story I started a few weeks ago. I stopped just when the sisters in the camp united their efforts by the Grace of Allah Almighty and carried the wounded sister to the medical center inside the camp.
I shall start the second part of the story by saying that, when we reached the medical center with our wounded sister, the entire medical staff was locked inside. Each minute, no each second was vital, since none of us knew just how seriously she had been wounded by the bullets. The women were trying to convince the medical staff to offer assistance, at least first aid to the wounded sister, but they refused. We all started to panic. In order to force the medical staff at least to examine our wounded sister, the other Muslim sisters present started screaming and yelling, in a desperate attempt to make the medical staff listen to their plea. All of a sudden, the soldiers busted inside de medical center and started firing their weapons without warning. They were shooting indiscriminately from a very small distance, in the direct direction of some of the women present there. A river of blood started to form and flow freely on the floor. The soldiers’ (all men) brutal assault was directed towards a bunch of traumatized, unarmed, weak women. Even in the midst of all the chaos, I could not help but to find this extremely low and offensive. None of the women had done anything wrong.
After the bloodshed finally ended, after what seemed like ages, an ambulance arrived to carry out the wounded. The dead were later picked up by another vehicle and taken, most likely, to an unknown, unmarked grave. This show of force by the soldiers that were supposed to guard us took many lives. Many of the remaining women were sent to prison, and a lot of children in the camp became orphans that day. Some, only for a while, during the time their mothers were detained or in the hospitals, while others, the most unfortunate, forever.
The remaining Muslim sisters in the camp tried to help the children as best as they could, they did all that was in their power to make life a little bit easier for these poor children, taking them into their tents and under their “wings” just like mother hens. The air inside of the camp reeked of blood, and of the faces of many of the remaining sisters you could still see the horror they witnessed. The women and children that had seen the shootings that day had nightmares about it for days and weeks to come, and many of them woke up screaming or jumped to take cover at the slightest sound. This dreadful event still haunts me as well, even though five years have already passed since then. I still get startled and scared and start to shake uncontrollably whenever I hear any noise that resembles, even in the slightest, the sound of a weapon being fired. And my thoughts carry me back to the black memory of that horrendous day.
But let me return for a bit to the wounded Muslim sisters. Time was passing, each day dragging along in panic and terror, and the rest of us, the ones that remained in the camp knew nothing about who had survived and who had not. I was extremely concerned about the Muslim sister I knew, the one whose life I had saved at the last moment. I need to remind you at this point, dear readers, that she had three small children, the youngest of which was barely two months old. As they got a little bit better, stronger and healthier, the sisters started returning to the camp, one by one. But my acquaintance did not seem to be coming back. My concerns grew heavier with each passing day, as I started be increasingly worried about her fate. I was not ready and I did not want to prepare myself to the worst, but my mind was starting to tell me it might be necessary and I began to lose hope. I was praying to Allah to save her life, so that she might return to her children and to us, her Muslim sisters. Finally, one day, when it as already dark outside, just as the children and myself were gathering inside my tent, we heard a car approaching. As we stepped outside the tent, our happiness knew no bounds. It was her, she was alive. The sister I had waited to return home for so long. Everyone started to run towards her, and took from the soldiers’ hands the stretcher on which they had brought her back. We took her inside the tent. It was one of the happiest evenings we had inside the tent for months.
In the following days, the sisters that had been detained started to return to the camp. They were being returned gradually, in small groups after being imprisoned for more than two months. And this, my dear readers, was the tragic aftermath of what started out as an innocent tea party amongst some Muslim sisters. A simple gathering of sisters in Faith took a wrong twist, taking many lives, shattering many souls, and testing our trust in the Will and Mercy of Allah Almighty.
Asira
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