“I heard the sound of an explosion. May Allah bless his mercy on those
who had died and give a quick recovery to those injured.” This is an ordinary
sentence. You hear all the day such a sentence. It is a part of our daily life.
Even it is our lifestyle. What is that soggy stuff? It is the blood of a nearly
murdered person. These words are common in the city. People always say these
words without painful feelings. Deliberately, you can recognize how it is
normalized such brutal actions. Adapted actions are bitter. People are killed,
wounded, and tortured indiscriminately.
It was six minutes before when I was coming out a coffee shop near to
the Hayat Mall branch Zope and got on a van at the Zope junction. I saw a dead
man in front of the coffee shop I left six minutes before. Everybody was
passing there without fear. Three or four people are standing over the dead
body. “A soldier shot him. He escaped after shooting’ The people yell those
words.
It is 4:15 PM. We are at the university campus. Shift afternoon
students are coming out of their hall lectures and going out one by one. I am
sitting at the corner and reading a book about psychology. One time we heard something
cannot be meant by the mind. It is out of hearing ability. It was an explosion
hit at the overcrowded junction. This explosion had left the lives of more
hundred innocents and paralyzed another hundred. After an hour or hour and
half, the situation of the junction had returned to the same it was before the explosion
occurred. The people began to repair and rebuild ruined houses. Some others
have been chewing khat. There were some laughing. I asked myself why is this
tragedy is hitting us. But it was my fault to ask that myself because it was
our fault why this happening. It is anthropogenic activity. It was also to ask
myself, why we are not kind-hearted people. The flesh of our beloved is over
there. Their brain is dispersed on the streets. newly born babies are dying.
And still, we are laughing, chewing khat, and rebuilding our collapsing shops.
The reality is that they will be destroyed tomorrow.
I and my friend are heading to KM 4. There was a traffic jam and a police soldier was kicking the bajaajis, calling go to straight. There is an infantry vehicle coming from the other side of the road. One time, a soldier in the car scattered bullets in front of him. It was a savage and disguising action what my eyes captured that afternoon. Outspoken act! Two dead, one was an old mom. There was a man shouting “I qaada, I qaada—Take me to hospital…hospital’. The people standing over the dead ones and the shouting one. My friend and I are among those people. We are not taking any step forward to help the injured one and cover the dead ones. Days before, I recalled that incident and I could not distinguish two things: we were shocked so that we cannot do anything or we were afraid of seeing us intervening and blame on us. The second possibility is out of logic. Neither we were afraid nor shocked. We were watching. Only watching. Such actions are full of our life and encounter every day at every junction of the city’s main road. When open my Facebook account, every three newsfeeds, one is a funeral for murdered person. He was killed by a soldier or in an explosion. We are walking bodies. We are at death place. One Bajaajle is killed and two were wounded is the news of every day. Hotel X was attacked. 20 had been dead in that attack and many others are missing dead and alive. These sentences are well-used ones in the city and the people see normal hearing those ugly words. This is a death place!
Ali Hussein Ahmed
