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There was order while she spoke.
"Let me illustrate what I said with an example," she continued. "I had joined a refugee caravan once. We were high up in the Afghanistan mountains on our way to the Pakistan border. For three days we had struggled at dizzying heights, across steep slopes and ice fields, always in danger of slipping and falling to our death, or of being seen by the Soviets. A jubilation erupted among the people when we finally reached the high valley behind the last ridge. Before us lay the way to the border to Pakistan. We entered a lush valley for the kind of wilderness we were in. Camp was set up beside a mountain stream. On the surface all was a peaceful and idyllic, a scene of serenity, far from the chaos of war. But we were at war. While the children were playing in the water the grinding-on war didn't stop, though the people were oblivious to the danger they couldn't see. They were supposing to be safe by being so near to the Pakistan border. I urged them to take shelter. There were plenty of low trees in the valley - a patch of forest with widely spread out branches. The thick evergreen would have provided at least some cover from the reconnaissance aircraft. Nevertheless, the people insisted on pitching their tents in the open as they had always done. I warned them that this would pose a great danger. They were too naive to comprehend the meaning of reconnaissance. How could they have sensed the danger? There was no danger reflected in the gentle calm of that sunny afternoon."
There was a sense of tension modulated into Ushi's voice, with a sudden sadness in her expression. She seemed to have been deeply touched by the experience. "A single aircraft appeared in early evening high above the valley," she continued quietly. "The children spotted it first. They watched its flight in a cloudless sky. High flying aircraft had never been a cause of danger to them. I tried to explain the danger to make them flee, to get them to abandon their tents, to run for their lives, to hide as far away as possible, under trees or behind rocks. But it was all to no avail. They stayed. The children continued their games. In desperation I fled alone. I ran as far away from the camp as I could until I heard fighter-bombers over the mountains. I saw two aircraft approaching. I spotted them briefly through the branches, each carrying two bombs strapped beneath its wings. I was lucky. They couldn't see me or hear my screams over the noise of their engines. The bright tents and colorful clothing of the people must have been glaring targets for them.
"They wouldn't have heard the chorus of the people's screams that filled the valley after two of their bombs exploded," Ushi continued. "No one in the valley could not have heard them, screams that I can never forget. Except for the pilots the screams were drowned out by their engines as the two aircraft returned for a second run with their guns blazing. Had they heard they would have veered off."
Ushi stopped speaking after that and reached for a glass of water, and added quietly, "They left thirty people dead. By nightfall, a hundred more had died of their wounds. The impact that this senseless massacre has had on me was so overwhelming that I could not talk about the experience to anyone for a long time. For years I was ashamed about what I had seen. What kind of person does this horrible thing to another person? What I had seen had shattered my image of humanity. I was ashamed at what I had seen happening and had been unable to prevent. I thought of the pilots in the planes. They could have been people from any nation that demands its people to isolate themselves from their humanity and their innermost self-love as human beings. The history books are filled with stories of atrocities of this kind committed by Germans, French, Japanese, Englishmen, Chinese, Americans, Russians, Israeli, Turks, Dutch, Spaniards, and whoever sold their soul to the whore of the empire that ruled them. All nations have fallen into this trap at one point and made demands for atrocity on their people in various ways. As a human act, even as a military act, the massacre that I witnessed was totally illogical, as indeed any massacre or war will ever be. Still these things happened and continue to happen all over the world."
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