Saleem Abdulla, aged six, is in the first grade at Rimal school, Gaza.
I finished the exam at around 10 a.m. in the morning [on Saturday] and I started to go out from my classroom when suddenly I heard a large explosion near my school. I started to be really scared. My classroom is on the second floor so I was afraid to get to the stairs until a teacher came and took us to the ground floor. Usually my mum comes to pick me up or sends me a taxi. I found no taxi so I stayed at the gate of the school just hearing explosions and people running.
I felt that I could do nothing but stand. I kept waiting for a while — I don’t know how long for. I found my mum running to the school to pick me up. We walked home — maybe about 2.5 km.
I started to hear explosions from right and left and was really scared. Mum tried to ask me how I did during the exam, but I forgot everything. I was just looking around looking at the flames and smoke on the buildings.
Now I hate going to school. I threw my bag in the bathroom with my books because I don’t want to see it.
I don’t want to go back to the school ever. I don’t know what is happening and why this is happening. I feel really cold as my mother and father keep opening the windows so the windows don’t smash with the bombs. I keep sneezing all day. When I ask my mother to close the window, they say it’s for my own benefit. I have no electricity for three days. We have no milk, and no dairy products. Other food is here for the moment — we have vegetables, but we can’t get fruit any more, just a type of orange. Just tell me why and what for.
The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed 'India's 9/11', and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice, or face civil war.
...We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities...
...In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs...
...Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minister VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention...
...The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.
