Victims

Sirens are screaming,
ambulances chasing police cars,
people running, yelling, crying,
praying, glass bits still flying,
glistening fresh crimson puddles
draw ugly abstract shapes,
soft tissue strewn around in waste...

It all happened unexpectedly, in the middle of a balmy, quiet, sunlit morning, while Rachel was pushing Miri in her baby carriage,  Ariela  held Adir's strong fat little hand, recently retired Rinat and Zvi, along with hundreds of others were shopping for fresh fruits and veggies in an open market within the City of Peace. 

Beautiful, olive skinned young Hannan was there too.  Who was on her shopping list today? 

Within the blink of an eye, their world changed forever.  Zevida, Amitan, Tori and Matan were screaming, walking off in dazed itineraries, hands held up high,  trying to find support in the air.  Others were desperately explaining something to uniformed men who were directing into the unseen, strong, big fellows sporting red aprons and carrying stretchers. 

Naomi and Yoran, were hugging and looking at each other in a benevolent stupor.  Yes, they were still  alive, for they could feel each others bodies.
 The warm viscous fluid which was slowly making their clothes fit tighter, caked on their hands.  They were able to quietly walk away, home to their two year old Shoshi, in care of Grandma.

"Who are these people?"  "What has just happened here?" I ask myself repeatedly in dull disbelief.

Quiet, deaf and dumb silence envelopes every cell of my brain.  I must flee, this expressionist painting horrifies  me. 

I quietly walk away, feeling my own body's weight on historic stones which pave the ancient road.  The dull chimeric fog starts to lift.  The sun shines brightly, sending a springtime breeze to smooth over my skin, ruffle  my hair, clarify  my mind so purely that I now hear it whisper,

"They are all victims."

After a moment consideration, I counter,

"How can that be?  How dare you mix them all, the innocent with the guilty?"

My voiceless, insulted lips utter reasons, counter reasons, yet the velvety voice resounds itself in a relentlessly calm rhythm:  "Victims, victims, victims..."

"Some are victims, yes," I condescend.  "Those who were hurt or killed, or harmed.  Those who went to shop for food, who were nearby, in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But not the perpetrator who caused the killing.  She is no victim,  but a murderer, like Raashad, Ali, Arshad and the others!"

"She is also a victim, a victim, a victim..." my nemesis taunts.

I am amazed to hear such defiance and I quickly skirmish to gather from within my brain all the reasons which could disprove that both, little Miri’s lifeless  body and the killer  be equated under the same word - victim -.

"Well, isn’t a victim someone who is hurt or killed by somebody or something?" I ask.

"Yes", replies the voice, "but so is a person who is tricked or exploited, one hurt or harmed by an act or circumstance.  Straight from your dictionary."

"A  killer, you mean, who for whatever reason, personal or otherwise causes the destruction of innocent workers, little  children, defenseless mothers - is a victim?  That’s nonsense!"

While still  babbling, a slowly building anger sharpens my alertness to false statements.  I am now determined to quiet this voice that has the audacity to remain so calm and hammer away at that single word, that one thought, with the precise sounding rhythm of the finest Swiss clock mechanism.

"A victim  and nothing else," it insists.  "What would you call  an innocent, beautiful child whose soul is pure as that of a fresh spring flower?  Hannan was a flower."