I will never forget that night as long as I’m alive, and I will tell the story every year

But the justice of the world dealt with the crime in a new way; it dealt in a manner that turned red lines into green traffic lights! This justice just confiscated the instrument of the crime and pardoned the criminal!

Around 2 AM, communication devices were repeatedly sounding the alarm. We had to head to hospitals and medical points immediately; the butcher had done it; we were bombed with chemical weapons!

Cars kept on bringing dozens of injured people of different ages and dropping them off in the hospital yard. Water tankers were pouring water on the injured to remove chemicals. Medical staff and volunteers were fighting the impossible using primitive means of protection to save a soul here and there before the bodies exhausted by hunger passed away.

The whole scene was horrific. Some had died, some were convulsing, others were suffocating, some were screaming, some were shocked, and some were motionless like the deads!
Everyone’s expressions were out of control, the place was filled with panic, screaming, whining, crying, and hysterical laughter! For a moment I couldn’t believe my eyes and thought I was watching a movie about Doomsday!

The response that the people of Ghouta showed at that time was called solidarity until death. Some brought clothes for the injured, some brought food from their homes, many hosted the injured in their homes, others took care of sarin orphans,
some volunteered to help the injured and others volunteered to dig graves and bury the martyrs! Many who treated the injured died after being polluted by sarin residue stuck to them
This time the injured survived but the paramedic died! I will never forget as long as I’m alive, how I also inhaled some sarin and went through death suffocating like others… but death refused me!
I will not forget how I cried with dry tears that day; I tried hard to shed tears, but I failed. I was under the influence of atropine. By morning, there were hundreds of numbered bodies arranged in rows which seemed endless! I lowered my voice in their presence, I thought they were asleep and feared to wake them up.
The faces of children with their angelic expressions were in deep death! Everything in their homes indicated that life had stopped at a particular moment; the movie of life stopped at the scene of death!

Here, a table with unfinished meals when they inhaled the Sarin. There, a teapot and cups remained untouched, bearing witness to their last moments in life…! In a third place, they were asleep… and they left traces of mouth froth, vomiting, and suffocation on their beds!

Even birds, fell in their cages their wings opened, surrendering to the sarin gas; dogs here, cats there, and sheep in the barn, all died together in a single moment!

A week later, the International Investigation Committee arrived, examined the injured, and collected samples of everything you might imagine. They came up with a report that documented the catastrophe in detail.

However, World Justice dealt with this crime differently; it turned red lines into green traffic lights! This justice just confiscated the instrument of the crime and pardoned the criminal.

That night was crowded with death, but it chose 1500 martyrs from us and postponed the rest for death in new ways, hunger, drowning, burning, buried under rubble… sorrow, and tortured!

By: Dr. Salim Namour

Share

This post is also available in: العربية Français