April 4. Here above Choman there is a cemetery, pointed stones planted in a field where poppies and tulips are allowed to grow, in a style even more sober than that of the Bostonians.
Even the cemetery is mined. Many told us that mining water springs and cemeteries has been common practice in these areas. These are places, you can easily guess, that people have to go to frequently. One each day when alive, the other everyday after death, and someone will eventually come to pay a visit.
In the cemetery, technicians have been at work defusing mines for a long time, but it is a painstaking job. For the people in the village, land mines and the many unexploded ordinance are a source of death, but with tragic irony, a source of subsistence as well. The Valmara 69, for instance, contains a light aluminum cylinder, which on the market can be valued at up to one dollar. So they team up in groups of four to defuse one mine, there, just above the cemetery. A brisk movement and baang! First aid is quick, the de-mining team is a few hundred yards away. They rush to the hospital, only 4 km away.
Jalal, thirteen years old, is dead on arrival. Asad and Mohammed, forty-two and thirty-six, undergo emergency surgery, the first on the chest, the second one on the bowel punctured in ten places by the Valmara fragments. Omar, sixteen, has his leg amputated, perhaps it was him who detonated the mine. He dies while he is waiting his turn to enter the surgical room. The seriously injured victims will make it, without complications. Bottom line: two dead for one dollar. Fifty cents for a human life, an unacceptable price, at least for those who persist in believing that life is invaluable.
