Pulling her from the rubble, Hayat was already dead. Her mother, full of blood on her clothes and head followed her talking to her as if she is alive. By that time, Hayat's soul was flying to heaven.
"What we saw on TV come true Hayat… wake up Hayat… bring your history book… history book is gone Hayat…" wailed the Syrian mother who saw her son and, her two daughters and husband die in front of her eyes in the deadly explosion that targeted the housing complex in Saudi Arabiya.
"Oh Nation of Islam… Oh Nation of Mohammed… Oh Nation of Quran… they killed our sons, No God but Allah," wailed Um Yousif, the mother beating her head and looking at the sky while the rescuers were taking her coal-blacked children into the ambulances.
Um Yousif is a kind of the typical mother who sacrifices herself for the sake of her children whom she lost in the blast. When she first heard the news on TV about the car bomb moving in Riyadh, she felt something would horrible happen but she didn't expect it soon. One day, Hayat, her 8 year-old daughter called her mother to sleep with her in the room. "Don't turn off the lights Mom, I am afraid," Hayat said. "After I saw the news on Television, I started dreaming I am flying every day in heaven."
The Sudanese guard, Bahhiya the Egyptian woman, the Lebanese woman, Farah the Syrian bride, the Jordanian father, and many others were killed with Um Yousif's children in the blast.
Before the explosion, Farah, the bride, was sleeping on the sofa when the explosion happened. Part of her body and face was distorted and she became paralyzed.
Farah, in her early twenties reminded me with Vivian, an Iraqi bride whose face was completely distorted besides losing her husband in a car bomb explosion targeted Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad On March 17, 2004 where At least 27 civilians were killed and 40 injured. Many of the victims were Iraqi families who lived in the adjacent buildings, but other victims were foreigners, including two British citizens.
"My life is finished. My heart is broken. Everything in me is broken. I feel like a dead person with open eyes," I remember Vivian saying sitting limply on her parents' couch. "I don't know who to blame; I just pray to God that no one else should ever have to see what I have seen."
On the night of March 17, Vivian was pulled barely alive from the rubble of her house. Her husband and three of his relatives perished inside the collapsed building, leaving Vivian a widow at 23.
"We were a hopeful couple with a simple life. My husband went to work and came home. But then it all gone in a minute, and he died for no reason," Vivian said. Her voice was angry came out her motionless jaws.
