Why They Hate Us?

The Apple of His Eye by John J. Dwyer: "My father would not stay down until finally the leader shot him so many times that only death stilled him. Because of this, he did not see the soldiers break both of my dead little sister’s arms. He did not see the leader return to the living room and begin the raping of the apple of his eye, the memory of whose smiling eighteen-month-old face, with the forelock of dark hair over her brow and her wide shining eyes that loved him with her whole heart, was the last conscious thought of his life.

He did not see them blow her brains out with their fancy rifle, nor set her pure body – and the house he had worked so hard to provide for us – on fire, to destroy the evidence of deeds even they must have been shamed by.

He did not witness the American commanders’ attempts to cast the blame for the crimes on our own countrymen, even though others of our family members and other neighbors – at great risk to themselves and their own vulnerable families – surged forward to testify that the men who usually wore the eagle on their shoulder did it.

He did not live to observe hate kindle in the souls of his two young sons, who had not been at the house and were now orphaned and would devote their lives as mujahideen – which he had never wanted us to be – to avenging our beloveds’ deaths on the children of the invaders, who now would weep their own ocean of tears.

And he never knew how the followers of the gentle prophet about whom I remember him growing curious to know more, could be so unlike that man. For in none of the stories he had heard of that prophet from our own holy books and those of the Americans, who called him their Lord and Savior, did my father remember that humble man urging his followers on to rapings and kidnappings and murders, bombings and burnings and massacres, all the while praying for their success and protection in such deeds."