What I saw that day I pray no one should ever see

PAHALGAM: His phone rings often. As president of one of Pahalgam’s largest Ponywallah associations, Abdul Waheed Wani, 39, is rarely out of demand. But he also keeps himself busy to push away memories that still haunt him.

Wani was among the first to reach Baisaran valley after the April 22 terrorist attack that left 26 tourists, including a local ponywallah, dead and 17 others wounded. What he saw there, returns to him at night and sometimes even during the day.

“What I saw that day I pray no one should ever see,” he says.

It was the afternoon of April 22, when he received a call from police saying something untoward had happened in Baisaran. Wani was in a nearby village. He took a shorter route he knew well and reached before police, who had to take a longer trek.

“When I reached there, I saw a woman crying, a child crying. Bodies were lying scattered,” Wani says. His brother-in-law, Sajad, was with him. “For a moment, I felt I would not make it back after seeing all this.”

As makeshift shops in Baisaran had been abandoned during the attack, he ran to one, picked up a bottle of water and returned to the woman. “I told her police and administration were on the way,” he recalls.

Soon after, he sent a message on a WhatsApp group of around 700 ponywallahs, asking all to come and help. Only about 15 managed to reach. Others were stopped by security forces.

“We tried to help the wounded,” he says. “Baisaran is a large area and bodies were lying in different places. It took time to bring them together.” He pauses, then says: “These were not ordinary bodies. They had head shots.”

Some of the voices he heard that day have stayed with him. One woman, he says, refused to leave. “She kept saying, ‘My husband is here. We were just walking, taking pictures. Where will I go alone?’” he says.

He remembers finding a man among seven bodies. Alive. “When we touched him, he spoke. He had bullet wounds in his neck and arm. I still remember his voice when he said what happened to him.”

“Those words haunt me,” he adds.

Wani says they managed to bring some of the wounded down. “One man we carried on our shoulders, then on a charpai. He survived,” he says.

The memories weigh heavily on Wani. “Whenever they return and they do often, I try to keep myself occupied. I move around, find something to do or pick up the phone and call someone,” he adds.


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