Feature: Mothers painful as rocket hits Damascus marketplace on Mother's Day

by Hummam Sheikh Ali

DAMASCUS, March 21 (Xinhua) -- On the eve of the Mothers Day, a powerful rocket fire slammed the Kaskoul marketplace in east of Damascus, killing 43, including eight women and children, and most of the victims were shopping for the Mother's Day.

The improvised rocket specifically hit a sweets shop where people were buying sweets for the occasion.

In the Mujtahed Hospital in Damascus, the view was a total heartbreak, tears, screams and cries mixed with disbelief.

People were terrified while searching for their sons or their relatives while hearing the names of those killed amid sudden screams whenever someone hears or read the name of his relatives who were killed.

A grieving mother in the hospital was swaying left and right, resting her head in her hands while weeping and repeating "she got me a perfume, she got me a perfume ... I need no gift, get me, my daughter, back."

On a blood-stained bed, a little girl was laying, her feet twitching spasmodically while muttering with words incomprehensible.

Her eyes were slightly opened, and her face was stained with wiped blood, she was one of the tens of the wounded that jam-packed the hospital.

She was unable to move and she was said to have lost her mother, who was accompanying her to buy the Mother's Day gift.

On the eve of the Mother's Day, this little pale girl has become an orphan.

Behind her bed, a bereaved mother has just had lost her son, and nephew as she was with them while buying gifts for an occasion that could never be the same.

At the end of the corridor, more than 20 beds were covered in black sheets, under each sheet a body and a number waiting to be put in the morgue, as the mortuary refrigerators were full.

On the Mother's Day, people kept reacting to the story on social networking sites, with sad emojis filling the posts.

"It makes me cry and burns my heart," a woman named Ghofran posted.

Another one reacted: "May Lord have mercy, this is so ugly that we are witnessing."

"I don't know how to deal with all of this grieve and horror ... what is the guilt of those people," Mariam posted, as Lama, another commentator, said "every passing day is worst than the day before ... how long are we going to pay the price of this war."

It's not the first day of the Syrian war, nor the deadliest of the last seven years, but it's the day when many mothers and sons lost each other without saying I love you on the Mother's Day.

Mortar attacks on the capital Damascus are not new, in fact, they have become part of the normal life in Damascus, as sad as it sounds.

People here have become kind of accustomed to the rattling sounds of the blind shell, which is like an angel of death harvesting the lives of the young and the old without giving people a chance to say one more word.

All of that looks like a normal result of the war that turned the country upside down and changed the destinies of millions of people, those who were rich and got poor, or the poor that got poorer, as well as the millions who have become refugees.

After seven years of war, all of that sound familiar and people have learned to live with it.

But wars always have new tricks up its sleeves and don't seem to have enough of shocks for the people.

In the Arab world, in particular, the relationship between the mother and the children and vice versa is almost sacred as in the beliefs of Arabs, God will please those who cherish their parents, especially their mothers.

It's the holy relationship that is treasured in Syria, where the Mother's Day is widely celebrated with children buying gifts for their mothers, even if they don't have money as they would take from the father to get the mother a nice thing or even a drawing saying I love you.

What could be more painful than the mothers to lose their sons and sons to lose their mothers on the day both are celebrating each other. Enditem