It was just meant to be a road trip

We were young and the thought of a 'road trip' across the Kuwait desert to see the Iraqi border seemed as good a way as any to amuse ourselves. The four of us piled into the Jeep, turned the music up and made light hearted conversation for the 3 hour drive across the sands but our laughter stopped abruptly. We came across a curious place that caused us to pull over and disembark. Struck by silence, we walked on automatic pilot as the eerie structures beckoned us forwards longing to tell a story. Bullet holes indiscriminately spattered the crumbling, deserted remnants of this once peaceful village and a fallen pylon served only to compound the destruction and highlight the extent of the attack on this defenceless hamlet. The leftovers of people's lives were strewn around us with hate filled abandonment; an upturned sofa slashed to pieces, smashed crockery and clothes torn to rags provided snippets of insight into before and after the soldiers came. Consumed by shock and disbelief I kept walking around the village, each horror filled sight drove me forward into the next one. A stable intended to house goats and provide a future and a livelihood now housed ghosts and violent memories, a few faded playing cards were stomped into the ground alongside a soldier's balaclava and I fought my imagination not to play out what had happened there. I was too stunned to cry even when I walked into the shell of a lovingly constructed nursery which had become a dusty burial ground for broken toys and an unfinished childhood. I took my camera from my pocket and aimed it at a washing line which had snapped in half and lay on the floor next to a battered, blue laundry basket but I couldn't take the picture, no snapshot could do justice to the unspeakable wickedness which had occurred here and I wouldn't need a photograph to remind me of what I'd seen. Some memories burn instantly into your mind and become a part of you. Without warning, revulsion washed over me as ghosts and demons flooded out of the walls pushing me to leave. Emotion overwhelmed me as I ran back to my friends, sobbing and demanding that we go back to the city as I couldn't bear one more moment in this place. The looks on their faces reflected the pain in my heart, we turned and walked back to the car burdened by solemnity. This unnamed village was within sight of the Iraqi border and had taken the first onslaught of the unexpected invasion; tanks, guns, soldiers intent on pointlessly obliterating all that lived here before moving on to the city. These people were farmers, they held no weapons and they caused no harm. They were simply victims of war mindlessly murdered because they were on the wrong side of the border. Not that there's anything simple about that. That day I learned about real hatred and the purest evil and what we are capable of when consumed by both.