What I saw that day I pray no one should ever see | India News

Pahalgam: Her phone rings often. As president of one of Pahalgam’s largest ponywalla associations, Abdul Waheed Wani, 39, is hardly out of demand. But also keeps himself busy pushing away the memories that still haunt him.Wani was among the first to reach Baisaran Valley after the April 22 terror attack left 26 tourists, including a local horseman, dead and 17 injured. What he saw there came back to him by night and sometimes by day.“What I saw that day I pray no one sees,” he says.It was on the afternoon of April 22, when he received a call from the police that something untoward had happened in Baisaron. Wani was in the next village. He took a short cut which he knew well and reached before the police, who had to make a longer trek.“When I got there, I saw a woman crying, a child crying. The bodies were scattered,” Wani said. His brother-in-law Sajad was with him. “For a moment, I felt like I couldn’t get it back after seeing all this.”As Beiseron’s makeshift shops were abandoned during the attack, he ran to one, picked up a water bottle and returned to the woman. “I told him the police and administration were on the way,” he recalled.Soon, he sent out a message to a WhatsApp group of around 700 ponies, urging everyone to come and help. Only 15 people managed to reach. Others were stopped by security forces.“We tried to help the injured,” he said. “Bysron is a huge area and there were bodies lying around. It took time to piece them together.” He paused, then said: “These were no ordinary bodies. They were shot in the head.”Some of the voices he heard that day stayed with him. One woman, he says, refused to go. “She kept saying, ‘My husband has come. We were just walking, taking pictures. Where can I go alone?'” she says.He remembers finding one of the seven bodies. Alive “When we touched him, he spoke. He had bullet wounds on his neck and arms. I still remember his voice when he said what happened to him.”“These words haunt me,” he added.Wani says they managed to bring down some of the injured. “One man we carried on our shoulders, then on a stretcher. He survived,” he said.Wani’s memories are too heavy. “Whenever they come back and they do often, I try to keep myself busy. I walk around, find something to do or pick up the phone and call someone,” he added.