Legacy MattersAnyone reading about the horrific events at the school in Baslan where terrorists took a school and more than 1000 people hostage must imagine, if only for an unbearable moment, could it happen here.
People did what they could to take care of themselves, shedding clothes to cool down, and tearing apart textbooks to use as fans. "For two days I was continually waving my arm to fan my children," Ms. Bekoyeva said. The terrorists also gradually restricted access to the bathroom, first allowing five hostages at a time to use the toilets, then three. With little chance for their turn, the younger children could not hold back and relieved themselves in the crowd's midst. "We had them urinate into bundles of cloth," Emma said.
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Ms. Bekoyeva said she handed six or seven children out the window, as older children scrambled past. Then she went out. She and her two sons ran to a shed, took shelter in it as the bullets flew by, and then Azamat punched out the back window, and they scrambled through it. After another sprint they came to the Russian police officers and soldiers. Most of them realized they were safe, but all did not. Seeing the police, Emma was confused. "I got scared and thought they were other terrorists,' she said. "But one embraced me and said, 'Do not be afraid.' "
Asamaz stopped when he reached a covered place near the police, and as the battle raged a few yards behind them, he snatched grapes from the trellises and handed them to the children with him - the first food they had had in more than two days.
Now lying in bed, he winced as his aunt Zalina Basiyeva put a traditional medicine on his burns. Outside their window, people clustered in the courtyard, waiting for news. Everything the people of Beslan thought they knew about living, his aunt said, had changed. She rubbed bits of the filament of eggshell onto the boy's blisters and burns, and said the lesson was indelible: "We never knew how happy we were."
Even If the government can protect the so-called "hard targets" like government buildings, nuclear plants, major financial buildings or airports, what about the "soft targets" -like schools?
We can hope for front line protection and good information from those in charge. In the event of a natural disaster or God forbid, a terrorist attack of some sort, we must realize that ultimately, in those first days, we are responsible for ourselves, our loved ones and those around us.