Remembrance "Waiting For Death"

By RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI

The Polish journalist and author (The Emperor and Shah of Shahs) was seven when he and his family fled the Nazis.

I remember walking with my sister next to a horse-drawn cart. High up on the hay my grandfather was lying on a linen sheet. He was paralyzed. When the air raid started, the whole patiently marching crowd was suddenly filled with panic. People sought safety in ditches, in bushes, in the potato fields. On the now empty road there was only the cart on which my grandfather was lying. He could see the planes coming at him, how suddenly they dived down. When the planes disappeared, we returned to the cart and my mother wiped the sweat off Grandfather's face. After each raid sweat rolled down Grandfather's tired, emaciated face.

We encountered the corpses of horses everywhere. Poor horses, big defenseless animals that don't know how to hide. They stand motionless, waiting for death. It was always the corpses of horses -- black, bay, pied, chestnut -- lying upside down with the legs pointing into the air, their hooves admonishing the world. It was as if it were a war not between people but between horses, as if they were the only victims of the strife.