You have seen the picture by now. The terrified little girl running to safety during the assault on the Westgate Mall in Kenya this past week.
The story of the photographer had already emerged. Little was known of the people he had attached himself with and honestly amidst all the other details of the story I did not give it much though.
That story is now being told as well, and it is pretty amazing. I will link a few pieces of the story but do yourself the favor of reading it:
Faced with a long afternoon trapped in the house with her five children last Saturday, Katherine Walton decided on a quick excursion – a trip to Nairobi's popular Westgate Mall.
...
"We were just going to meet my two older boys in the supermarket when we heard an explosion,"
"I grabbed the girls and started running. A woman pulled us behind a promotional table opposite. I could see the bullets hitting above the shops and hear the screaming all around us."
..
During their ordeal, the couple's three daughters, aged four, two and 13 months, were shielded and calmed by an injured Kenyan woman and two Indian women who hid with them.
"They were so still and quiet," Mrs Walton said. "My baby was screaming when there was shooting but between that, she just slept. In one lull in the fighting, my two-year-old and the baby were playing together with my phone. I couldn't understand how they could be acting like everything was fine."
Yards away a man with a pistol who was shooting at a heavily armed young jihadi in a bandanna who was taunting him to come closer.
That man was Abdul Haji, the son of a former security minister in the Kenyan government, who had rushed to the mall after getting a text message from his brother who was trapped inside.
Abdul Haji has brushed aside his privacy and safety and come forward to share his story and speak against radical Islam. It is lenghty (30 min), but an amazing story well worth hearing. Haji tells of entering the mall, engaging a terrorist, rescuing more hostages (including his brother) and eventually goes into detail his views on Islam, and the real goals of the terrorists being to foster civil war in Kenya between Muslims/Non-Muslims and the hypocrisy of the terrorists in general. Watching him speak I really believe Haji has the power to make even some of the Limbaughiest of people change their views on Muslims.