...When war becomes a possibility.

It was the after-dinner time, and my family was lazing around when we heard a blast.

and another one

and another one

and another one

and another one

By this time we stopped counting, wore shoes and were out on the street...

and so was every single person from our neighbourhood. The kids, the parents, the grandparents, the servants, the odd guests ... everyone was on the street.

and you could hear panic. The odd "Allah reham" (God, Have mercy) or "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is great)

We called our brothers, who live close by.. and they were as confused as we were ..

Nothing was being shown on the TV initially ... after a while one channel ran a "Rawalpindi may dhamakay" (blasts in Rawalpindi)

but no details ....

Everyone was freaking out. We were calling people. People were calling us. My mom was shaking. We thought it was a war, cause there had been at least 8,9 blasts...

It was half an hour before we found out that those weren't blasts. Those were cannon shots to honor the visiting Turkish PM.

Fucking cannon shots!