Word: afsana
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...When Afsana, 18, a Muslim living just outside the Indian city of Ahmadabad, heard that a Muslim mob had torched a train carrying Hindus in the nearby town of Godhra, she knew what would come next: furious Hindus seeking revenge. And sure enough, her family soon spotted a mob nearing their home. The girl fled with her 5-year-old brother and hid in the home of Hindu neighbors. From the neighbors' roof, she saw her parents and her two elder brothers beaten, doused with gasoline and burned alive. Her four sisters, she says, were stripped, raped and killed...
Later the neighbors told her it was safe to go out. But they were wrong, or lying. Afsana and her brother were walking home when a pack of men fell upon them. "They were people I knew," she says, "people who lived near us." She and her brother were tossed to the ground and set on fire. She got loose, grabbed her brother and, her clothes still burning, tried to scale a wall to escape to the roof. Then her brother's hand slipped from hers. From atop the wall, she saw the crowd ignite him again. He died...