" I knew something was seriously wrong.  Her eyes were beginning to swell, her face puffing, she panted for breath shamelessly in the middle of the restaurant, her eyes widened in fear."  

" In the back next to a gray cement portion of the slanted wall was a wood pallet. The kind with slats on it, dark brown and rough, only used to keep things off of the floor.  On this pallet sat a small boy, no more than eight years old, wearing nothing but soiled boxer shorts.  With his knees up under his chin he sat looking at me.  His skin was white, eyes sunken back into their dark sockets. "

" In another hour the sun would set, darkness would fall across the hood. The sound of gun fire would erupt intermittently, like it does every warm night.  Its just the way it was here..........just the way it was.  I thought to myself, every single night kids go to bed with the erratic, pow, pow......bang, bang, bang of gun fire, every night they sleep through a neighborhood war. "