Phone ringing of a victim of the Lahore Blast; caller's name is Ammi Jaan (dearest mother).
The phone snaps to life, the ring tone strident, the caller’s name lighting up the screen: Ammi Jaan.

But no one answers this frantic mother.

The phone keeps ringing; who has the courage to take the call? This mother’s child has been silenced forever, a victim of the bomb not in a war zone but on a carousel in Lahore where there had been shouts of glee and broad smiles.

Take a look: At least 72 killed in suicide blast as terror revisits Lahore

Now small limbs lie askew, blood smearing the toys scattered amidst shards of glass.

First came the attacks on our police, army, navy, the Rangers, then the humming bazaars and crowded mosques.

As the targets retreated behind barbed wires and layers of security, they set their deadly sights on our children. First schools, now parks.

Why have Pakistan’s children come in the line of fire?
Apart from the drivel about soft targets tossed out to apportion blame elsewhere, have we failed our children post the APS tragedy?

Televised songs of patriotism and jubilation with defiant marching kids in uniforms calling out to the terrorists to do their worst; newscasters reading the news clad in uniforms of the slain children, directing salutes to them as if they were warriors, not school kids racing in between classes.

These children were not soldiers. They were killed in their classrooms, not on the killing fields.