What was so hard about their desert training who does Ned meet up with in chapter 16

Explain the effect of the rhetorical questions for the below paragraph. "i pinched myself: was i still alive? was i awake? how was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? no. all this could not be real. a nightmare soon i would wake up with a start, my heart pounding, and find that i was back in the room of my childhood, with my "