Thoughts of a War Child

If I could write to anyone outside this cavern of hopelessness, oh how much I’d tell him.

I would tell him about the gravel beneath my feet, crunching under my weight. The long, never-ending road ahead. The horizon only clouded by dust and sand. My shoulders burnt red as the sun beat down on me, on us, relentlessly. Mercilessly. The heat concentrated on my skull that only tries to create an umbrella of shadow for the body below. My lips that peel off each other like Velcro-strips, the walls of my throat that scratch against each other like dragging high-heels on uneven pavement.

My mama always told me, “Life is unfair.” Our lives were decent, we lived on alright. We had at least 2 meals a day and my neighbour taught me Mathematics and Science. I didn’t quite understand my mother, until there came a day. Two weeks before I was to turn 8. When buildings shook, and my drawings fell from the wall. When cement became dartboards for lead bullets. When my neighbour was never to be seen again.

Life is unfair. We see it everyday. Able-bodied, stronger men who entitle their kill for only theirs to devour, snatching flattened plastic bottles or “sandals” made of rubber. While our white-haired, wrinkled, hunched-over fathers bleed through their soles, treading on glass.

We see it though we would rather not. Watching your five year-old sister snatched away by the cursed waves, as hands reached out to grab you from the sinking orange deathboat. Her screams I still hear in my sleep, her screams I want to force into a glass jar and leave in the city where we once lived, where ruin is kept.

We see it now. The sand path that disappears into mirages, the destination we seek but seems to be another myth. It mocks our sanity, and it mocks our faith. The cruel, stone-cold Sun that whips us with glowing red rays. It dares torture us from worlds away. Revenge cannot be taken; even if we reached it we could not touch it.

I would ask him about what it is like where he is. I would ask whether the youthful gave to their elders, whether meat was shared. I would ask whether mothers held their babies every night as if so close to death. I would ask if they see flowers more often than we, whether they ever stopped to peer and caress them amidst the chaos and debris. Whether Life is still unfair.

Thoughts of a War Child // CLL