Thursday, November 22, 2007

"The thing with public transports is that you have to deal with the public!"
Indeed :p
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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Thoughts from war

Silence. No, there’s no silence. That’s just me trying to mentally escape from here. The nights are the worst part of the day. Everything is quieter, except for the babies crying from time to time. The sound of death is stronger than ever. Sometimes, the woman sleeping in the bed next to mine wakes up screaming, but that only happens on the worst days.
Nurses come and go endlessly. Poor dears… they try really hard to reach everyone here. But there are not enough of them to meet the need. They work until they can’t go on any more because we, the injured, are more than many, more than the hospital can shelter. And every day brings more. And many leave… lifeless.
I try to sleep. But again the images come back to my mind, over and over again: the summer day, the shop full of people, happy people enjoying their sunny weekend. I was at my post by the cash register. Suddenly, a strong noise, fire coming in my direction, I’m projected into the wall and the ceiling falls, covering me with stone and dust.
The next thing I remember is being here surrounded by people whose names I don’t know. We don’t talk to each other very much . We just suffer and cry together. That’s all that is left to share. Most of them have bad injuries, like a missing leg, or burns, or sometimes they are so damaged that they’re only waiting till death comes take them.
I was told that 4 or 5 young men got into the shop with bombs attached to their bellies and chests. This fight between countries… and these young people, with so much energy, so many ideas boiling in their minds! And they do it in name of God! I wonder where God is now and if He is enjoying this show of destruction and pain.
This is a living hell- people dying, suffering, screaming, children without parents, parents without sons, wives without husbands, people losing their homes.
I don’t understand why we must go through all this. Sometimes I wonder “Have I done something wrong? Do I deserve all this pain?” but nobody can answer me.
Every single day I wish to press rewind and go back to the time when I was happy, when we were at peace, when all my sons were alive. I used to spend hours watching them playing and singing in the living room. They were all so beautiful, so peaceful. I miss them so much… Our house was like a dream, like a doll’s house. The walls were so white that it almost hurt your eyes, and the big windows let the sun come shining through, lighting up every little space. And you could feel the scent of lavender coming from the balcony. Every person who stepped into that house could feel that we were happy. Then the war started. We moved to a shelter with another eight families. My two older sons died. My daughter ran way to some country far from here. I haven’t heard from her since then.
The nights here seem endless. It’s hard to sleep with all these people coughing, crying, agonizing. But it is better to hear this than hear nothing at all, because these sounds say that people are still alive.
I don’t even know what day today is. Here, days seem all the same, it’s hard to keep track of time. But that is not important. I only know that this war has gone on for too much time. Sometimes I think that people wouldn’t know how to live without war. I guess that when you are living in hell, there is a point when you forget what it means to be happy and what the definition of peace is. People say that time heals anything. I bet those peoples have never been through something like this.
The sun is rising again, thank God. Everything looks better as these dark shadows fade. Day’s are empty of any meaning, except for that day, the day that everybody is expecting. The day that will bring the peace we all wish for.

I wrote this... last year I think.
I hope you like it.
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