The Runaway From Death

The silver lining of the moon flickered in my eyes. Fear immersed my authority. Tears started emerging on my pale, anaemic skin as I ran through the bewildered, obscured desert. My fatigued body remorsefully pushed its way through the wind as the mist drew me in with a force stronger than any gravitational pull could compel. My heart thumped out of my chest, the smell of ragweed tingled in my nose, I sighed, in futility. The memory of the awful sights I saw, made me feel vulnerable and desolate.

Call me an ‘asylum seeker’, ‘a beggar’, ‘, after all that, I am still a child, an orphan. My parents were massacred in front of my frightened eyes, after being chained for days, death was the only solution. I still remember my mother crying out for help, her hands covered in infected wounds after being mutilated. Wailing in excruciating pain, her screams still echo in my head. After her bloodshed, I watched helplessly as they took Ammi’s lifeless body away. As heartless and helpless as I felt, I couldn’t do a thing but stare in agonizing vain. That was the day my whole life was snatched from me. No one was there for me, no one to cradle me in their arms, no one to help me smile, absolutely no one. I still ask myself till today. How could anyone have been so callous?

There was nothing there for me, except an endless line towards mortality. I sometimes even pleaded with God to end my misery, my infinite pain. I was in shock after what had flashed in front of my eyes, two lives were taken within seconds, but this was happening every day in Syria, wherever I went I saw blood, I saw the injured, the dead. Yes, I was only eleven years old at that time, but I felt like an old lady, from all the misery I witnessed, every minute in Syria felt like years. Every day felt like endless torture.

Days passed, Syria’s condition grew worse, it was almost like it was inhabitable. I had promised ami and appa that if Syria worsened, I would escape and reach the promised land safely along with my brother, Aabbaz. Before any more remorseful thoughts, I fled the town through the night. With no food. I was able to find my way to an asylum, the violence kept me awake, the continuous bombing paved my way in the light. There were two guards on duty, they looked quite grim and dull and I had an omniscient feeling about them. As I entered the asylum, latching tightly onto Aabaz, I could hear the stale water dripping onto the ground. There were patches on the curtains. The room looked menacing and intimidating. Thousands were helplessly staring at us. Soon a lady, with ravaging scars on her face, came over to us with yellow stickers. She brusquely slipped one onto Aabbaz and the other one on me, it wrote, ‘DON 94 and 95’. I figured many people had that too. She also escorted us to our ‘sleeping beds’ which was nothing but an old, single mattress that was infested with insects. As I cuddled Aabbaz, I heard the people around me moaning and howling, some of them were brutally injured too, they seemed in dreadful pain. But no one was there to help or comfort them. Just like Aabbaz and I who were there, now for eleven months, waiting, as Aabbaz peacefully-lifelessly lay on my hands. But does the run stop there?