Ten Minutes

It was night. Ten minutes till midnight. Ten minutes can change the world. After all, every minute counts (doesn’t it?). It was a cloudless night as I headed to my balcony to look at the moon. The worst part about night is that it is silent never could i have thought that silence is something that one can hate.

I took a deep breath and headed back to my tent. Cries and moans of mothers and daughters were common in the refugee camp.  Some are polluted while the others disappear like a chameleon. Do they disappear or are they there but not there? I wouldn’t know. I never attended school after the eighth grade. I knew someone who knew the answer.

I lost Alana in the bombing in Aleppo. She was my moon-pie. She was only 10 but could outsmart a 20 year old with ease. People may lose everything in seconds. Time is everything. A minute- One long minute was enough to destroy my soul. My peace. My life. There were no goodbyes. There were no words. Just me holding her soft hands under the rubble. The blood was as thick as a tomato soup. Alana saw it on the internet. I had never heard of a dish called soup. How can someone fill their stomach with soup? “Baba, stop being silly. It is an appetiser”, she said. I smiled. I wanted her to have a normal life. A “modern” life. The American dream!

It was midnight. My balcony was replaced by endless Syrians. Fear, trauma  and abandonment  havd become mundane feelings. 

I gulped the water from a nearby puddle and squeezed myself into a two man tent housing seven. All I want to do is dream, not an “American dream”, just a dream with moon-pie in it.