Uprooted-LS

Bombs relentlessly showered through my head each carrying a taste of different emotions. I could smell the uneasiness and discomfort. The family meeting was dead serious; each debate was more diverse than the one that came before, wrapped with bundles of loose passion. I could see my father boiling up. He suddenly exploded, “This is my house! Why should I leave? We’re in a safe place tonight, they won’t bomb nearby.” As he roared on, the women became crazier while thinking, “Men! Please swallow your pride!” As bombs showered down, we fled up north where it was “safe”. We were clueless as to what was coming.

The days melted into weeks; it was all the same. The bad news made me numb. My ability to feel became nothing but a vague memory. Until one night, my wound was cut open once again. My little village was hit. I called the driver Kamoo, my friend, who puffed heavily into the phone, “The house was shacking, I though a bomb fell inside the house! I just picked up Erica, her house was destroyed. She couldn’t get through the rubble and she was sobbing. She’s sleeping in your house tonight…” That’s when the rivers started to flow; one of my best friends was hurt, frightened, and broken. I couldn’t do anything. Anything at all.

The next morning she sobbed into the phone, “Thank you baby, I’ll be fine. The room is perfect. You just move on with life, move on…” She was rearranging my bed as she talked, after all my home was hers.

It was all very difficult. Socializing became thorny, the different points of views tearing people apart; my father, edgy. Tolerance was an unfamiliar, formless concept seeped deep within my memory. Anybody who though differently, was wrong.

War raged on and the house kept shaking. The planes flew low. They flew low. “Powerless” was a concept I had rarely touched base with, but I rapidly familiarized myself with it. Staying up and listening to the bombs, the indistinct shouts, and listening to my own guilt and pain were things which often squeezed themselves into my schedule. Guilty that I was okay while others weren’t, a form of torture.

My father still stood by me, but even his hugs spread guilt, others were missing their daddies and I wasn’t. I was okay.

The situation intensified everyday, food and medicine grew scarce. Pharmacies gave no medicine and supermarkets, had no food to sell. A couple days later we found ourselves on a plane leaving from Damascus to the U.S., but the seat next to mine was missing my father.

At the start, the U.S. was extremely fun. It slowly sunk in that my father wouldn’t follow, and I slowly broke down. Missing him and not knowing when I was coming back was all too much. I was brimming with hate. I felt like a strong, powerful hand had reached down, grabbed my life, and uprooted my soul. And I was not surprised to find a big star engraved in it.

Just like a net, the cease-fire caught me, and I was happy.

Landing home added the warm layer of joy my heart was missing for so long, but my daddy’s eyes added so much more. Once again I smiled, although it was broken, I smiled, for I was home…