One Day’s Battle

I remember the day my innocence came to an end, sixteen years ago, when I was five years old. By early morning, the day was already very hot. My cousin Roshan had come to visit and was helping my mother prepare lunch while I played with my two sisters, one age three and the other just barely one years old.

My grandmother rushed into the room in a panic. She was frantic. A group of mujahedeen was attacking Farah, our city. My grandmother wanted us to leave immediately. My mother did not want to leave. She told my grandmother that we would be safer staying in our home. But my grandmother was nearly hysterical. “If you do not leave, my son and grandchildren will be killed. You must leave your home and the city,” my grandmother cried.

My mother was worried about traveling. Shortly after the birth of my youngest sister, she had had an operation. She suffered with pain in her back and her feet and never really felt well. Still, at last she agreed to go. She took a basket with some clothes for my littlest sister and a pot of water. The rest of us had only the clothes on our backs.

We set out on foot, my mother, my father, my cousin who carried the baby, my three-year-old sister and me. We were poor and did not have a vehicle. It took us about one hour to get from our house to the desert, but it seemed much longer.

After a while, we spotted a mosque. My father said, “We will go to the mosque and God will keep us safe because it is the home of Allah.” We were not in the mosque for long when I looked out the window and saw a tank with fighters who seemed to be aiming at the mosque. I ran to tell my father about the tank and that they were going to fire upon the mosque. My father went to look out the window. Within seconds, he had the family out the door and walking away from the mosque and the tank. After just a few minutes, the men in the tank fired upon the mosque and it was completely destroyed. We all thanked Allah for saving us.

I remember the rockets and bombs. Explosions were their voices. Walking in the desert was difficult and I had to walk quickly to keep up with my family. I lost my shoes. My family started to run and run. It was probably only a few minutes, but to me, at age five, it seemed to last much longer. I became separated from my family. It was not dark but I do not know how, in a second, I lost my family in the afternoon.  I began to cry. I cried and called to my mother and father, “Where are you?”

Then through my tears, I saw fire. It surprised me; I did not even know what it was. All of the sudden, my father was there. He pulled me into a hole and we lay on the ground to be safe until the rockets passed over our heads.

It had only been five hours since we’d left home. We did not know how long we would be gone or how the day would end. My grandmother had not come with us. She had gone to see my aunt—her youngest daughter—to make sure that she was safe and to tell her that we had left our house. As we walked in the desert, we worried about my grandmother.  Despite our fears, we were all very hungry. I remember being starving, but trying hard not to complain.

We had left the house in the morning. It was night before the day’s fighting stopped. Then we began our journey home. My mother was weakened from the trip by the time we walked back to our home, but our family was alive.

And I was changed, in a single day. Before that day I was oblivious. I did not know that I was born into a world of war, or that I would grow up with the sounds of explosions and rockets being fired, or that I would still today hear of people who lose their lives in this fighting. But I have hope within me that one day we will live as other people in other countries, who have peace instead of war.

By Seeta