The Wind: A Short Story

The Wind

The wind.

The first thing I notice when the gunshots crack out of the distance is the wind. Flowing. All the bushes swaying to one side.

Then stillness.

No more wind. I squeeze my papa’s hand tight. Like thunder, big, metal boxes with cannons inside of them rolled in from the distance into the village, masked men holding guns, and my friends and their family dropping to the ground in disarray, limp and lifeless. What... what happened to them?

My papa squeezes my hand. Another gunshot. Time seems to stop. I can’t move my foot, and I’m stuck, motionless. Blood is oozing out of my foot, and I can’t feel a thing. My foot has no feeling, but not a numb, drugged feeling, more like a chilled, frozen feeling. Then pain. My foot erupts as though in flames, but slowly time goes returns to normal. I lie on the dirty ground, but my papa says we have to move. I can’t walk, so he just drags me urgently to shelter under some bushes along like a farmer pulling a dead goat, although in this case the dead goat is alive and is struggling with pain. Behind the bushes, my papa uses a pocketknife and digs it into my skin, and pushes at something. He flicks it out, and all hell breaks loose. Now, instead of local agonising burning like my foot was being burned on a stake, it feels like something went supernova in my whole body.

Screaming, I lay helpless as my papa covers my mouth, and whispers, “وسوف قتلك اذا كانت رؤيتك” “Be quiet. They’ll kill you if they see you.” I know who “they” are. I learnt about them at school. At school they call them ISIS, and they shoot people because of something they believe in. They give us drills on how to get out of the school and run in case it happens, but teachers never say anything about what you do when it happens to you somewhere else. I guess they expect that the majority of the time, about 7 hours of the day, you will spend in school, and maybe they think they will attack when you are there. My papa pulls my hand, and taps my feet. I think this means to ask how my feet feel, so I look down and shake my head. But when I look back, he isn’t there. He was running out of the village. I follow him hobbling, thinking he will show me something, but all he does is to stop moving for a few minutes for me to catch up, and then he lets me lean on him, and then we start hobbling away again. Away from our home.

We’ve been traversing through the desert for a long time now, but my papa has his watch on; he says it has only been 20 minutes. It had seemed forever, but since now we are far away enough from our village we can relax a bit. People are running out of the villages, some in their pyjamas, some in their clothes. We walk slowly to give them time to catch up, but it takes more than an hour (what my papa says) for them to catch up. When they came closer to us, and started to form a group, you could see them hopping in the sand, like all their feet have been shot, but I think their feet are just hot. Since we have shoes, we could walk at the front of the group, but my foot is still burning from being shot, so we limp in the middle. We are all quiet, just shuffling along, when a sudden thought hits and shames me.

“يا أبي، أين ماما وياسر؟” “Papa, where is Mama and Yasir?”, I scream in panic. He stares back in shock. “يا أبي، أين ماما وياسر؟” “Papa, WHERE is MAMA AND YASIR?”

I tried to follow him, but Papa yelled back, “ابق على وضع” “Stay put!”. He rose his hand as a stop sign to me, and said, “Stay in the middle! I am looking for Mama and your brother!” By now there were about 200 people from our village that had escaped from the black masked men, and now it was hard to stay in the the middle of the group. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the unwanted news. My papa finally returned. “They’re gone. We shall just pray for the best and continue on. There is still hope.” Suddenly, shouts of “we should sit down, it’s getting dark” rang out, and I sat down, ate some honey someone brought, and night descended.

That night, I cried. I cried because most of my family was gone, and I cried because I now had no home to go back to. I couldn’t sleep as well. I wasn’t too hungry because I had a good breakfast this morning, so it wasn’t hunger, but it was all the thoughts flying like little rocket ships in my head.

Where was my mom and brother?

Where is my house?

What are we doing?

How will we survive?

And most importantly,

What will I do now?

I barely slept a wink.

I think I am starting to know what a splitting headache feels like. You can’t think, you are too tired, and all you can do is clutch your head and moan. A stench fills the air, and I opened my eyes. People were lying on the ground, and they were covered with a sort of rice soup. But then I realized where the stench was coming from. Sick people. The bodies on the ground were too sick to move. Two more sick men sat in the distance nearby. One had his head on his knees, eyes blank with pain, and the other had his head sagged like he was drugged. Around them were the bodies of fellow neighbors that I knew, now lying on the ground clutching their stomachs. I tapped my papa beside me.

“ما، هل هو الصباح” “What, is it morning?” yawned my papa sleepily. He still hadn’t woken up properly yet, and he was probably getting used to the smell. “هتاف اشمئزاز، ما هي تلك الرائحة؟” “Ugh, what’s that smell?”

A person near us that (fortunately) wasn’t sick replied, “كان هناك وباء الكوليرا في المياه، وتعاني الآن نصف مجموعتنا مع المرض.” “There was cholera in the water that one of the people had and shared, and now half of our group are succumbing to the disease.”

After that, my papa and I looked at the sick and dying one last time, and with a heavy heart and riddled with guilt for not looking back, we left. I have never felt this despair -- watching the very people I grew up with suffer an unknown fate. And I am helpless. We dragged our feet along the dusty sand, and even though it had only been a day, I could barely take the first of many more steps to come.

I always thought being in the true desert, as wanderer would be fun and it would be interesting. But it is as boring as hell. All there is is orange sand after sand after sand then maybe the occasional cactus. And all you think of is where is water, and how much will I have left tomorrow. Most of the time you can’t even talk, your mouth just tastes like copper, and there are cracks on your lip. We trudged on and on and on, slowly but surely giving up, the will to survive fading, like the people that we left that were sick.  With two days without water, how was it possible to survive? A glimmer in the distance caught my sun-burnt eyes, and I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then my papa saw it. Here, in the middle of the desert, there were two people riding on camels. What they were doing right smack in the middle of it, I don’t know, but suddenly the camel riding men saw us. They rode to us. They said hello. We said hello back. Nothing much. But then one question changed everything.

“هل لديك أي الماء؟” “Do you have any water?” pleaded my papa. The man nodded his head, and pulled out six small but life saving canteens of water. Replenishing our source. I put the water to my mouth, and it was far from refreshing. The plastic had melted into the water, and it tasted like extremely old water. But I still took sip after sip after sip, until my papa pulled the bottle from my lips and put it in his pocket.

“يجب حفظ الماء في وقت لاحق” “You must save the water for later!” he scolded, “ما سوف تشرب في يوم واحد أو اثنين؟” “What will you drink in a day or two?” I hung my head and as we waved goodbye to the two people on the camels, we trudged on and on and on. Although a wave bye in the desert was just a way to say,  “Please don’t go, I need you to stay,” but I was too tired to say anything else. Looking in desperation, I reached out to them in my mind, but stopped. They were already gone. Hope had come, and had darted away from my fingertips again.

My papa had found a tree, so we sat down for the night. People might say that at night, the desert gets cold, but that’s just an understatement. The cold numbs your body, and you need a quilt, but all you have is a tree to rest under. And you can’t sleep.

I woke up surprised. You always wake up in the morning either in a pool of sweat or freezing cold. You never woke up warm or cool. So this morning when I woke up, my body covered in a pool of sweat, my legs tired from the previous day’s walk. I wasn’t surprised. Nor was I suprised by the fact that it was already the middle of the day and my papa was waking me up. What I was surprised from was the fact that a cloud of orange dust was sweeping its way towards us. Like God’s fingertips. Swift and rapid and destroying. Then I saw the tree in the distance snap in half. And then I could start to feel the wind.

“هَبوب” “Haboob!” This word alone got me out of my shock. In our village, we usually dealt with small haboobs, or sandstorms, and all we did was just hide in our huts and wait for the storm to pass. Here, a huge cloud, the size of a city, was racing towards us, and there was nowhere to hide. So we ran. You don’t actually know how fast you can run until you have to, until your life is threatened. And I found out that I could run like lightning. However, this only delayed the haboob reaching us.

“ليس لدينا سوى دقيقة واحدة للحصول على مأوى!” “We only have a minute to get to shelter!” Like a bat out of hell, we ran as fast as we could to the nearest tree. But it wasn’t enough. The wind swept the sand into the back of my head, as I tried to use my shirt to cover my face, but all it did was make my back hurt because of the sand whipping it like they would do to a prisoner in jail. The tree was useless now, so we just ran as fast as we could away from the wind, but suddenly, just after we passed the tree, the wind caught up, and the tree snapped in half and flew towards us.

“تفادى” “Duck!” I fell to my knees, but the wind delayed my fall, and a tree branch smashed into my stomach on my way down. Clenching my stomach, I finally fell to the ground, as the flying sand stung my eyes. I dug my head into the ground, pulling myself slowly across the ground toward the shadow, the shadow of my father. But the shadow was moving, slowly moving away from me. Last chance.

“! بابا” “Coooeee! PAPA!” Recognition glowed in the shadow’s eyes, and instead of the shadows slowly moving away from me, it powered its way toward me. Two hands reached towards me, and I blacked out.

It was morning again. No more haboob. Now, the whole thing was just like a bad dream, except it was real, and there were consequences. I knew what we had to do now. The usual monotonous thing. Walk. But for some reason my papa shook his head. Finally, the mist in front of my eyes disappeared. We were next to water. Water! Stagnant water, but at least it was something to drink! And there were trees near the water. For me, after what my papa says has been almost a whole week, this is heaven. Before, when we found water, there was not much, just a small hole in the ground with a bit of water, but this was about 20 times larger! Somehow my papa dragged or carried me, I will never know, all the way to this small lake. I throw my head into the cool, crisp water, and leave it there. Taking off my shirt, I wash it inside the lake, then after hanging it on a tree, I go for a swim for myself, letting the sand wash of my pants at the same time. You don’t really know how good you have life until suddenly it goes away. Like a bomb. You don’t notice it till you are dead. Before ISIS came and destroyed our village, this would have been boring. Now, I think this is the best thing in the world. So I enjoyed the moment. And I went to sleep thinking about things that I used to do.

Two days have passed, and we have started again. Walking, walking, walking. There is no trouble. We have water again (my papa somehow finds water every few days), and it turns out the trees that looked empty actually had some dates at the very top, so now we have food, and for the first time in the last three weeks away from home, away from my mama and brother, we have a full stomach. We keep on going, my papa walking next to me, and talking about the nearest refugee camp, which my papa estimates is about ten kilometers away. Which is very close. Then for some reason I felt a bit of déjà vu. I mean, in the middle of the desert, how can you feel déjà vu? Then I realized what it was. The wind. It had that same feel as when the gunmen on the tanks came.

“بابا، هل تشعر بذلك؟ شو هي؟” “Papa, do you feel that? What is it?” I tapped him nervously on the back, as I glanced nervously around, “لماذا أنا شعور غريب؟” “Why am I feeling weird?”

“نعم، هو غريب، مثل عندما هربنا من منزلنا.” “Yes, it is weird, like when we ran away from our house.” He glanced a full 360 degrees. “مسلحون!” “Gunmen!” I twisted my head to face where he was pointing, and sure enough, there were a few masked men walking in from the distance. And they were walking towards us. Before, we were in the village, with many people, but now there was no place to hide.  I quickly brainstormed a few strategies.

1.        Jump and bury ourselves in the sand.

Wait, no that wouldn’t work because they already see us and will know where we are.

2.        Surrender to the gunmen.

No, they would just shoot us.

3.        Run away.

I mean, they wouldn’t bother chasing after us, we’re just a few people in the desert.

I decided to choose Plan 3. We had survived once that way, why shouldn’t we just we do it again? I looked at my papa, and it seemed that that was what he was thinking too. I nodded, and I started sprinting away, my legs pumping away in the sand. But my papa didn’t follow me. He walked up to the gunmen, and put his hands up in the air. Silence continued. As the gunmen walked up, they started talking in fierce Arabic, and they said things that I didn’t understand. Something must have been said that wasn’t what my papa planned. One of the men took out his gun. I hid behind a sand dune, and I heard nothing. Good, maybe they are leaving and not shooting my papa! Then the shot. I peeked out, and all my papa was lying on the ground.

I waited for the gunmen to leave, and tiptoed up.  I shook him once. Twice. Three times. No response. Now I get angry out of despair. I turn him over, but his eyes are still looked pale and lifeless. I shake him one more time. His eyelid twitches. I gain more hope. I shake him really hard this time.  “آب” “Papa!” I cried. His eyes opened, and my whole body, tensed, suddenly relaxed. I cry tears of happiness.

My papa clawed my shoulder, “ابن، وأنا لا يمكن أن تأتي معك، أنا يصب بأذى.” “Son, I can't come with you, I'm hurt.” He touched my face affectionately. “اعتني بنفسك” “Be safe.” I hugged him as tight as I could.

“بابا، لا تذهب. أنا بحاجة لك معي.” “Papa, don't go. I need you with me.” I looked back at him, and he was gone. His eyes were lifeless, and the truth hit me. My papa was dead.

There is no point walking in the desert now. The things I had to do with my papa I now did alone.

Walking in the desert. Alone.

Drinking water. Alone.

Talking to him. Well to myself, but alone.

I then think about my mama and Yasir. Maybe they are alive. So I take a few more steps. My papa did say the refugee camp was close, and what if mama and Yasir are there? I take three more steps. Each one for my papa, mama, and Yasir. And after each step I do it again, and again, and again. The only thing fueling me: mama and Yasir might be alive.

I try to imagine the way my papa and I were walking. East. After grabbing the supplies that my papa and the rest had and putting it in my pocket, and I took his watch. So I could remember him. I took one last look at the remnant of his body, and left. I wouldn’t make the mistake of not taking a last look at my papa. Tears streaming down my face, I started to walk again. It was starting to become night, and I settled down near a lone tree. Alone, like me. I sat down, and bearing with the cold, I thought. Kids usually have a papa until they are an adult and have a family. I have had my papa from age two to now, now I am only ten years old. Before I was two, my papa was at war in Afghanistan, and then he came back on injury leave (his leg broken, and he didn’t have to go to war anymore) for the rest of his life. Now, another war, and this time, he is gone. No coming back. Life will never be the same. If I don’t find my mama at the refugee camp, I will now probably be an orphan. And I said that walking in the desert was boring. Now it is hell. Not much water, not much food. All by myself. They say that when someone dies, they are still with you in your heart. For me, it feels like he is just fading away, I already can’t remember his face. It’s just fading, fading, fading.

Then I slept.

  Next morning, I wake up, drunk in my dream. My papa and I were back in the good old days in our village, taking a walk. I reach for him, but he’s not there. I drank a full bottle of water, despite what my papa said about just drinking a few cups. Watching the sunrise, I knew that the sun was facing a little bit north of east, so I headed off, at an angle just going away from the sun.

About five hours later, according to my papa’s watch, I hear noises. I look into horizon, and I see a few kids running around in the distance. Then I see a large fence. The refugee camp. I jump up, and knowing that this would be my last steps to safety, and if this is a race this would be the final steps to the finish line. Then I realise that my papa was so close to making it here with me, and how much he went through, and that he never got here. But he is gone now. Crying for my papa and laughing, running towards the camp might seem like a strange sight, but it seems like this has happened many times before, because no one gives a second glimpse at me. Because I think everyone that comes here is distraught. Except two strangers, sitting in the shadows of the building. My mama and Yasir.

“بشري”  “Humam!” my mama cried. I ran up to her and Yasir, and we shared a three way hug. I feel safe now. I think about my papa. I think about all the people that died. I think about the gunmen, and my village, and if my papa might be still alive. So many thoughts, and I block them out, and relax. And I listened, to the wind.

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