Jaja's hard life

• Jacqueline Mccaffrey, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2004

That night we had only a small pile of rice. My stomach grumbled. I sighed I couldn’t get to sleep. Plus my stomach hurt like mad. I began to sing softly crying out into the night. It was a song I had learned in kindergarten, but it was the only one I knew. Then suddenly I heard a soft rumbling, I knew instantly it wasn’t my stomach. I had heard them too much to not recognize them. It was a thing that everyone in Afghanistan knew and hated, bombs.

I heard my mother wake up on the floor beside me. “Wake up!” She yelled. “They’re coming this way.” My sister was screaming. I sat up and began to crawl over to my mother. But just at that moment a bomb fell on our house. I screamed, and screamed. I then rolled over to the side of the house and forced myself to sleep.

The next morning I woke with my sister crying trying to wake me up. “Jaja! Jaja! Wake up.” She began to cry again. I pushed her off me and saw what she had been crying about. My mother was dead, lying on the floor. I just stared. Then I said to Nunda, “Pack your stuff. Get the money and put it in a bag. We’re leaving.” I knew that the soldiers would come around to check on the houses. My father (he left us) had explored the world and brought back twenty books. But books were banned these days. I would probably go to prison. Nunda obeyed me silently. I grabbed the money and all the food and stuffed them in a parcel and grabbed Nunda. “Let’s go.”

I walked all the way, sometimes carrying Nunda on my back. On the second week of walking with the hot sun burning our necks we ran out of food. “What are we going to do?” Asked Nunda, she missed my mother immensely and hated my cooking. “I don’t know Nunda, go without food I guess.” I said glumly. My stomach was killing me. Nunda through her bag down and stormed off and ran over the hill.

“NUNDA WAIT!” I ran after her. Suddenly I saw a snake lying on the ground in the distance; it was a rattlesnake. I ran over to Nunda where the snake was closing in on her. “No Nunda! Don’t move.” I yelled. But she had already begun to run. I had no choice but to run after her. The snake followed at incredible speed. Nunda suddenly stopped. “Look.” She gasped. A man was running up the hill. He carried a spear in one hand and had a long beard. He flung the spear over his head and killed the snake. “Come on.” At the bottom of the hill was a campsite. But I was interested in the man. I sprinted over to him and hugged him. “DAD!” I screamed.