War Torn Baghdad

Dust trickled from the roof, as yet another bomb exploded a few blocks away. Ali could hear men shouting and guns blazing. He sat on his bed and closed his eyes, wishing it all away.
Of course, it stayed. Reality didn’t work like that.
‘Ali?’ His mother asked worriedly. She poked her head around the doorframe. Another explosion rattled the house and a fine stream of pale dust trickled onto her headdress, contrasting with the black fabric. Worry and distress had wrinkled her face prematurely. Well, everyone was distressed. There was a war going on in the streets, for Allah’s sake.
A man screamed in pain, but Ali and his mother ignored it. It had become so easy to ignore one man’s pain when so many were dying everyday.
‘Ali, come with me. Upstairs isn’t safe anymore.’
Of course it wasn’t. The Americans had brought the warfare to their part of town.
‘Downstairs isn’t that much safer, either,’ Ali replied, as a tank roared past their house. Ali could see the dust storm the treads created waft past his window. It had shattered long ago. “Downstairs” was a small, sloppily created cellar. Now it was a makeshift bomb shelter.
‘Please, Ali. Until your father comes home.’
Ali didn’t care what his father did. He was old enough to understand the atrocities of war (he had spent nearly two years living through one) and he knew his father was making a complete mistake.
Ali’s father had joined the opposition, blowing up and destroying the Americans. On the rare occasion when he returned home to his family, he was full of tales about the dangerous situations he had been in, how close he had come to death and how evil the Americans were.
His younger brother and sister were too young to understand. They stared at their father in admiration while he described his escapades with his comrades in arms.
In some ways, Ali felt like he was older than his father. His father seemed to take a boyish delight in the “adventures” he was part of.
Ali wondered how long it was until his father realised it wasn’t a game. When one of his family members died, perhaps. He would probably keep “playing”, Ali thought bitterly, as he walked with his mother towards the hatch which opened up to “downstairs”. His mother smiled at him, a brief moment of happiness surrounded by mayhem and chaos.
Ali sat next to his younger sister, leaning against the dirt wall. His mother closed the hatch that allowed access and sat next to him. Ali remembered when she whispered words of optimism and hope. She didn’t bother anymore. Hope went straight out the window when tanks and bombs became a daily part of life.
His sister whimpered as a bomb exploded particularly close to their home, rattling the entire frame of the building. Ali and his mother winced as something delicate shattered.
Perhaps it was their life.

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