Kindred Spirits

• Sophie Ryan-Seignior, Grade 6, Coburg North Primary School
• Short Story
• 2014

1st in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

Guns fired. Bombs hit. Lives were taken.

Damascus as I knew it was disappearing. Each day my family woke and stared hopelessly out of shattered windows. Gossamer curtains dangling in shreds. They stood there for an eternity, watching as our devastated village crumbled before their eyes; their hearts breaking. The horror and untallied loss were just beginning to set as memories in the recesses of their minds; destined to haunt them forever.

Somehow, I felt oblivious to the war. Everything felt surreal; I was seemingly okay. I was strangely relaxed and knew deep down, that it was all going to be ok. My mother always said that I was an optimist and able to ‘elude the perceptions of reality’. She said that I took after my grandfather, Abdel Gawwad, who died a few months earlier after desperately dragging himself from his bombed house. I was with my beloved grandpapa at the time. We were playing ‘I spy with my little eye.’ Both his legs had been blown off and he bled to death.

Mama talks to me no longer.

I tug at her weighty, dirt encrusted skirts, desperate for her attention, but all she does is pace the floor; back and forth, back and forth. She howls relentlessly like a winter wind. Her head hangs heavily in her hands and she chants “Daughter, daughter, daughter …” endlessly, but she ignores me, like I’m not even there. As I sit in the corner on the floor of the cold hard concreted room, my legs are crossed and I feel warm. I am the picture of health: plump rosy cheeks, my eyes clear, wide and alert and my body relaxed and assured. I am wearing my favourite dress and the shiniest black patent leather shoes matched with frilly white ankle socks. I feel no need to cover my ears, huddle in the corner or rock to and fro as machine gun fire constantly peppers the walls of our world. Then I hear that by now familiar whistling sound. It’s getting closer and closer. There is bedlam, chaos and unmitigated terror as my family run for their lives. Direct hit … BOOM!

Ancient terracotta tiles fly off the roof of my ancestral home, as if they are feathers. Window frames are ripped out and doors are blown off their hinges. Our home in the end is blown to smithereens. I see that everyone has escaped physically unscathed. I smile serenely as I continue to sit, as I will always and forever sit, in that same corner of that same room, where my home once was.

I whisper ever so softly to my mother that I knew all would be ok and I hear her wail, “Daughter: you are like your grandfather; two spirits together eluding the perceptions of reality.”