I Want To Go Home

• Jemma O'leary, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

I sat in a place that was meant to represent everything I had ever dreamed. There were people crammed into every little space available as they try to find some comfort, amongst the hard layers of red earth and old wooden benches. People sat and cried for everything they had lost yet tried to find happiness in the little they’d gained. Others sat quietly as hunger panged in their stomach, and their throats burnt with the taste of dust.

Yet the most obvious and heart-breaking feature of each person huddled around was their eyes. The pain and heartbreak were obvious, nothing could ever take away what they had witnessed. The massacres, the death, the acts of humanity that would break even the most hardened criminals. A story of what they had lost.

The burning sun glared down. The sweat of the person pressed against you evident; sticking to every piece of skin exposed. Everyone is one person as they sat with little to do but stare at those who were opposite them. Everyone had the same memories burned into their minds. War, death and destruction. They sat straight and narrow in hope that they would become invisible amongst the mass of other over-heated bodies. Many had realised that the best, if not the only way to survive was to blend in and not stand out. Draw no attention and you would survive.

No one wanted to hear what other had gone through. For some their own story was too dark, others simply could not bear to hear of more horrors. Most were scared to discover something they did not want to know.

That was the funny thing everyone was connected in some way no matter where they came from. Each person understood the others experience of pain and torment in what had been a treacherous five years of pure hell and agony.
Reactions were different. Some sat in the middle in pain, crying for all those they had lost. The salty tears ran down their face as few people comforted them. Living in their own pain that consumed them and locked them in cages that were impossible to escape. I watched silently taking in everyone that sat in the crowd. Faces ranged in age and colour. The youngest of the crowd seemingly careless, not yet aware of what they had been born into or the world of pain that awaited them. They ran, played and giggled with those of different cultures, with smiles that ignited hope spread across their tiny faces. The eldest of sat quietly, the pain they have endured evident by the lines of life that sat silently on their faces. Sometimes a small smile would work its way onto their faces; a mark that showed they had once existed in a world full of love and peace.

Yet all that we really wanted was to go home.