Innocence
written by: Bonnie Currie
Laughter and squeals permeated the gloom. Children played as children do, creating their amusement among the devastation of their surroundings.
Innocently, the group of four to eight-year-olds kicked the bright red ball to each other across the only piece of clear ground in the area. Around them, adults scurried here and there; some carrying containers of water, others struggling with household wares, many carrying the wounded whose battered bodies were bound up in bloodied rags. The children played regardless, ignoring the gruesome sights and despairing sounds of war.
Sunshine vied with dust clouds to shed its light on the devastation below. Acrid-smelling smoke drifted through the rubble, the stench of human decay, everywhere. The children played.
Mariam, aged four, and her brother Khalid, tired of the game, found a spot to sit against a wall of debris. Holding each other’s grubby hands tightly, they quietly watched as their friends carried on the game; the ball floating one way then the other. Each kick of the ball results in a puff of dust billowing up around the player’s feet, to then continue on to shadow the ball on its journey.
Appearing as if from nowhere, a drone descended, the buzz of its motor louder as its approach grew near. Mariam and Khalid’s big brown eyes watched blankly as the machine fired. The last thing they remembered was a yellow flare shot from its body; brighter than any sun they had ever seen. A sudden blast split the air, sending bricks and metal searing in all directions.
Dazed and in total blackness, Mariam lay coughing and spitting grit from her mouth. Her tiny hands felt around in the darkness for Khalid; she was alone. Her hearing acute to every sound, she lay numb, listening.
Voices raised and panicked made their way through the debris that engulfed her tiny body. She had just enough room to wriggle into a kneeling position, cold enveloping her fragile frame.
“Mariam,” screamed her father at the mounds of rubble, his eyes searching desperately over the chaotic scene. He had already learnt that his son Khalid had not survived the attack. Onlookers pointed out where they believed Mariam might be buried.
Frantically, her father, aided by the crowd, began to dig with their bare hands. Boulders and bricks were tossed aside as the men worked tirelessly, hands cut and grazed, fingers scraped raw and bleeding.
Mariam, aware of the movement around her, began to cry out; tears tracked down her soil-encrusted cheeks to leave a salty wetness on her dry lips.
Suddenly, a chink of light illuminated the darkness. Blinking away tears and wiping her nose, Mariam noticed a grazed and bloodied hand reaching towards her through a gap made by the rescuers. Hearing the urgent tone of her father’s voice calling out her name, she stretched her tiny fingers to clasp hold of the searching hand and its familiar touch.
Not far away, a little girl sat deep in thought under the shade of an olive tree. Rachel had been informed that day at school she should never make friends with ‘them’ people who lived on the other side of the wall.
The seed of fear and mistrust was planted, ready to be cultivated.
