It rained, and I stared into the sky.
The raindrops bore my memories:
Experiences of joy and of grief.
If I close my eyes, I sink into memories of my childhood.
When I turn my head I see a blood-soaked doll – my neighbour’s.
We were playmates.
She slept peacefully now, in a pool of blood, and the doll next to her.
I, who couldn’t even hear my own voice after the explosion,
sought frantically for a way out of this nightmare,
where I saw my friends and their books burn.
They had come to learn.
Now they flew through the air like wind-torn petals.
Where was Mohammad, who dreamed of playing football?
Mohammad was still alive, but he no longer had hands, or feet.
Or hope.
I saw a mother searching for her children underneath body parts.
In tears, in terror, I ran home.
To where I was so urgently expected: to my mother.
Covered in blood, all tears and dust, I threw myself in her arms.
My safest place of all.
The single ray of light in this nightmare.
Now it has stopped raining.
Each time this nightmare comes back to me,
it rains in my eyes.
