I understand...

I walked along, trying to make sense of everything around me�"the shouts, the screams. I walked along, trudging in the hot, dusty afternoon. Ah See pointed at a small girl clutching a doll, wailing for her mother. She was lost. The doll was battered, with the arms and legs missing.

            I lost my slippers along the way, but had no other choice than to move on. I noticed that there were Malaysian soldiers behind us, but turned out that they only wanted to herd us along. I kept quiet for the journey. I could hear the bombs blasting behind us, and we hurried along. The dimming afternoon light dappled on the ground. I saw a boy herding some chickens home. ‘So this is what it is like to be refugees.’ I thought with exasperation. ‘Driven out of our own land, but not allowed to settle on new land.’ Then, suddenly…

            At first, all I heard was the droning of airplanes above us. The next thing I knew, there was a flash! and a loud boom, as a bomb came screaming down to Earth on its black wings. Oh! the heat, mingled with the screams of the injured, the noise made my head spin. This new wave of bombs caused a stampede, and somebody tripped me. I clutched people for balance, pulling down an old lady and a small boy. The old lady lay on the ground, groaning, as people stepped on her face, hair and limbs. I tried to get her into a sitting position, but she couldn’t budge. Finally I gave up, and leaving them lying there, I felt guilty.

            I finally thought of Ah See. What had happened to her? I noticed Ah See sitting at a corner, her ankle cut by a shrapnel of glass, bleeding really badly. I was in despair. Ah See, my best friend, being hurt, and there was nothing I could do about it. I swiftly rushed over to her side. After five minutes, I spotted a Red Cross van and immediately stopped it. I led them to Ah See, and they put her in the back of the van.

            “I…I’ll go with you, Ah See. Don’t worry, my family will go to the refugee hospital to find us.” I tried to reassure Ah See.

            “No, you don’t understand. They will never come and find us, Dana.”

            “I know they will! They are my family! They will come for us!” I shouted through my tears, trying to get Ah See to believe in me.  “Just you wait, Ah See, they will come for us.”

            “No, they will not and never will find us. You have got to go find them. They will not be bothered, Dana, they do not have the supplies and the time. Besides, it is two less to look after. They will just think that we are lost.”

            There, the word was out: We were lost. I felt a rock hard pain in my abdomen, so hard that it almost knocked the breath out of me. “Oh, Ah See. I’m scared.” I tried to swallow my fear.

            “Of course you are scared.” She said slowly. “It is a scary world, but aren’t we stuck in it? Try to think of something comforting, Dana. Just think, and you will feel better.”

            I thought, and remembered my father who had so nicely covered my ears whenever there was thunder and we would be in our own snug world. I nodded slowly, and said carefully, as I let go of her hand, “Yes, Ah See. I understand.”

Reviews

[Zachary_James]

Good thanks for sharing

[Rain]

A good story, with the raw emotions of war and its impact neatly embedded into the story. Just a suggestion, maybe at the front introsuce Ah See a bit, because whiloe I was reading the first paragraph, I had no idea who this 'Ah See' was. I was a little bit confused, then got the hang of the story.

"Finally I gave up, and leaving them lying there, I felt guilty."
"Finally I gave up. I left then lying them, feeling guilty."
I thought it sounded better like that.

Maybe a bit more description on the characters and their past, but overall, I enjoyed reading this piece.