What do you want?

I’m not like my father, I try to be like him. I dress like him, I smoke the same cigarettes as him but I am not him. My father is an aeroplane engineer, beautiful metal works of art but when the war came, he started making aeroplanes for the Air Force, I was four when the war came. Bombings of our cities destroyed our nature, our parks, and our forests. I was eleven when the war ended, the president signed treaties and The Union occupied our country to give aid to us and help rebuild our country.

When I was 18, I entered university to study Aeronautic engineering to follow the path of my father, I got my associate's and so moved on to my bachelor’s. While I was in university, I joined the literature club of my year and sooner or later, I joined the student movement and the protests.

During one of our demonstrations, the police lashed out and beat, hosed and tear gases us. We were all lined up against the wall and blindfolded. Suddenly I heard a gunshot go off, “Why did you shoot him? Our orders were to line the protesters up and to down their names and major!!” I hear a voice go, One of my fellow schoolmates shouts “They are killing us!! Get off our land, invaders. Reinstate the emperor!!” we collectively shouted ‘Reinstate the emperor’.

One of the riot officers dragged one of us one metre out from the line and made him kneel, he pulled out his revolver and aimed it at the student while saying, “You want to die that badly? I’ll give you the release of death, this movement of yours will do nothing. There is no emperor here to save you.” The student laughs, “Do it!! Take my life like you take our mothers, sisters and daughters!! I’d happily die for my cause, I shall be remembered as a martyr for it. Cowards, you take our lands, take our women and replace our emperor with  false presidents, it is heaven’s mandate for our emperor, do it!!”

The student taunts the officer. The officer brimming with rage was about to pull the trigger but suddenly another officer cuts in and puts his hand onto the revolver as if to tell the officer not to do it. The officer pulls away his revolver, holds up the student and shoves him back in line.

They started taking our names and majors, and slowly, they let us go individually. I came back to my father, still awake despite it being late at night. He told me to sit down, as he wanted to talk to me.

“I won’t ask you what you did earlier today or what you plan to do with this student movement that you are in, you are young and still fickle at your age but tell me, what do you want?” My father asked while making us tea. “I want to be an aeronautical engineer like you, Father,” I replied, “No no, really think about it, what do you want?” My father asks me again, “I want you to think about it and tell me in a week, now drink the tea and go to bed.”

I thought about it for a week and yet I was unable to find an answer, I looked upon my books and something came into my mind, I thought to myself “I shall be a writer!!” when I reached home from a lecture, I approached my father and tell him “I have decided on what I want to be. Father, I want to be a writer. I want to write about my views on the world and the people in it, I will still be an aeronautics engineer and write on the side, will that suffice?”

My Father smiled and nodded. From that day onward, I stayed out of the student moment and focused on my writing and my studies and soon, I shall become a great man like my father.