The year was 2003.
A new scene in the bloody war betweeneast and West. Between USA and IRAQ. Watching a war on television and being in a war are completely different things. Sometimes you feel that fear is chasing you and sometimes you are running away from the fear. This fear I’m talking about is the fear of death. The grocery clerk you spoke to today might be lying on the floor in blood tomorrow.
I was 6 years old then. A person may only remember a few small things from the age of 6. But I remember everything: how the houses were falling apart, how cars were burning… While I was lying in my bed, I wasn’t able to sleep, because of the helicopter lights which were reflecting on our garden. I knew back then that the phrase ‘’they are just streetlights’’ that my parents used to tell me to sleep was a lie. But sometimes it’s not such a bad idea to believe the lies to get the fear off.
In fact, we weren’t nervous all the time during the day. However, after the sound of the bombs started, all the smiles on the faces dissappeared in an instant, as if time had stopped. Smiles left the room and the fear came inside. I used to hide under the bed with my mother at every sound of a bomb. My father was hiding behind the door and waiting for soldiers with his gun. And my grandfather was hiding in the bathroom.
Each sound of bombs was a harbinger of how close death was for us. With every sound of a bomb, we would wonder if someone we knew had been hurt this time. Every bomb soundwent on like this until the last bomb. The last sound signaled the end of the war. That voice brought both happiness and sadness. Because only debris and memories remained from this horrible war…
From the autobiography of Muhammet Şahin Akkaya
