In the down trodden abject meandering streets of the Afghani City Kabul, a little girl of about six years sat with her face placed down on her lap on the door steps of a dilapidated building. Someone observing the scene from a distance might have mistaken her for a dirty rag in the middle of utter state of quietness; for all around her, the once gay and bustling with life cocoon of a city had now turned into a mere state of wretched disaster. Blood puddles had given the streets a red hue, there was rubble all around and the odor of rotting human flesh made the place quite unbearable. But still amongst this debris, the little creature sat still-looking very frail indeed!
The big black hound down the street who was feasting on the remains of the once alive inhabitants of this town looked up, observing this epsilon of a creature with great interest. He had been used to little girls shrieking with disgust and fright when they saw him but this one did not even nudge a little. God had not blessed him with enough grey matter to give the subject much thought so he went on to fill his appetite, shoving what seemed like a shin with his teeth.
The little girl looked up as the sun shifted angles so that bright light emanated her cherubic face. The glow that lighted up her large hazel eyes was shocking! She picked up a large metal rod-probably some part of the destroyed car on her left- and threw it with all her might at the black devil that was heartlessly ripping apart the shin now. He howled with pain as it gashed his hind leg and leaped towards the girl ready to take her down!
The girl shouted at him, saying something in a language foreign to his ears. But the fury that possessed her soul intimidated him. He stopped short of her, looked up at her ardently furious face; howled loudly and ran off. Soon the strength in her gave way to the overwhelming amounts of agony and bitterness and she bowed down on her knees, darkness enveloping her slowly.
She fainted!
The sun was setting down when she opened her eyes. "Ama", she shouted. "AMAAA", the girl retorted again restlessly, expecting her mother to come and pick her up! She was about to shout the third time when the ugly realization dawned upon her and she got up with despair raging against her fragile lungs. Seeing herself sprawled down over the rubble and her once beautiful house destroyed to smithereens, she started to cry. Gushes of tears rolled down her angelic mud stained face. She cried for everything.... It felt as if someone had sucked the soul out of her leaving her in this chaos to figure out her own future! The plump kind face of her late mother came before her eyes and she toppled over in her anguish. Her father’s loving remarks, her elder brothers jeering taunts and then the 'ladoos' that he used to bring for her when she was sad reeled in front of her eyes. "Bhai, rashaaa", she screamed again and again in her native tongue pushto, still crying. She wanted him to come back, her parents to come back. She could endure a lifetime of fights with him, only if he would come back. Where did everyone go? Why did they leave her, Sarah, in this mess all alone?!
All that she remembered was how her mother had shielded her when "agha" had rushed into the house screaming that they were about to get bombed and hidden her brother, Sultan, behind him. In a flash of a few seconds, she had heard the bombs being dropped, the shouts of her neighbors, Sultan, Ama and Agha and the crashing down of the buildings until their own house came down right before her eyes. Her loving Ama had sacrificed her own life for Sarah by towering her own body above hers. Ama had died. Agha had died. Sultan had died. But Sarah had survived! Sarah still had the little ragdoll that Ama had made for her when she was a little baby. Sarah had called her "Anzah" when she was one, which originally was just a baby mumble of hers but over the years everyone started to associate it with the dark haired woolen doll of hers. Sarah had never slept without Anzah. And now Anzah was still there in her hand, but the woman who made her-her beloved Ama- was dead!
It had been on the news for months that the Americans were at war against the talib people, but she had never cared about all that stuff. In her world all that mattered was her Ama, her agha, the rude Sultan, her school and her friends. She did not know what bomb was. Neither could she ever imagine that the people she loved could die. War, pain, death were just another couple of foreign words in the dictionary: only until yesterday! It was when her world had changed. Changed forever!
She knew as much that her agha had been a friend to the American people. He wanted the Al- Qaida rule to stop. He advocated peace! But then why was he killed by those same allies of his. Her little brain searched for answers, but for a girl of six understanding that his father had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and her family had been killed because of a mistake were ideas that never occurred. To the innocent soul, who could not even hurt a fly, the idea that people could perish just because of someone’s mistake were alien mythologies. She ravished for answers but could not come to a conclusion.
In her world, only the bad people died. The villain always got killed in the stories like in lion king and Aladdin! Her agha had been a good man. She had seen him helping the poor and the destitute many a times when she had gone with him to the bazar for shopping. She had seen him speak kind words to the sick. He had been an emblem of goodness and high morality for her.
It was night by the time she walked out of her array of thoughts. She Shivered! The cold winter winds were blowing past her and freezing her to the bones. The little warmth provided by the bright afternoon sun had diminished. She tightly wrung the worn out burgundy shawl around her shoulders and got up. It had been two days since she had a single bite to eat. The tears, pain, loss and cold of the past forty hours had squelched the little remaining life out of her. She needed food, water, a warm fire and some clothes - in short she needed a home!
The ruins of her own house brought back the wonderful memories to her mind but she was too exhausted to even shed a tear. She rummaged in the ruins and found a stale loaf of bread for which in the present circumstances, she was thankful to Allah. Then she scrambled inside the ruins of her home and lied down on her broken cot. A deep slumber overcame her and she drifted off in her dreams......She saw Ama, Agha, Sultan! But this time they were there for real, for the little innocent soul had joined her family in heaven!
Next morning, when the paramedics arrived they saw her lying in a rusty old cot. Her lips had gone blue due to the cold and the thump of her little heart had stopped forever. The wild cold winds had vacuumed the soul right out of her weakened malnourished body!!!
