It wasn’t until I was separated from that world, did I know the true meaning of heartache. Not only the ache you feel from people you lose but the ache you feel deep down being separated from the comfortable surroundings you once thrived in. I feel the heartache of being separated from a nation I was born in.
I took a silent journey back to what I once called home. I was sent away to be protected from the conflict that ignited between two countries. Without a second thought I travelled to a nearby nation and made home there, alone, to be sheltered. I probed their decisions about my life and without a choice, I was ushered with a bag and a goodbye. Everyday, I questioned the morals of two nations, the justification of invasion. There is no road to victory once innocent lives are threatened, families and homes are torn apart, lives are lost.
This train ride doesn’t seem to end and with no end in sight, my anxiety refuses to shed. An air ride would have taken less time, but there are no planes landing where I’m headed. In my seclusion, everyday, I longed to be in the arms of my mother and to be sitting next to my father. They tell me I left, so I don’t understand what they live with everyday. But did they understand the depth of my depressive state and how I managed without them and how I struggled with a new beginning.
I may not understand what it is like to live amidst destruction but I survived in a traumatic state of distress everyday, worry and concern consumed every inch of my being. What is the point in advancing in technology when a war strips you of your ability to communicate? I waited tirelessly for phone calls and watched the media hype up every attack and then I suffered with the troubled silence, until I heard that one awaited voice on the other end telling me, ‘All is well’. No, they don’t understand. You don’t gain relief, it’s a never ending cycle of agonizing torture, thinking the unknown.
I realized when you leave something behind it stays behind. I walk the same streets that are all too familiar but now seem foreign to me. My emotions switch within minutes as I glance at my friend’s face, we laugh over coffee in the city as we finally reunite, and in another glance, silence draws a veil over me. My body shudders to see the hundreds of pictures that line the great wall; faces of people who lost their lives in this battle. What happened to my country, my people and my home? People walk the streets as if nothing is wrong, I suppose normalcy sinks in at some point amidst this turmoil. The tug between defeat and victory amongst nations equals the ideology that humanitarianism barely exists when power is at stake. It revolts me that I came back to a war scene.
I walk into my parents home, it is their home now. There is an uneasy exhaustion that fills the space, a feeling of not belonging and an unexplainable distance between us. Within a few years, everything changed, but her cooking and his hospitality and the love, that hasn’t changed. They share their disconcertion and I can only imagine. Picking themselves up at 2 A.M. to the sound of sirens and seeking shelter. Hour after hour, huddled together with like minded fear. The melancholy air refuses to leave as I sit and imagine how when their eyes finally met the sunlight, they saw their world torn apart. No, I don’t know what that was like. I don’t know how you watch losing buildings to missiles and how you lose neighbors to unexpected death. I don’t know what it feels like to watch soldiers pace the streets and weapons of destruction around every corner. How do you stumble over rubble and mourn remains? How do you grab your belongings and run for your life? I don’t know how your home becomes a temporary cage. I don’t even know how they let me go so they could suffer like this.
Tomorrow, I’ll take the same 20 hour journey back to my home, because that is where I belong now. She fed me her best meals, the ones I craved. I received an embrace only a father can provide as I saw in his eyes, the years of labor he tirelessly sweated for me. I let them be, they have each other. I can see clearly how a war couldn’t separate their love, even when I pleaded for her to come with me. Why was it that fathers, sons, brothers and husbands are held hostage and forbidden to leave even when they disagreed with this war? All they wanted for me was a life, safe and secure beyond this disbelief. I understand now how I had to separate in order to make them happy, even if that meant heartache for me and the country I once called home.