I am sorry that you had to see things that nobody will ever believe. You will try hard to get people to listen to you but no one will care. Dirty looks will be comming from all directions but I know that you are the only one who can tell the world, share your story. Fight for all of them that you saw, fight for their story to be told, fight for them to be remembered.
This is what I was told when I slowly stepped on the plane and headed back to America. It was a dark year as I was sent to live a year with my family in Yugoslavia. My father was working there and the day I was taken to our new apartment I cried my eyes out. Half of the building had been blown out and parts of the steps were missing. It was like playing jump rope, you had to jump steps to get to our apartment.
I soon discovered that our apratment was not that sad compared to the kids that I would soon meet. One day I walked outside and started to watch the local kids play games. When they took notice of me they started to hide and scream like I was going to harm them in some way. Soon they learned that I was not going to harm them and I got to know them.
That is the day I felt by heart stop beating. The first kid could not talk at all and I keep thinking he was just scared of me or something but soon tears started to run down his checks as he opened up his mouth and showed me that his tongue had been cut out. To this day I do not know who did it or why but he was only around 10 years old. The next kid I meant did not have to tell me what had happened I could tell. He was missing his right leg. It was noticable that nobody really fixed his stub because it was uneven and skin was hanging all over as though nobody noticed he had a missing leg. The third was a little girl who her older brother spoke fairly good English and to me it seemed as though they were better off than most families. Looks can be misleading when I soon learned that why the little girl cried every night was because it had been 3 years since their parents went to the market to grab dinner and never came home. The oldest son dropped out of school and had to 2 jobs to keep the family feed and under a shelter. Than came the girl that I would become best friends with. She was around 13 years old and to many she seemed way to grown up for her age. Her sister was killed in a shooting downtown and that left her 2 year old daughter to this 13 year old girl. At 13 I could not imange taking care of my sisters child while balancing school. On top of taking care of a kid their appartment was missing walls so anybody could walk into their house at anytime. Parts of the floor were missing and pictures were hanging up that were shattered. Every where I looked there was a story that needed to be told. On the streets kids as young as 10 were selling guns and knifes that anyone could buy all you needed was money. A walk could mean being shot or blown up. Mines covered most of the land including hiking paths and parks. They were active and sometimes I wonder if that is how some of the kids had missing limbs.
The sun rose everyday yet to me it always seemed dark and mysterious. Some of my friends left and never came back, they just went to school and whithin a few hours they were not home and it scared me. My mind could only think of horible things.
Than came the night I will always remember. I woke up and thought the streets were on fire due to bright red flames all over. The smell was something I had never smelled before as it almsot smelled of flesh being burned. Than I heard little yelps, the townspeople would burn animals at night. Any animal they found they put in a bag and would burn in the middle of the night.
The tragedy happend when I got to America. I wanted to tell people what was really going on and how us being over there creating a war zone was not helping and the pictures we saw of American soldiers giving candy to local kids was not the truth at all. The truth was that we were bringing more harm and death to Yugoslavia than anyone could imagne. As I came back and started to give presentations on my journey people began to attack me. They accused me making up lies to make our government look bad and how I wanted to tell dark tales to make people listen to me.
People need to have a open mind and to relize that sometimes things are not at all what they seem. We have to question what really is going on when we enter a war zone or declare war. The person who declares war shoudl have to take a walk down the battlefield and see the damage that is done. Everybody has the same answer about war and it is that we are there to help and it may take awhile but we are helping and making a better world. Why can't we show the real photos and bring both sides of the story in stead of just the progress of war. Let us hear about the families who have to sacrifice their home or one of their sons. Why do we close our eyes when we see something that we are not willing to believe.
All the people that pointed fingers at me and told me I was wrong did not understand the suffering and pain. If we are strong enough as a nation to get into war than we should be strong enough as a nation to handle the truth. The truth that we kill children who will never be able to attend prom, pull apart families, kill fathers and sons, and preach that we are hear to save them. The truth is we know that we will make mistakes while in a time of crisis and we may kill innocent people but why let those people be forgotten. They deserve to have their story told as much as you deserve to have your story told. News tries to cover both sides of the war. The fact is that sometimes we miss up and have to take the punishment or that we do feed the local kids but how about the news telling the story behind it all. We go knocking on doors asking for war and pain it does not just come to us. Why are we so afraid to admit that horrible things are happening.
We take more time in creating stories and covering up the truth than fighting for our nation.
Stop running and look. We are to afraid to see what is really happened because deep down inside we know that unspeakable things are happening and if we look at them we might acutally care to much and try to stop it.
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