Shades of war

by: E. A. Saharaeian

Does time change everything? Or do we just simply grow out of the ideas and re-build ourselves around them? As we grow up we tend to these problems as part of our journey, then we become more tolerant to brutality and to what some people are capable of, living in such situations, we lose ourselves or at least a part of our ideas and beliefs. What comes next is the scariest, when we lose hope or expectations from any soul, which makes us numb observers of life; and not truly living it. in every step of our lives, every place we live in, and every single person we meet at that time in our lives, will leave a brush stoke on our ways of thinking and taking on life, each house carries memories, with or without our knowledge, it is a school we pass through, there will be unnecessary lessons, that later on in life we have to work to unlearn them.

Writing about this next house almost took me four months! I have edited this text more than ten times, I have re-wrote parts of it, fearing the time, and it still has its claws deep in my heart. I made hundreds of excuses to stop this blog just so I wouldn�t finish it. Whatever I wrote, I felt like it wasn�t enough, so I will just write about some parts of it, pleasant and sad ones, for a long time I used to watch the world from those cracked wounded walls of that house, it took me years to take off those goggles and look at life itself.

Generally, The house itself was in better condition than the One-room house we previously lived in, although we were more than happy to stay where we were, the house was right next to our previous home, for that the view was the same mountains on the left, the vineyard behind the house and in front of the house was the colorful field that loved dressing up in colorful outfits. The walls were built with cold lifeless cement blocks, the roof was not that much better than the other houses, it was made with clay straw and woods. The whole house consisted of three rooms, but the scariest of them all was the large room which was used more like a working area. The air inside that room was always dim, misty, and tasted sour, the fire was always on inside this room, there were three big gas cooks and each one had a huge pressure cooker boiling on it. From the pressure cooker, two metal tubes came out and went inside a barrel of cold water. At the end of this big �chemistry lab��, drops of alcohol were coming out. I remember there were plastic barrels lined up next to each other full of dates, warped with plastic. The sour smell made the air much thicker and heavier. There was a window that was always sticky and dim, sunlight was barely making its way through from some corners of that window. I was always scared of and hated that room. My oldest sibling, once told me that it will be a good idea to put me in one of those pressure-cookers, cook me and eat me. I had checked many times, I would easily fit in them even with the top closed. I did my best not to ever go in there alone, even if I had to. I would just run in and out as fast as I could, breaking my record every time, in many ways that room usually reminds me of Jane Eyre�s Red room.

What had happened was, unfortunately, another civil war started and many were killed and many more fled the country,  for no good reason we had to flee the country to the same neighboring country we went previously through the mountains and small villages, but this time, we were immigrants, although the road was not as bad, since we went with bus both ways, not so adventures like the previous time, when we came back we saw, The one-room house was sold to a four-person family, although they didn’t buy for the room they bought it for the land to make their own home, that is why we had to move in with my relative.

However the situation inside was no better than the war outside, I do not know if anyone has seen or felt this before, it’s a very confusing situation when you are seen for every single mistake you make as a kid, and being invisible for the rest of the time, does it push you to make more mistakes to be seen, or when you grow up you will doubt every choice you make and will require reassurance in every decision? 

Having a good imagination I was able to escape reality and make my own, one of my favorite things to do was slide down the hills during snow, since the schools are not well built, with no heating or cooling systems they had to close it during the snow days. Those hills around that area were farms, during the season of Chickpeas, which was one of my favorite things to eat when it was green, and I have heard if you steal just a little bit to eat from farms it is not considered as stealing and its not a sin, well now I know it’s not true, the kids from the neighborhood and I were waiting for the farmer to leave, we would go and take some of the chickpeas, the farmer was a very short guy, his skin was red from many years of sunburn, he was always wearing traditional clothes from our area, he was getting angry so quickly, and he was scary when he was angry that is why we always made sure that he leaves, one time he knew kids are stealing because he returned and saw us in the field, we started running, he was ran after us and swearing at our families, till he was reaching our great ancestors, he wouldn’t leave one out, what was weird about it was that all of the kids were mastermind thieves, because none of us went back to our homes we ran and pretended to go to different houses we were sure if they found out it wouldn’t just end up with some swearing.

During summer night with my middle sister, we were sleeping on the roof, there was a ladder at the back of the house, we would take some water two small mattresses, pillows, and blankets, we would dream and look at the stars, finding shapes and hopes in them luckily the stars never disappointed, they always give sparkles of hopes and joy, seeing one shooting star and being able of that millisecond to choose one of your dreams among millions and wish it on time would give hope to last for weeks waiting for the result.

Although life was not so typical here, in other words, we were surviving, physically, but things changed again my source of trust stability, and love was my mother, she found a job as a police officer so she had to leave for about forty days (I believe to finish training). At that time for women to wear which was controlled by men and was supposed to be for men in our society, it made us stand out and be even more different from other people. She was one of the first ones to take that big step for women here, to carry a gun, wear a uniform, a woman who had a night shift, these are just normal sentences now, but 24 years ago, they were jaw-dropping information. I remember I was crying myself to sleep every single night she was away, but I was so proud of how strong she was. I remember one time she took one day off, she came back and took me to the main Bazar, just to buy me a backpack. After that she went straight back to work, the money she paid for that backpack was more than half of what she would receive, a woman can be something other than a teacher, nurse, and government employee that was new, for that time.

To wrap things up, each period of life has its adventures, bears many lessons and hardships, that house was one of the darkest ones, especially for my older siblings. Having next to nothing at that dark time, there were two different civil wars, people were starving because of the sanction on our country, they were selling anything valuable to feed their families. The fact that we survived with our heads held high, with faith in our hearts, life looked much easier after that, those two years passed meant life will go on too, by that time my mother was a police officer, there was a promise of our own house, what could go wrong, one might think moving to the next-door house might change our way of life, well that has to be for my next post because one house at a time�