I am the girl watching kids my age going to school everyday in a bus, hearing their peals of laughter and songs fill the morning air. I am the girl they watch and feel sorry for when their bus stops at the traffic light.
I am the one who carefully looks into their eyes and knows what they are thinking. I am the one who gazes at their colorful school uniforms, their meticulously tied braids and their pretty hair barrettes and remember my own uniform that the war had burnt. I am the one who envies them for their wool hats and their puffer jackets as my headscarf is drenched in the storm and my beautiful hair hiding underneath it becomes limp and flat.
I am the one who used to go to school just like them. I am the one who used to like the nice teacher, the big classroom and the wooden desks that I used to scribble on. I am the one whose friends have dispersed when the war broke out and the school was razed to the ground. I am the one who misses them all. I am the one who wishes she could close her eyes this moment and find herself with those kids on the school bus stopping at the traffic light.
I am the one whom the arts teacher once told that she would become an artist or an architect. I am the one who had believed the teacher. I am the one who had believed her.
I am the one who taps on car windows hoping to sell napkins as drivers rebuke me for no reason. I am the one who hears them cursing at me and those I love all day and part of the night. I am the one who hates this rain that is soaking me, the cold that is biting me, the sun that is burning me, and the exhaust pipe smoke that is gnawing at my chest; and I am the one who hates the sound of car horns now and forever.
I am the one who if she remains on the street the big bad gray wolf would come to eat her in a little.
***
I am the father who has fled with his wife and daughters to this country. I am the one who abandoned his house and livelihood fearing for their lives from predatory monsters. I am the one who did not find a warm house to give them in place of the home we left or a roof to keep them from the rain and cold. I am the one who is standing helpless before their demands that they used to be embarrassed of sharing with me, I am the man with the gray hair.
I am the one wandering the streets in search of work –any work– that would help me provide for their needs and avoid asking strangers for aid.
I am the one who everyone turned down because my age hardly allows me to work. I am the one who stood confused and lost about what to do with the mass of hungry flesh. I am the one the world closed the door in his face and who refused to stretch his hand out to people and would not ask for anything because I have never and will never be able to do this.
I am the one who stood on a rusty metal chair, shaking on its four legs. I am the one who tied the rope tightly to the ceiling and tied a noose around my neck. I am the one who lit a cigarette with whose smoke I puffed all the worries that had piled in my heart. I am the one who flicked the butt to the ground and dispelled along with it all my faith in finding justice in this world.
I am the one who pushed the chair with my foot and was left hanging alone from the ceiling.
***
I am the young man who was forced to leave university. I am the one who had one year left to his graduation with a dentistry degree. I am the one who lost most of my family in one explosive moment. I am the one who now fears the scalpel and hates blood because of all the blood I have seen and all the blood that had touched me.
I am the one who arrived in this country without official papers. I am the one who took a liking to the people of this country although they were wary of me and my dialect.
I am the one who they refused to rent a single room to because I was a single young man. I am the one who they viewed as an intruder, agent and terrorist.
I am the one who searched for a smuggler and I am the one who decided with conviction to risk my life to get to Europe in search of human rights I had lost in my own country and in yours.
I am the one who will put on a life vest and set from this coast to new lands. I am the one who has never learned to swim.
I am the one who the Mediterranean swallowed and whose waves carried me to be buried with others like me in the strangers’ cemetery.
***
I am the mother who covered her belly with a wool blanket and envied the child sleeping inside her for the warmth he enjoyed. I am the one who looked at her fingers to find them cracked and blue from the bitter cold. I am the one they kept asking why I got pregnant when my body in not able to make milk? I am the one they asked why I was bringing a child to this world while I was living in a tent?
I am the one who suffered from infertility for nine years and did not conceive until I had found myself in these conditions. I am the one who panicked when my period was late and thought that I would never be able to conceive again. I am the one who could not believe the news of my pregnancy and thought that the visiting physician at the camp was consoling me and lifting my spirits. I am the one who saw a different world in the eyes of the fetus that was bathing inside me.
I am the one who despite the war, despite the pain, and despite the suffering saw a ray of hope in my heart that I had dreamt of for years. I am the one who imagined baby clothes in blue and pink. I am the one who dreamt of a stroller to push and a child laughing and calling me by the sweetest word. I am the one who had waited for this word for a decade, and prayed and went to sleep in tears so that the heavens would hear me and finally they responded to my calls and anticipation.
I am the one whose fetus died of sorrow before being born. I am the one who would never again know motherhood.
(N.B.: Any resemblance of the characters of these stories to real life events is a realistic and intended resemblance.)