Garden of Dead Flowers (Spring of Death)

It’s 5:00 am, and it’s early and quiet. That’s unusual. The Fajr prayer call usually sounds. Why is it silent? I plant my feet on the ground and go to the window. I still hear nothing. Even my family has not stirred to wake up and pray. It’s a cool morning; I can tell by the cold floor. Making my way to my bedroom window, I wrap myself in a prayer shawl before I throw open the curtains. Color drains from my face as it has from the landscape, now a mass of rubble and ash, in a tonal gray silence. A single tear slides down my cheek. 

There is no movement outside. No man or creature is walking about. The smell of death fills the spring morning, kissed by the acidic hiss of dew. 

I turn to leave my room and call out to my mother. There is no answer. I call to my father, and the same silence wraps its tightening noose around my neck, a fear I have never known before covering me in panic. I stop breathing as I open my bedroom door.

The scene before me is now in full color. Blood stains the floor, and the furniture lies scattered like wheat stalks after the harvest. My home is unrecognizable. I see death. I smell it. It smells of utter despair and darkness. 

Tears stream down my face more freely now. I can’t keep them at bay. I am alone. Utterly and desperately alone. What happens to me now? I am only thirteen. This is my home, and this is my family. Was. This is no more. 

I fall to the ground to weep, my core constricting in pain as if my body were being assaulted from the inside out by sharp objects. Through my blurry, tear-filled vision, I see a shoe. Papa’s shoe. Not far from it, I look but don’t want to see what's there. I know a foot and part of a leg are his. I don’t think I can move. 

  Something propels me forward to search. I do so, terrified of what I know will most certainly be my mother in the kitchen. She would have risen before all of us and prepared the morning tea. I turn the corner toward the kitchen, but I stop. There is no kitchen to speak of. It is rubble of stone and wire. She’s gone. There is nothing left that is recognizable to me, save a tattered apron where the stove would have been. 

I go numb. My mama and papa are gone. I am an orphan. How did this happen while I slept and heard nothing? 

A stream of blood flows over my bare feet, its deep-red syrup the only color in this desolation. I see red and feel it rise in my chest. It wants to fill my lungs and drown me in grief so deep I may never return from its labyrinth of pain. But I fight its grip and break free. I need to find someone who can tell me why this happened. Who did this to me, to my family, to my home and town? 

I know that even before I reach the edge of my yard, I will find nothing and no one. It is all gone. I can’t remember how to walk. My legs feel like concrete statues, immovable and stoic. Morning turns to dusk. Have I been standing here that long? I have no tears left. I have no appetite and thirst for nothing but blood. I want vengeance. I need my destroyer to pay for his murders. 

My rage increases, filling my ears with screams and a need for vindication for the horror of brick and mortar being blown to shreds. All I hear is the loud sound of rage in my blood. I look out and see something unreal. A single flower is sticking out of the ground where life once existed. 

I approach the lone wolf of the desert, a postcard left by the deliverer of sorrow. I look down and see its innocent petals in red, white, and blue, protected by piercing thorns. My wrath drives me to rip it from the earth and crush it in my hands. What should be a beautiful thing, scents the earth with sweet aromas, is an ugly machine of war, now covered in my blood and the blood of my fathers. 

A thorn stabs my finger. My eyes snap open, and I am in bed. I have been asleep. It was just a nightmare. I can’t stop breathing; the rise and fall of my chest are clearly visible as I lie there. I am so relieved, so grateful, that the nightmare was just that, a nightmare. I hear sounds around the house, making me want to run into my parents’ arms. 

Quickly, I wrap myself again, but this time in reality, and make my way out of my room.

Throwing the door open with all my strength, I run to them and realize I have woken to my nightmare. We are at war. 

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