Runaway

As I cross the border, I take one last look at my mother country. I think back to all the experiences I had back in my home. Where I took my first steps, where I spoke my first words, and where I lost my whole family. I stoop down to feel the grass on this side—it is fresher, moister, and greener. It has the texture of a bird’s feather, soft and structured. However, it is not the same. This grass is not the grass I ran and stumbled on as a child, the grass that I literally grew up on. But, alas, running from my home country is the only way to escape the torment and tyranny of it.

            The year is 2050, and I am a middle-aged man desperate for the freedom I grew up in. I remember when I could walk across the street to purchase a candy bar as an adolescent, unafraid of getting shot. I remember when I could travel the world as I wished, unafraid of being blown to pieces by a bomb. I remember when I had right to believe as I pleased, when my family could attend the community mosque without fear of being heard by government spies. I remember when diversity of religion and culture was a benefit, instead of a crime.

            I remember when my wife and two daughters could express their political stances, without being brutally massacred in public.

            My hands sweat with nervousness, as I seek refuge in this neighboring but foreign country to me. I know that if the government finds me, they will kill me. At times I feel like giving up, and letting them take and kill me. But my family did not die in vain. I will make their deaths a driving force for me to continue, to raise awareness of the government’s horrible actions. The Salvation, as they call themselves, is the government which has mercilessly killed over 500,000 of my people over a course of one year. They are a foreign group of people who took over the country, after 10 years of my country’s courageous battling.

            It will be hard to begin my life again in my new home. The other people are kind and helpful, but I feel as though I am not one of them. I do not belong to anyone anymore. I do not associate myself with my ancestors’ land, because I would be killed. The environment in this new place is different. I occasionally think back to the days when I was young, when my mother was still alive. When I came home from playing with my friends each day, she would always make me hot soup—my favorite. I will never forget the way it tickled my tongue during the winter, and the way it tasted in the spring. I dream of how often I disrespected her as an adolescent. I would do anything to have her with me here in my days of hardship. She always gave all her love to me, and never raised her voice. I miss her with all my heart. I miss my father, with his stoic and reverent attitude, when he always used to give me advice when I had trouble, and when he always pushed me to do my best in school. I hated him so much when I was a teen, because I always thought of him to be too strict, holding me back from fun. Only now, when it is too late, do I realize how much he really cared.

            I will never forget my wife and two daughters. They were the brightest, most intellectual, and most caring family a man could ask for, and now they are gone. If only I had learned to appreciate them while they were alive, before all this tragedy struck my country.

            As I begin a new life of successes and hardships, my only regret is the fact that my family is not here with me. Never again will I take my freedoms, my new country, or my skills for granted. Hopefully at the end of this life, I will be sent up to the gates of heaven, to see the faces of my loved ones once again, and to look down upon all tyrants and evil-doers, burning in hell.