We hid them as we hid our coins, our grandmother’s jewels, our precious salts and spices – in the closets and cupboards, in the hollow places of the house. “Shh,” we whispered. “Be good. Be quiet. Be still.”
Be small, we meant. Be nothing at all.
The children crouched in silence as our minds raced and raced. What would happen if the soldiers came? What could any of us do? What could any of us ever do?
When we left for the market, we said, “Don’t make a sound.” We promised, “We won’t be long. Just water and wheat. Eggs and sugar for cakes, for sweets, for something soft and golden brown.”
On the bus, we spoke only of our babies, our worries blooming with every passing moment. The soldiers watched us as we stood in line. Their eyes lingering on our chests. One of them muttered something to another, and they both laughed, and the laughter followed us like smoke.
As we rode back, daring to think – look, nothing has happened, nothing has happened – the sky split open and our lives snapped in two.
We ran toward the place that had been our entire world. There was nothing left but ruin. Nothing left but ruin and smoke and the bitter taste of it. Our bags tore open, spilling eggs and sugar into the dirt, into the dust. We no longer cared for baking or bread. Nothing would ever taste right again. Nothing would ever be right again.
We plunged into the wreckage, into the chaos of broken things, of shattered things, of things that would never be made whole. Our voices rose together, a single torn sound, as we called our children’s names, again and again and again.
No one came. Not to help. Not to save. Not to bring them back. Not to answer. Not to hear.
We crawled toward the center of the earth, toward the dark, toward the place where all lost things go. We grasped at ghosts, at shadows, at what was no longer there. We filled our pockets with dust that might have been them, might have been bone, might have been breath. Each handful carried the faintest trace of them, cinnamon and cumin, sumac and thyme – their small warm bodies, their breath, their hair, their skin, their sleep.
One of us found her son’s drawing, done in crayon – a little purple world. Purple poppies, purple rain, a purple sun. When a soldier pressed his gun to her head and demanded even that, she stuffed it into her mouth. Purple moon, purple stars. She chewed and swallowed, so desperate, so desperate to keep it, to keep even that.
And then the little purple world was gone.
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Photo by Krakograff Textures on Unsplash