My grandmother's visits were usually so heartwarming that her presence alone could keep us feeling warm for days. But during this particular visit, something was different. Instead of feeling safe and comforted by her presence, we were overcome with a sense of unease. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, and her questions left us feeling cold and distant, as if we were lost in an endless winter.
My grandmother's departure at sunset left me with a lingering sense of longing. I watched her shadow disappear into the distance, hoping she would turn back for one last look. But she didn't, and I was left with a question that gnawed at my insides: would I ever see her again? Her scent still clung to my chest and hand from our last embrace, but it offered no comfort.
We were all forced to leave our homes, abandoning our spirits and searching for a safer haven. We did find it, but it was distant - distant from our dreams, which were left behind on the shelves of our homes, and our stories, which were folded among the old books.
Far from our happy days spent with friends, our lamps of light extinguished, the trees bare, and the sidewalks showing no signs of life to welcome us.
We were far from the echoes of our voices, the sound of our laughter, and the rhythm of our footsteps that once filled the open fireplaces, deserted courtyards, and streets that no longer felt like ours.
While we found a safe place to stay, I still long for my grandmother's warmth, which seems far beyond my reach.
Seven long years had passed, and my heart continued to tremble with anxiety. During this time, I heard rumors that my grandmother had passed away. I spent those years in a constant race against grief, trying to shield her from the emptiness that threatened to surround her, locking the windows tightly to keep the terror of my own confusion, my own sense of being gone for too long, from seeping into her as well.
Peace, to me, is embodied in my grandmother and the land we left behind. Her absence only exacerbated the despair that I had been trying to outrun for the past seven years.
Her warmth was like the light that crept in through the open doors of her home each morning, always ready to welcome us, her abandoned grandchildren. But now those doors are said to be closed, and we must hide our sense of abandonment.
Consolation is like the palm of my grandmother, who always patted our exhausted shoulders and wiped away the tears that fell from our souls and our eyes, and pulled us out of the bloody battles, stricken with despair with dark thoughts. She had realized the waste that is our youth, spent in a country devoured by war. She knew that we would live in great despair and immense loss, that we would dream and be broken, that we would stand and fall, over and over again, that we would bend down to feel our buried dreams, but never find them.
Indeed, it was said that my grandmother died, that her land dried up and that her trees, her peaches and coffee, were sick!
Yet, I am sure that those are some of the big lies in which I live; the lie of the war, of displacement and homelessness, and the death of my grandmother.
