The Great Secret….

Such that uncovering it would make your heart break……

Short Story: This is a composite true story names, places and instances have been changed to protect individuals; thus the title.

“And what is wrong with you that you do not fight in the cause of Allah and for those oppressed among men, women, and children…” (Qur’an 4:75)

A child is jerked out of sleep there is no time to change clothes.  A jacket is flung on her shoulder and she is hustled out of her home to the sound of sniper fire, a bomb explodes close enough that the sound precedes the fire it causes.

A jeep with one man with a gun gives her a hand, the mother climbs up and the child looks back at the receding figure of her father waving to them and then turning back into the burning inferno.

Such is the life of a child of war….

The mother dies on the road of heart break ( or the bleeding wound from the sniper fire) is it Assads men or ISIS or the superpowers that have made this country a playing field for gunpower and to test their latest armaments.

The child looks back from the jeep which leaves behind in its dust, hundreds of men women and children trekking to the Turkish border.

She watches her mother slumped on the bed of the jeep holding her wound with her fingers through which blood seeps continuously.

The jeep does not stop it is too dangerous.

Men on the road try to board the jeep which is already full and the jeep

Guards beat them back with the butts of their guns and then look back wistfully and in pain at having to hit their own brethren for the sake of their own survival.

The people occupying the jeep are silent, eyes hooded, watching for danger but refusing to steal a glance at the bleeding woman by their side.

The child is paralyzed in situ unable to offer comfort to her mother, so she looks away.

The jeep arrives at the Turkish border their papers are checked and they are allowed to enter.

As the jeep crawls on the dirt road towards a village like shadows the men and women surreptitiously leave the jeep and melt into the night.

The Jeep arrives at a ramshackle unmarked tent.

The men jump off and carry the bleeding woman into a tent where multiple women are lying on makeshift beds with intravenous drips hanging from each.

The female volunteers in Doctor coats reach out to the bleeding woman being carried by one of the jeep volunteers and placed on a bed.

Everything happens in silence no questions asked no emotion shown just a focus to complete the task at hand.

The child stands at the door frozen uncertain what to do.

Another woman in hijab wearing a doctor’s coat asks in a whisper “ is she injured? “ nodding towards the child, the man from the jeep shakes his head and the doctor in hijab moves away to another woman on a bed who is beginning to moan.

It is the first human sound that the child has heard since leaving her home.

Suddenly she comes to life and screams!

The last thing she remembers is the women doctors running towards her and a man at the door pulls back the tattered curtain of the tent and in a rasping but angry voice at a low strained level shouts “ QUIET” “Sus” in turkish!

The girl collapses to the floor!

All is silent, the child, the tent inhabitants ,the patients, the doctors and the guards.

In the ensuing silence the sound of the jeep leaving becomes distant as it disappears into the horizon of the dirt road.

A silent tent in no man’s land with injured women from a quiet peaceful town in Syria being tended to by Turkish female Doctors from the bustling city of Istanbul exists in silence as it cannot be acknowledged.

Dawn breaks gently with a blush at what humans can do to each other.

The call comes from a faraway Turkish mosque. the Fajr Adhan floats in the air like a balm for the silent, the hurting and the near dead. Another day has begun in secrecy and will either end in secrecy or…..?

It is all a big secret, the city bombed in Suria, the identity of the bombers, the fleeing population, the injured women and children, the tents for the poor and homeless of war, the volunteer doctors from Istanbul; it is all a secret that no one wants to talk about.

No one wants to acknowledge it, and no one wants to accept responsibility for it.

No one wants to challenge the crimes against people, and no one is brave enough to ask for accountability.

No one wants to speak about it incase this glimmer of humanity may also be snuffed.

It is the silence of fear……. That even keeps the Doctors silent!

However like blood from a wound; compassion though silent cannot be hidden. As the dawn breaks over a tent hospital at a faraway place in no man’s land : humanity is seeping through the cracks of the wounds…..

“And do not think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them until a Day when their eyes will stare in horror.”

— Qur’an 14:42

To be continued ….

***** This could be a story of any muslim country currently couldn’t it?