"Don't sit beside me. Go away!" The boy said waving his hand, his white clothes moving harmoniously with his waving arm. Apparently, his shoes and pants used to be white as well, if not for the filth smudging them.
"Do you need any help?"
"I don't think you would be able to," the boy replied indifferently.
"Was that the way your parents taught you to speak with when talking to strangers?"
"My parents taught me to not speak with strangers."
"Where are your parents, kid?"
"You won't be able to take me to them," he paused, "unless you take my life."
"Oh, um, I'm- I'm sorry,"
As they sat silently, the motion of the kid's hands-on rope bracelet, somehow, was able to describe Halem's bottled anger.
"I saw you reporting a while ago." The boy said, breaking the silence. "Some people survive on others' pain, and you're one of them." He added.
"What makes you say that?"
"And what makes you say that about the protesters?!"
He looks at Halem with watery eyes.
"You're too young for that. You won't understand anything."
"You won't understand anything," he mimics Halem, "you're right; I say things I'm not supposed to think of at this age. Why do you not say the truth on the television?"
"It's complicated." Halem fidgets, "you have to make people feel safe and sound, or else chaos will spread." He makes direct eye contact with him.
"So, when you did that people did not rebel? No properties have been burned?! No one died in the revolution?!"
The boy's eyes were shattered pearls, rest in their places across a white desert of skin, and hills of a red nose and lips. For one could not help but ask what happened to this boy? To make him hold such majesty…
"Look around you, what do you see?"
Halem takes a glance around, wounded people, crying kids, and others looking for food scraps. This was not a protest; this was more of a refugee camp.
"Broke people."
"Well, aren't we all," he replies, "you're making yourself live in a glass globe of rivers of honey, and you're swallowing in all you know and love, in desperate hopes of not burning them with your fire. You think you're safe, but you're hanging on a cliff."
He pauses, "you know who else is like you? The soldiers told to fight their enemies on their land, when they're fighting their shadows, their own brothers. They burn the soldiers' dreams the same way they burn lands for 'war'."
"How can you say that all of these lives are gone for nothing? These soldiers are sacrificing their lives for our safety!"
The boy bursts out, pointing his finger between the air, and himself. "Don't try to feed me lies of goodness! The fake war is not for our safety, it's for their safety! They are better off with us believing that there is a war! In that way, they were able to take away all our rights and brainwashed us to demand what they want us to demand! Do you even know why people are down here today?!"
"Of course! They want their freedom. They want their rights back!"
"Why not? Freedom, and rights, aren't they soo alike?" The boy asks in a mocking tone, "Do you know when do humans refer to violence? Do you think this was the only way to protest?
People start fighting and throwing stones when they are desperate. This is the last stage before losing hope. This is their last line of defense, and this level may only be reached when people look at dead people's graves and wish to switch places!"
Cold tears fall on his burning face as he weeps with anger, "can't you see?! People do not care anymore about life, and neither do I! I keep telling myself that this will be over soon, but it's never over! I lost EVERYTHING on a dead hope of living! I was told that good will always rise in front of evil, but it was never there! But today is going to be different, this is the day history is re-written for good. For our good! And the next generations will remember and thank us!"
11:56 P.M.
The boy's last words roar in the square, reaching near and far. Strong winds start moving the sheets used as tents, street dogs howl and run away, and the smell of dust fills the air. The stingy feeling Halem gets in his nostrils gets him again, and he sneezes hard enough for the upper part of his body to bend down. That's when the pebbles on the ground beneath his feet start vibrating, and he raises his head gradually to find tanks approaching.
Everyone in the square stands up, gathers around, and awaits the soldiers exiting their tanks. A steady arm of a lieutenant opens the top of a tank, pushes himself up, and jumps on the street with a small cloud of dust forming around his feet. He knows, deep down, the protesters will not accept his offer.
The only thing stopping him from meeting his wife and feeling the warmth of his baby's smile again is the oblivion of this crowd. He just called his wife to make sure she's fine with his mother. But does he know that she's between the crowds with the baby?
He moves towards the protesters, tall and proper, hands behind his back, with the rest of the soldiers armed behind him; the square is sieged.
"By a presidential decree," he says aloud," you have one more chance to surrender your lives or face the consequences!"
In a blink of an eye, Halem finds the boy climbing a light post and screams, "ALLAH AKBAR!"
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Allah Akbar: God is the Greatest