Halem finds himself hitting the ground hard, feeling an unexplainable pain in his back; he sees flashes of light killed with black figures moving above him. The protesters and soldiers have clashed and are ripping themselves apart. Halem's shoes and clothes are soaked with water and a red warm fluid.
Screams of a child pierce his ears, and he loses control over his body as he runs towards the screaming boy. His heart and legs burn, as he sprints towards him and jumps over bodies. When the boy gets a hold on Halem, his hands tremble with fear around Halem's waist, and tucks his face in Halem's clothes, panting his concerns away.
"Stay here," Halem says, leaving the boy in a place where, he hopes, the light of darkness can't reach him.
"Where are you going?!" The kid cries out for him.
"Well, someone has to help. Even if I don't have what it takes." He smiles wholeheartedly to the boy's watery eyes, "thank you, kid." He takes a deep breath and looks at the boy one last time.
"Burry this letter with me!" The boy hands him a paper, and flashes into the fires, shouting for freedom at the top of his lungs. For the chaos of the screams would make either a man run or fight, Halem looks at the letter lying in his hand, clutches it tightly, and runs for the boy again. Adrenaline was running in his veins for a while now, and the situation was not getting any better.
Red, orange, and black are all that he sees, no sign of white anywhere. He desperately starts punching, shouting, and hitting violently than ever before. He wonders when he adopted such violent energy. He wonders if it was always within him, killing him like subtle poison. He moves from one soldier to the next, helping one protestor by the other, telling them to keep moving.
On the other side of the road, is a woman taken away from her baby, pulled by her hair towards the ground with a gun pointing at her head, and begs for mercy and forgiveness. To whom she thinks she's trying to persuade? All the soldiers are dead.
The fight of brothers, the moment history awaited, the spray of the blood of the slaughtered hopes and dreams. Despite the people's fight from despair and helplessness, the only sound of hope in the square was that of a crying baby. Halem stumbles upon its cries, fetches a gun and shoots the soldier gripping the woman, and gets her up, only for her to run for her abandoned baby.
She tugs her baby's face in her shoulder, as rivers of warm tears sweep away the dirt her face had collected. Looking around desperately, she notices Halem standing in front of her, and moves her lips in a way that Halem interprets as a 'Thank You'.
It is only when the fire grows, that darkness seems clearer than ever before.
An ear-piercing sound, with a pitch darker than death, spreads and leaves its mark on every eardrum. The sirens of death are approaching, and the horrors in people's imaginations are growing. The tanks are leaving, and the soldiers are withdrawing. All the protesters are squeezed together in one big circle.
Every believer in the square starts shouting for Allah, for whom His relationship with Halem was not the best. The last memory of the mother was pictured in silence, holding her baby dearly and praying, under her breath.
It's the hardest thing for a mother, to admit that she failed to do the best for her child and watch him slip from her hands. Nevertheless, deep down she knows that moving together to heaven is better than leaving her baby to the lieutenant, or the so-called, her husband, father of her child.
This is the end of the story, with helicopters dropping bombs on the forgotten, and autumn leaves dropping from trees on the fresh warm pool of blood.
One day, the oppressed hoped to give their children a future that would help them to achieve what they want in life. But the odds were never in their favour, were they?
To end up toasted above the flaming streets, that is the result of greed. Flaming hot greed, fresh from their authority's mind. And it will continue growing and lasting, they will keep winning, for greed lasts longer than hope.
This is a story of the boy I met, whom I never knew his name until I read his letter and came to my knees, feeling the weight of the tears climbing down. People think that I was one of the few survivors of the protest, but I was one of the fewer survivors of the brainwash. They were exactly thirty minutes. For one human, they were the last thirty minutes of his life, and for me, they were thirty minutes that I will never forget.