Gone up in Flames

Gone up in Flames

Walking and reading, reading and walking, perpetually doing nothing but that for the last fifty minutes of her daily trip back from a deserted school library building that is located three miles away from her humble home in the Rakhine State of Rohingyia, Myanmar. Having to walk this distance all alone seems like a risky option for a ten year-old girl especially that the only things she gets out of this practically long trip are a couple of books that have ripped covers and pages filled with dust that accumulated through the years and one pair of sore feet bright shade of red covered with blisters from walking with the simplest version of a shoe on the burning land under the scorching, hot sun of Myanmar. Seeing her bamboo home along the horizon -like a painting with the sunset as the background- boosts her with just the amount of energy needed for her to run the last ten minutes all the way back home. She bursts through the front curtain with her hands in the air yelling, “I’m back home!” expecting, like any other child to be taken affectionately in her mother’s warm arms. The emptiness of the house and the echo of her voice ringing in her ears welcomed the child. She rushes into her mother’s room and sees her mother’s fragile body shaking like a rattle-snacks’ tail and her eyes sobbing like a used sponge dripping with dirty liquids against the sheets that feel no more comfortable than the hard dirt floor they were put on. She calls for her father but remembers that he is not coming from the fields until later that evening.

“A-may, what’s wrong, why are you crying, is something wrong with a-pfay?” She shrieked while scurrying to her mother’s side. “Nothing,” the mom replies while gasping for air “and why, young child, do you have your shoes on inside?!” “Because I will get my feet dirty if I take them off” the girl talked back. “Aung, please mind your manners, we might be penniless, but we mustn’t act like street kids,” she said while wiping her tears away. “Mya, I know you’re trying to change the subject of conversation but I’m going to ask for the second and last time, what’s wrong?” Mya held her daughter’s hand close to her chest and held her closer to her and said, “ You know how we are Muslims, our neighbors are Muslims, and our village is Muslim, almost all the people outside these boundaries” pointing outside the window” don’t believe in Islam. It was not really an issue until they said that they don’t want those who are different from them in their country. So now they are after anyone who is.” “Is it wrong to be a Muslim,a-may?” Aung asked with a trembling voice.

“There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, and there is completely nothing wrong with not being a Muslim; it depends on you and your relationship with god and no one, and I mean no one has the right to interfere when it comes to this kind of spiritual relationship, not even your parents.” “You still haven’t answered my question, is a-pfay hurt?” “God forbid, he isn’t, but a lot of people are, near villages are being destroyed and burned, and some of our relatives have passed away. It’s getting dangerous around here.”

The humming of the father, coming home after a hard day at the fields, interrupts them. He has a large figure with broad shoulders and long monkey arms with a splash of tan all over his brown skin. Having to go harvest the crops every season made the outer skin of his hand scrape off like a snake shedding its skin, his muscles as hard as winter wood, and his nails break off. He enters his house with a misleading smile. Aung rushes to the front part of the house to greet her father with a similar misleading smile. They both know the pain the other is going through from their eyes –eyes never lie, they portray your true feelings like a star in the pitch-black sky. Mya calls for Aung and tells her to go read in her room but the little girl hides behind the curtains. With his fingers clutched into a fist, Naing sits next to his wife, “You know what happened in the other village?” “These bastards burn people alive; they kill childs and rape women.” “I won’t let these animals get away with it, I meet with tribe leaders, we will fight back.” Seeing his teeth grinding against each other like a mad dog, and his eyes popping out like a bull seeing a pieces of red cloth, Mya grabs hold of his hands, holds his hot body close to hers, and whispers,

“အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများနှင့်အတူကိုတုံ့ပြန်ပါဘူးကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကိုအလေးပေးကြဘူးနှင့်ဘုရားသည်ဤရန်ပွဲအတွက်ငါတို့နှင့်အတူရှိ”

Naing soon finds himself leaving the world of reality and materialism only to find himself in a world of combat where the sky rains the ashes of the people being burned, and grenades are tossed around like toys only not spreading happiness but spreading its noxious explosives like a pomegranate spreading its bloody-red seeds all over. He hears the deafening KABOOM of an explosion, he stood with difficulty without hearing a thing, and his narrow eyes follow the smoke to find the source of the blast. He recognizes the bamboo sticks that make up his house-his sight is blurred; his hands become windshield wipers to clear his vision. As soon as he regains the mutualistic correlation between his brain and body, he begins to walk like a toddler walking his first steps. Naing sees Aung, an Angel from the Heavens burning in the Hell of Earth, screaming like a wounded bird. He sprints, as he has never done before, adrenaline takes over his blood stream causing his heart and breathing rate to escalate. His lungs are balloons on the verge of bursting and his heart is a gray-haired lady trying out activities she used to do four decades ago. He catches a glimpse of his child before collapsing several feet away from his burning house.

အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများနှင့်အတူကိုတုံ့ပြန်ပါဘူးကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကိုအလေးပေးကြဘူးနှင့်ဘုရားသည်ဤရန်ပွဲအတွက်ငါတို့နှင့်အတူရှိ:

Do not respond with violence. Do not stress yourself. Do not worry god is with us.

အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများနှင့်အတူကိုတုံ့ပြန်ပါဘူးကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကိုအလေးပေးကြဘူးနှင့်ဘုရားသည်ဤရန်ပွဲအတွက်ငါတို့နှင့်အတူရှိ:

Do not respond with violence. Do not stress yourself. Do not worry god is with us.