Fleeing

It had been 3 days without any food. Mother and I were wandering in the middle of Sudan with no where to go and no food in sight with night coming on fast. "There goes the last of the water," panted mother as she let the last drops of water from her canteen trickle into her mouth. Looking around, In hoped for some sort of miracle, like the ones I read about in books. I could picture myself spotting a water hole with food aplenty, where mom and I could live together, just the two of us. It didn't have to be big, just enough for us to get by. Slowly a smile crept over my face as I dreamed about it more and more. Soon, all I could think about was that fantasy and I began to lose my hold on reality. So when I saw something in the distance, I couldn't be sure it really existed.



"Mother," I asked as I pointed my finger into the distance, "Is there something over there." Mother squinted as she tried to look where I was indicating.



"No," she replied as she turned away in disappointment. Taking one last look into the distance, I was sure that I had seen something. But I figured I had just been seeing things because I was tired from all this walking. I was about to turn away when I heard a gunshot from that same spot.

"Did you hear that?" I questioned mom as I strained to hear more.

"I did," mother answered as she again tried to spot the thing in the distance. Suddenly, more gunshots broke out and I reached for mothers hand. Slowly, we began to advance upon the gunshots, hand in hand. Looking back, I'm not sure why we decided on going towards the scary guns. Seeing what had just happened to our town should probably have made us weary of people with weapons. But we were so tired and hungry, that all we wanted to do was rest, even if that meant risking our lives.

When we finally reached the place where there were gunshots, two things jumped out at me. First, dead bodies where lining the ground. About 30 corpses where spread out in front of us, all covered in blood. Most wore the army pants of the janjaweed, but a few looked like regular civilians. Second, There was a group of people dressed in civilians clothes huddled around a fire. I shuddered as I realized how cold it was outside and how I would love to be next to a warm fire. One person in the group noticed us standing there and shouted "الذي يكون أنت" as he raised his gun.-Who are you?

Mother replied, "نحن من [بيدا] [أرديبا] ويحتاج طعام ومأوى" as she put a protective arm around me.- we are from Beeda Ardiba and need food and shelter.

The man replied, "نحن أيضا من [بيدا] [أرديبا] ، يأتي سهم في وجهتنا" as he smiled in relief.-We are also from Beeda Ardiba, come share in our meal. The rest of that night is all blurry. I can only remember that I was given food, and that I liked it. In the morning, we headed off to a destination unknown to me, but I didn't care, because for the first time all week, I felt safe.