"Two minutes and I'll be back," Hussein asks the driver to wait for him so he can pick up his family from their "unsafe" home, after that one, and take them to another place, supposedly "safer," but...
Hussein "Abu Al-Abd" only needs "two minutes of running" - no time to walk - over the rubble or along a potholed, debris-strewn road to reach his "home," where his wife and children are waiting, terrified by the hovering warplanes and the roar of tanks as they get closer and closer.
"Don't be late, Hussein. You can see how scared the children are. The sound of the tanks is getting closer and the planes are filling the sky."
Hussein quickly and fearfully ran over the piles of rubble to get a car or any vehicle to transport them from this place that was now in the line of fire.
Had the road been less bumpy, Hussein might have returned to his family at the exact moment the shell hit. He would have been lucky enough to join his wife and children on their eternal journey! An additional family would have been added to the thousands erased from the civil registry during this insane war. Hussein survived, but he did not...
If the driver had been a little faster, he wouldn't have had to stop his car "two minutes of running time" after the house that separated him from "Hussein's house", and his chances of escaping death would have been zero.
But the leader of that flying metallic monster in his glass cockpit doesn't care about the children's wishes and the trembling of their bodies, and he quickly pulled the trigger to destroy Hussein's "Abu Al-Abd" house, turning it into a mass grave for the mother and her children. The head of the family escapes this "killing party", perhaps by waiting for another shell in another place and time, or in another mass massacre, or perhaps by waiting for a "blind" bullet to surprise him from a "quad copter" lying in wait for those walking on the paths of pain.
A massive explosion resounds, filling the horizon with dust, smoke, and fire, preventing the driver from proceeding, fearing that another shell might follow, or perhaps the road was no longer passable because of the rubble flying from the force of the explosion. He stopped before that house, “two minutes” from the house where Hussein’s wife and children were waiting, carrying what they “carried” of their “lightest and most necessary” belongings, hoping for survival, as was their fate during nineteen months of killing and starvation.
Hussein jumps out of the car, pleading: “Don’t move from here. I’ll get my wife and kids and come back. I won’t be long. Just wait two minutes. The place is nearby. There’s a house in front of me behind this.”
Hussein ran aimlessly through the chaos left behind by the explosion. He stumbled and fell, got up, and ran again, his heart aiding him: the explosion must have hit the house. And indeed, nothing remained of it but rubble.
As happens after every explosion, the residents rushed to help and removed the rubble with their hands, hoping to pull out survivors from under the rubble.
"I want my children. I swear I didn't take long. I went to get them a car so we can get out of here. I just want one of my children to get out from under the rubble. Please, guys, just get one out for me. Please help me. I just want one of my children to get out."
If only he had listened to his wife and taken his eldest son, Abdul, with him, he would have had one of his sons left..!
شارك برأيك
Hussein was two minutes late to his family due to the timing of the missile.