Malik Ademola

"Is hell enough the appropriate surrogate for my home?" the question I asked myself after the launch of the first airstrike. That evening was with a suspicious feeling. We had finished our dinner of crumbled bread and were perching against the wall when it began. The sound humming above the rooftops was a paradox of expression - sonorous to the ears, and yet petrifying the heart. "We leave before the dawn of tomorrow breaks!" father blared into my ears, and I nodded doggedly despite my conflicting thought of if running was actually the last resort. People would tag us cowards, snitch, and indict us, but I guessed that wouldn't matter. We'd already lost everything. Father had lost his wife, and I had lost a sister and my teen years. What more could the world say that would haunt our sanities? After all, a warrior flees to fight another day. For a decade, father and I had been surviving amid the seething sound of bombs and bullets, bodies pilled...