Anyways, one of my favorite essays to write so far this year has been Child War Casualty. Basically she showed us a slide show of a bunch of different war-type themes, posing the question 'How would one of the people in the picture respond to fighting for independence?'. I chose the picture entitled Child War Casualty. This is the essay I wrote about it, yes I am American and yes, I share some of the views I gave the man in the picture.
Here is the picture, so you can see for yourselves, and below is my essay. Comment, please. Agree, disagree? I like opinions.
Child War Casualty
There is no such thing as independence. Always, someone will hold power over me. I believed my country would succeed in its revolution. I believed that we would become a democracy. I believed it, how foolish I was! Even in democracy there are laws and people telling others what to do. No, independence is only a whisper of an unachievable dream. The United States lies when it claims to be “independent”. Americans still have laws telling them what to do, they may have more freedom than I and my countrymen, but they are a far cry from independence.
I had wanted to go to the United States earlier in my life. I thought that their so-called “independence” would be what I had sought after my entire existence. But when my mother became sick and died of AIDS and my father and half of our village was murdered by soldiers, whether they were soldiers fighting for independence or soldiers trying to crush the revolution I do not know, I gave up all of my dreams. I decided that all I needed was to live and protect my baby sister. My innocent baby sister, who, at seven, didn’t know any life other than the mixture of war, pain, and suffering that she was exposed to every day, was still able to make jokes and play simple games. My dreams had died, but I still held hope; hope that I would be able to give my sister a full life.
I remember the day my hope died. I was at the market, trying to barter for something edible to feed my starving sister. She was at our village, over a mile away, playing with the other malnourished children who were still able. I heard the bomb before I saw it. When I came out from hiding and saw the smoke of the fires in the direction of my village, my heart clenched. I started running, sprinting, to my home and my sister. I had never run so fast in my life but it still took much too long to get to her.
Debris covered everything, and the smoke was so thick I could hardly breathe. Eyes watering so much that I could not see, I walked down the crude roads I had traversed my entire life, knowing them by memory. The majority of the bomb’s blast had hit the center of the village. I was thankful that our house was set on the border. A house with thin walls and dirt floors is no match for a bomb. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. The stone building in front of my house had thrown itself almost completely apart, the large rocks flying in every direction from the explosion. Two had gone directly through my house, collapsing it.
It took me no more than five minutes to dig under the debris and find my sister. She was still warm. I picked her up, ignoring the blood that soaked her tattered clothing and ignoring the truth of her death. I walked out of the village, staring down into her face the whole time, crying and unable to stop. Now she will be just another casualty of the war, another nameless statistic and unmarked grave. Fighting for independence caused her death. Independence, the unachievable vision, is stealing the lives of millions. I could never fight for something that takes so many lives and offers only the condolence of “their deaths were for a good cause”. There is no good cause for early death.
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