Go and see the damage

We come upstairs to find that apart from some broken dishes and a shattered window, the apartment made it through without taking much damage.

I lay down in the dark but I don’t fall asleep. It’s hard to believe what just happened. The war is here. It’s real. It’s no longer something you just hear about on the radio or read about in the newspaper.

Eventually I drift back to sleep as the adrenaline wears off. I wake up in the morning and have breakfast with the others. Nobody mentions the elephant in the room. We don’t talk about last night. Sasha asks me if I’d like to go for a walk with her, so I get dressed and ready to go outside.

After walking down the staircase and out the front door something stops me dead in my tracks.

It’s the building across the street from us. A whole section of the roof and upper floor is torn open.

“Oh my god.” Sasha mutters when she sees it.

“That must have been the one.” I say.

“Come on, let’s go this way.” Sasha says as starts to the right. I follow her.

We don’t have very much to say as we walk through the streets together. We simply look at the destruction and quietly take it in. There are some buildings that are completely destroyed. Rubble pours into the streets which are spotted with bomb craters. I look on with overwhelming feelings of awe and fear.

I can feel tension in the air. I can see it on the worried faces of strangers. I know that I have the same look as them. We’re all thinking the same things.

Why does this have to happen here? Why does this have to happen to me? All that I ever wanted was to live my life in peace but here I am. Here I am in the middle of a war.

There’s no doubt anymore that this is real. Every crater I see, every broken window, every brick strewn about makes the truth sink in deeper and deeper inside my head. Here I am in the middle of a war.

We walk a little bit further before Sasha stops me.

“Do you hear that?” She asks.

“Hear what?” I ask, but I hear it before she answers me.

Somebody is shooting. I hear gunfire in the distance, along with shells exploding. The sounds of the battle can’t be more than a few kilometers away from us.

“Come on Sasha, let’s get out of here.” I tell her as I pull her along.