National Exile: A 21st Century Novel about Nobility, Poverty, and Cruelty

by Rusul A. Altaay

  Chapter 2

  Every Day's a Blast

 

  Sidra lived her life pretending to be strong. There was a lot to do at the Burj. They were used to getting orders to devolve new lethal weapons. The military is unorganized. They kept them doing random things, and they gave them very little time to rest. They were not even getting any proper food. The administration is corrupted. Chaos is everywhere. No one cared about what was actually going on at the Burj. The workers did a lot of things thinking they were helping their country.

  They lived, however, a much better life than a lot of other people. They had food and shelter. It was less than what a lot of people would kill for. People in the city, on the other hand, barley had few pieces of bread every now and then. They just had, actually have, enough to keep them alive. As hard as she thought her life was, Sidra never complained.

  She always remembered the days when she went by with no food or shelter at all. There was only one thing that always moved her feelings. It was the look on children’s faces on the streets. They just seemed as lost as the adults. Every time she had something to eat, she had the street kids on her mind. She saw them every day struggling to survive while she could do nothing. It seemed that those kids were the only thing she actually showed any emotion towards for a very long time.

  One night, all they heard at the Burj was explosions and guns’ fire. It was anything but a quit night. No one knew what was going on. As usual, the electricity was out. As a result, they did not have any internet access. No TV or even a radio to get the news about the outside world. The workers living in the Burj were not able to get but few hours of sleep. It was nothing unusual for them.

  In morning, and in the main dining room where everyone ate, Sidra and her friends had a discussion.

  “So, Sidra, today we are going to visit the capital. I would like for you to come with us and help out. We might be able to find out what happened last night, and why there were too many explosions.” Rain explained.

  “What’s up with your hair? You look like you’ve been electrocuted. And sure I will go with you.” Sidra replied with a serious voice.

  “What? I just woke up. Focus on the task on hand. And leave me alone.”

  He tried calming his hair down with his hands.

  “I’ll be back in a second. Then, we can go.”

  Rain came back after he wore his hair normally.

  “Well, look at the bright side. At least… You still have your sense of hummer.” He said.

  “I was stating a fact. I was not trying to be funny. So, who is coming with us, guys?”

  “It is going to be me, you, Mai, Yazan, Rayan, and Waseem.”

  The six of them were always working together. They helped so many people both on and off the streets. They had so little and yet, they gave up so much.

  They left the Burj that day and walked towards the capital. Entering the city was like entering a Zombie town. Things had gotten a lot worse since last time they visited. Almost all buildings had bullets’ holes on them. It looked like a battle just happened in there. Very few people were walking around. There were no bodies on the ground at all, which was surprising and comforting for them. They tried to stop some of the people and ask what happened, but no one wanted to stop what they were doing to talk to them. They kept walking between the buildings until they all stopped all of a sudden.

  “What on earth just happened here?” Yazan asked. Yazan was 32 years old. He was the director of the Burj.

  “Let’s go and ask. Something really bad just happened last night, and we need to know what.” Mai said.

  Mai was Sidra’s best friend. She was 25 years old engineer. She was only couple of years older than Sidra. She had long-blonde hair that she always left freely.

  “I know we’re technically working for Estil’s administration, but there is something they are not telling us. I feel like we’re not fighting for who they say we are.” Waseem added.

  “This is just crazy.” Rayan said.

  Rayan and Waseem were half-brothers. They were 26 and 18 years old respectively. They were both working as technicians.

  All of them walked to the crowd and asked one of the men about what was going on. Hundreds of people had all gathered in one place digging the wreckage of destroyed buildings. A man from the crowd finally answered them,

  “After the bombing last night, a lot of the buildings collapsed. Hundreds of people died. No one could do anything last night because of the dark and the shooting never stopped. So… We gathered at the earliest in the morning to help the survivors. While we were working, we heard the sound of a baby crying. We are trying to reach to him or her… But there is way too much wreckage on top, and we don’t have any equipment to lift it. Maybe you young men can help out as well.”

  Rain shook his head and said,

  “Of course… Guys, let’s start by removing everything we can to get to anyone inside. Rayan, please help the men over there to get the baby out. Sidra and Mai, look at the ladies over there, try and see who they’re looking for and help out. We have to save as many lives as we can.”

  Sidra stood there like a statue. She said and did nothing. She was just looking at one destroyed building and watching the people as they were in panic mode.

  “SIDRA…” Rain screamed. “Move it, NOW…”

  “But… this is... how can... I don’t understand… why… I used to…this building” Sidra mumbled.

  “Wake up… We are all shocked, but we don’t have time to show our emotions every day. You of all people know that.” Rain said.

  She finally moved. They all went to help and dig through the collapsed buildings. There were no paramedics at all. There were very few local doctors that could only help few people at a time. It was very bad. There were more dead people than what they had thought. Rayan and Waseem took the dead bodies and started putting them all in one place. Rain and Yazan kept digging through the wreckage to get to the baby. However, locating him got really hard when he or she stopped crying.

  “I think he just got tired and finally went to sleep. Let’s keep removing the wreckage carefully until we find him.” Rain said.

  They kept working and working until they finally got a sight of what seemed to be a human. They worked faster until they finally found a dead woman holding a baby. A lot of people gathered around and tried to get them out. They took the baby out of his mother’s hands and tried to give him CPR. He was not breathing at all. Rain did everything he could to bring him back to life. Nothing worked. The baby did not have any injures at all. It seemed like the mother had protected him very well. Rain finally announced that the baby was dead.

  “I’m really sorry. He must have died about an hour ago.” He said.

  Mai, who was watching the whole thing, looked at Rain and yelled,

  “You called yourself a doctor at some point… Why can’t you help him? He is just an innocent child. There has to be something you can do.”

  Rain looked far into the crowd to where Sidra was standing and kept staring at her. He felt like crying while he held the baby in his arms. She looked at him for a second then continued digging through the wreckage. She knew that the baby was found dead. She just pretended not to care.

  After a very long day, about 150 people were found dead. That was all the bodies that they got out of the wreckage. They gathered them all in one place and decided to bury them together. Most of the bodies were children and women. Our friends, from the Burj, were there the whole time. They had mixed feelings about everything.

  Rain and Yazen went to get some food, but there weren’t any stores open. Everyone was starving. They had to walk far into the city to find a market. They bought as much bread and vegetables as they could.

  “Are you sure your bank card can handle all of this, Sir?” Said the owner of the mini market they were in.

  “Yes, don’t worry about it.” Rain replied.

  They got enough food for at least a hund
red people. After they got back, they asked the young folks to put the vegetables into the water and make as much soup as they could to feed most of the people. Everyone went back to work and prepared to pray for the dead. It was a very sad day. Everyone tried to stay strong and not show their tears, but it was such a hard thing to do. Some prayed for the dead, and asked God to grant them haven. Some just said what came into their minds. They buried every dead body they could find.

  It was very dark that night. They made fire to worm them up, and to get some light. They finally were able to eat. The food was enough for everyone. However, as hungry as everyone was, no one had the appetite.

  People started making camps and lit more fire, so they would not freeze outside. Our friends had to spend the night there as well. It was way too late and far to try and go back to the Burj. They all slept on the ground. The women and children spent the night inside one of the partially collapsed buildings while the men had to stay outside since there was not enough room for everyone.

  Sidra could not sleep that night. Despite all of what happened, she did not have a signal tear. She walked outside. It was cold and dark.

  “What a quiet night.” she thought. “It is kind of hard to believe that only 24 hours ago this place was turned into a complete mess.”

  “Sidra, I’m not going to apologize for yelling at you today.” Rain said from behind while he walked towards her. “However, I want you to understand that this is the life we have. It is normal for us to see this every day. We can’t paralyze and get shocked every time people around us die. All we can do is to help the living as much as we can. We have very little time to mourn the dead.”

  “I’m fully aware of that.” Sidra replied. “Why couldn’t you save that baby?”

  “Do not blame it on him. He barely graduated from medical school before all of this.” Yazen said as he was coming out of the shadows.

  “Yazan, you are not helping.” Rain said.

  Sidra just stood there and did not say a word after that. Rain just felt so hopeless.

  “Forget how many people we lost today, and let’s focus on why we lost them in the first place. We are supposed to be fighting for our county. But ever since the former president was killed, all hell broke loose. Who exactly is bombing these people?” Yazan said.

  “Oh, please. Who put us in this mess in the first place? Wasn’t that stupid president of ours? When he was replaced by that idiot new president ‘Maki Lion’, people just simply started getting killed for God knows what. We need to get to the bottom of this.” Rain said.

  “Are you saying that our administration is killing its own people? That does not make any sense.” Yazan said.

  “As much as it pains me to say…Yes. I am saying that. Did you look at the one building that used to be an orphanage? I found some bullets’ shells near it, and I’m hundred percent sure that it belongs to our people. The ones our enemy uses are completely different.” Rain explained.

  “We are developing new weapons for our administration’s army to use. We were not told of any bombing on civilians. Why weren’t we given the order to kill our own people if that was the case?”

  “We are not some random soldiers. We are highly educated unit. Everyone who lives in the Burj has some kind of scientific degree. We are doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists, and researchers. They know we would not obey such orders if we ever get any.” Sidra finally said something.

  “That might be true, but it simply does not answer our question. Who are we fighting against and why?” Yazan asked.

  “If you want to destroy a group of people, the best way to do so is by destroying them inside out. Maki Lion is definitely our enemy. Even though we don’t know his true intentions, or why he is doing what he is doing, he and his inner circle got us fooled. They made us think that we are fighting outside powers, while the true enemy was among us.” Rain said.

  “There is much more to the story than we think. We need more proof that Maki Lion is the one behind the recent attacks on people. We also need to……..” Sidra said before she found herself thrown to the ground by a blast.

  “WHAT just happened?” Yazan Yelled very loudly. “Stay DOWN everyo….”

  Few minutes passed, when they opened their eyes, all they could see was fire.

  “Is everyone ok?” Yazan said while coughing. “Sidra… Rain… Are you there?”

  “I’m so sure...” Sidra said while coughing. “That I saw our own flag on the aircraft that shot the rocket. It is defiantly our administration” She coughed, “behind the attacks. Rain? Oh my God… You’re bleeding.”

  “It is nothing, just flying piece of glass.” Rain said while carefully removing the fragment from his left arm.

  Most of the people, who were inside the building, where they camped, got out. The rocket hit a nearby building. Almost everyone there rushed to where the rocket hit, hoping to find any survivors.

  “We need to find Mai, Rayan, and Waseem.” Yazan said.

  “We’re here…” Waseem shouted. “We’re both ok. We aren’t sure where Mai is though.”

  Sidra rushed inside to find Mai and shouted,

  “MAI… MAI… Where are you? Say something if you can hear me?”

  “Over here… Hurry… This old lady can’t move, a fragment got into her leg, and she can’t move.” Mai replied.

  Some people saw that and rushed to help the lady. They were able to get her and some other people out. Some people had some injures, but nothing deadly. After making sure that everyone was safe, the remaining of the people including Rain, Sidra, Mai, Yazan, Rayan, and Waseem ran to the nearby building to help the survivors. It was outrageous to find no survivors at all.

  The fire was everywhere. They could smell the burning flesh inside. The people gathered and formed lines to the nearby river to get water and stop the fire. Some got buckets of sand and dirt and poured it over the fire. They did just about anything to stop it. They could hear a firing truck coming. However, only one truck was not enough. There was not much they could’ve done. It took hours to put out the fire. They were finally able to get inside. No one was left a live. The burned bodies were everywhere.

  Our team left the place and went back to the Burj. There was nothing else for anyone to do. During the time they needed to walk back, no one said anything. They were just too tired to even think about what they had witnessed.

  “Apparently, being poor and having a life like garbage, was not enough. Now, we need to be killed, get burned a life, and not ask why? Why?” Rayan commented.

  No one replied to Rayan’s comment. Everyone just kept silent.