The Storm

You resist the demons in your nightmares.

And then you wake up.

You try to take a breath but you can’t.

You try to ask for help but no one is around.

Your face starts getting all red and you feel your blood pressure is increasing rapidly.

Five… Four… Three… Two… One…

And Rolling…

Countdown complete… Your application has been processed…

You start looking around you and gazing at the walls around that seems to keep reassuring you that you have no chance of making it out of your misery. You wake up every morning, sip away your cup of Turkish coffee, you have heard of Brazilian, American, maybe even Jupiter Coffee but you believe in that cup of Turkish coffee, those drops that you believe are drops of heaven.

You open your door and take a walk, you are heading for your work and you can see your reflection in the water that covers the ground as the sky rains over your head. You keep walking and staring at the reflection, a car almost hits you, drives over you, crush you like a roach but you still insist to go the whole way to the end. You get to the office, soaking wet you could be used as an alternative source of mineral water. Your boss kicks your ass with words that are harsher than literally kicking your ass. You are late again…

You sit in your glass cubicle. You look through the glass to watch her do her work. She is the beautiful dream you always wanted, the love you never found yet like every dream you had, she knows not that you even exist. You take a deep breath and countdown, three, two, one thinking that by the time the count is up you will have the courage to walk to her and confront her with your feelings. You don’t. Why did you think you would when you did the same yesterday and the day before and you never ended up telling her a word? The girl doesn’t even know your name.

You look to your left and there she is, the other girl, but this time the one who keeps staring at you for eight long working hours every single day the same way you keep staring at her rival in love. You look at her and pity her inside you, you know she is as miserable as you are and you know it would have been a lot easier if you loved her back. Everything is always easier in a closed loop rather than having the extended endless line on which you are just a point and apparently one with unknown coordinates.

You are going for your lunch break four hours later and some guy picks up your dream girl with the sleaziest line you have ever heard and things work for him so good. You wanna stab yourself in the back, you feel betrayed, and your intelligence is what always betrays you. You come back after your lunch hour has been over with and you see him standing at her desk making stupid jokes that she seems to like. Your heart is pumping boiling blood to your entire body including your brain and you feel like you are gonna explode. Everyone can read between the lines, lines that maybe unsaid but are written all over your face especially on your forehead with the veins popping out of it. You feel violated by the looks of the people all around the place. You wanna throw them or throw yourself out of the window or maybe throw the funny guy talking to the one your heart beats for and making her laugh like crazy.

Your manager walks in and asks you about some report… Your frustration is rising to another level, you ask your manager to give you time but he starts yelling at you. No one knows how you feel about things. No one knows that you hate your job. No one knows that the girl you love is laughing to the jokes of some rodeo clown standing at her desk and leaning forward as she sits on her chair to take a glance at her teddies every once in a while or even less than that. No one knows that you haven’t paid your rents in months, the pay you get is not enough, your cat died last week and your mother died the week before. No one cares about you or about your stupid existence for all that matters. To everyone here you are the machine that produces well formatted analyses and well written reports that everyone else ends up taking credit for while they sit their asses on soft leather chairs and enjoy listening to the songs they store on their I-Pods. To them you are just another slave in the system chained from your neck to their desks, doing their work, and sometime soon to be diapering their babies if they asked you too.

You try your best to remain calm you always do but then you see the lightening through the window and you practically hear the wind blow in your ears. It is the storm, do you need more signs. The storm hits the streets and you hit the office, you have something in common with the storm outside, you both don’t give a shit. You blow, like a breeze, they try to stop you, you grow to a win and then you hit like a storm, today in fact you are the storm of this place.

You yell, you shout, you confront, you scare everyone around, you quit your job and you walk out and then as you walk home you get soaked again in rain water. You arrive at your destination and you go to sleep while asking yourself one question, “What the hell have I done?”

Your nightmares keep haunting you, fires and deaths and demons following you wherever you go. Today you was the office storm, nightmares are the storms of your life. You try you wake up but it is too hard. You try to escape your nightmares but it is almost impossible. And now your rage is piling up, you have now achieved a new level of rage, rage in your sleep and that scares your demons and gets you to wake up. Though you woke up like you wanted you still can’t breathe, you try but it is too hard, you just can’t. You try to call for help but no one comes to rescue you, it seems like the end. You have no hopes in life that would help you resist the pain and the fear that fills you and the smell of death drawing near you. Your face is gaining a bloody red color like it is gonna burst into flames; or maybe it is to explode like a bomb. Your blood pressure is rising rapidly… Suddenly, you see absolute darkness and you hear nothing and feel nothing… That’s when you know it…

That’s when you know you are dead…

Congratulations mate, your application has been processed and it is today that you die…

May you rest in peace my friend…

Her last words were ‘Promise?’

I am sitting here. I am cleaning my rifel’s tube and shining my knife. I know I will need them although I am not sure I still know how to use them. But I know I was born to defend my life and the lives of those I love and I am sure I still have it in me. I leave this place I am staying in since they released me from prison and I get on the back of my horse and head back home, the home that must have changed a lot since the enemy burnt it down years ago in a battle that have been based on lies and deception.

And as I cross the valleys the memories race by. I remember how the elders of our little village called for a meeting that morning, how I was sent to negotiate the enemy for the lives of my people, how I had a beautiful wife and two kids… And then I remembered how it all ended up in war and ruins…

That morning I was in my bed minding my own business when my wife woke me up and asked me to head to the village council where I am to meet the elders of the city to discuss a very important issue. She knew not what that issue was all about, all she knew was a messenger dropped by and asked for my prompt response to an invitation by the elders to attend the council..

When I arrived there I was told by the village’s chief that we were to be attacked by the citizens of the surrounding villages. They told me that it was our turn. For years they have taken over lands and taken away rights that they were not entitled to and today it was our turn. I was told by the elders that they are raising an army and I was told that we wanted peace, all we wanted was peace and our freedom.

I was then asked to go to the elders of those people, there is one in every village and I could talk to any one of them but if I wanted to do it best and get our peace I had to go to the eldest figure they had. It was a duty I owed to my family, my people and to home. I left with no weapons, I went to preach a message of peace.

When I arrived at my destination they have already known I was coming… They were waiting for me to arrive and they were kind I have to be honest. They gave me food and wine. And they treated me with great respect. But that respect ended when a conversation started. I spoke to the eldest man of these people.

I told him that I come in peace and he implied that would mean that we would give in our village without resistance. I asked if there was any particular reason we should give in and he asked me, “Didn’t you say you came for peace?”

Me: “I came for peace and our freedom.”

Him: “Then you have to submit to our armies. We too come in peace, we don’t want the blood shed.”

Me: “There will be no blood shed if we agree to peace and peace to us is you leaving us alone and we reciprocating.”

Him: “Peace will be there when we remove the threats to our community.”

Me: “And you call us threats?”

Him: “You are, you don’t like us and you would always be a threat and unless we guarantee our safety, we will always be subject to your wild attacks.”

Me: “But we are not even that strong, we don’t have the power you have, how would you be threatened by a weaker community of peaceful people. And don’t you tell me we don’t like you because we are not forced to, you are a bunch of cons, pirates you may say, who came along and took over the lives of innocent people and then claimed that their lands and lives belonged to them. Why would we like you?”

Him: “You admit it that you hate us, to us it is a threat and to that the only peace I could offer is not shedding blood if your people give up.”

This argument kept going on for hours, I was determined to achieve what I was sent to achieve but I couldn’t. Those people were out of order and they wanted everything and I saw it since the first moment.

As I was leaving on my way back home the head of their army looked at me and said in an ordering tone: “Tell your people to submit to us or war it shall be.”

All I did was reply: “I will see you in the battle field.”

As I left I knew they gave orders to their armies to move. We didn’t rest on my way back, not me, not my horse. And when I arrived I told them what I have heard and they were as dignified as I was to give in to those people. They would never accept that option. For war we prepared and that was how it all really started, that is what got me here.

It was not a war for any hidden political reasons. We did not go for it for more land or for denying anyone their freedom. All we did was march out to meet an enemy and defend our land, defend our identity, defend what we stand for, defend our families, our food and our lives…

The battle was not fair, they had ten times the military power we had. The town was burnt down. My wife and kids were killed and those who escaped were a minor group…

Today I am going back home to see the ruins of what I once called my own cottage. Today I seek to remember how simple life was cause it is not that simple anymore.

As I arrive there I see many houses have been rebuilt, but that’s not what makes the place different. What makes the place different is that the people I know are no more there, the people I know have died and the few left are fugitives away from their own land.

I know one day I will see them again in the battle field and I know I am gonna fight them and I know some people think it is an old story. A story of twenty years. My home is not there anymore but I remember where exactly it was and I am gonna come back and I am gonna make my wife and kids proud of me in their graves…. And let them call me a criminal… I am just in it for the truth… I am just in it for the honour I swore to keep for life…

And for my lost Identity…..