Children in the warzone

From their knee-high world, everything looks upside down. The sky, erstwhile a canvas of clouds and kites, present spits fire. Thunder nary longer brings raindrops but missiles. Streets, erstwhile truthful familiar, twist into mazes of rubble. For children, warfare arrives without warning. One time they are successful school; the next, successful chaos; hungry, afraid, and alone.

The bushed of beingness — lukewarm hands astatine breakfast, the ringing of schoolhouse bell, evening games nether fading airy — vanishes similar enactment connected glass. The child’s tiny universe, erstwhile stitched unneurotic by routines, tears isolated astatine the seams.

Their satellite shifts successful a blink: from the clatter of luncheon boxes to the clang of tin roofs successful exile camps, from chalk-dusted hands to bloodied fingernails, from bedtime stories to sirens of death. Until yesterday, unit meant a artifact snatched distant oregon a scraped knee. Not this. Not the entity connected fire. Not the quiescent aft an aerial strike.

Ironies onslaught hard. The aforesaid adults who erstwhile scolded them for petty fights present unleash demolition with objective detachment. And the guardians they trusted to support them basal helpless. Elders, erstwhile oracles of answers, present susurration successful fearfulness oregon look successful silence.

The astir haunting images of warfare are not ever fallen buildings oregon mangled metal; but children. The Standing Boy of Nagasaki, with his dormant babe member strapped to his back, waiting silently astatine a cremation ground. The Napalm miss from Vietnam, fleeing, arms outstretched similar breached wings, her shriek scorching the air. These children did not outcry for cameras. Their soundlessness has echoed done generations.

Today, the communicative repeats. Ribs poke done bladed skin. Dust-covered faces look from collapsed homes, clutching breached toys. Children beryllium beside the inactive bodies of their parents.

To a child, warfare isn’t past oregon politics. It isn’t strategy oregon slogans. It is hunger. Pain. Loss. A terrifying crippled played by grown-ups; without rules, and without mercy. Volumes are written astir war; its causes, its costs, its necessity. Adults argue, justify, condemn, adjacent glorify it. But children? They don’t recognize provocations oregon ideologies. They lone unrecorded the consequences.

harichitrakootam@yahoo.com