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This is a genocide short story i have written thought you guys would like to read it, it's called - Innocent Eyes
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I dedicate this short story to the 1.5 million Armenians who were massacred brutally in the hands of the Ottoman Turks in the year 1915, and to my grandparents who were witnesses to this black page in history. Through this short story I wanted to portray the feelings and thoughts a child might of gone through during the death marches of thousands of defenseless Armenians into the Syrian dessert. I was inspired by my grandfather’s stories because he too was a child at the time.
The sunrises over peoples whose sun has already set, never to return. Whose cries echo into emptiness, never to be heard. Whose eyes have seen the ending of their families, and the ending of their race.
The golden sun lifts from the east, over the ever-changing sandy hills created by the fury of the wind, marking the start of another day, but who has slept? Just the dead, lying with limbs separated from their once productive bodies, bodies butchered of their once intellectual minds.
The sun has now risen to the sky standing in solitude, as a child stands alone - skin and bone. His once agile feet, with which he used to play with friends, and his never-ending childish energy, were now worn out. And friends? He wondered where they all were. He dreamt that once again he could feel the sensation of the cool water from his old town’s well, passing through his dried up body, at least allowing him to sweat under this treacherous heat, which has emptied him of every drop of fluid, but his thin blood passing through his now weak heart.
As the strong winds passed, the smell of the dead corpses assaults his senses. Ahead of him, he could see his nation’s people marching to their deaths in a straight line, as if they were boxcars emptied of their baggage, and the next stop for the train was the last. Only this train would not make a second trip the next day. The child had been left behind because he could not continue on, dragging his legs in the boiling, blood tainted sand. He had come a long way. As he stood in a trance, he remembered the happiness of his family. His mother was pregnant, and the joy they were all in was unexplainable, but this happiness turned to pain without warning. With his small, innocent eyes, he saw his pregnant mother raped and killed, and his father butchered of his head by the death soldiers. He was left alone on the land, which once was the Garden of Eden, but now had become the depths of hell.
He noticed the line of people had gotten very far by now, and was disappearing into the steam, leaving behind more groups of corpses on its way. He turned, looked back, and he saw his fate. He saw people slowly, and painfully moving to their deaths, lifeless bodies lying on the sand never to be buried, children crying with nobody to stand by them, and the old mourning with nobody to console them. As death lingered over the child, he came to his knees, and with his last breath he prayed the prayer his mother had taught him to say every night before he went to sleep. Only here there was no pillow, there was no bed, there was no mother to tuck him in…
As he closed his eyes, the weakened sun settled behind the blood wrenched sands, burying the dead with darkness, but there was always hope for another day.
Give me feedback
I dedicate this short story to the 1.5 million Armenians who were massacred brutally in the hands of the Ottoman Turks in the year 1915, and to my grandparents who were witnesses to this black page in history. Through this short story I wanted to portray the feelings and thoughts a child might of gone through during the death marches of thousands of defenseless Armenians into the Syrian dessert. I was inspired by my grandfather’s stories because he too was a child at the time.
The sunrises over peoples whose sun has already set, never to return. Whose cries echo into emptiness, never to be heard. Whose eyes have seen the ending of their families, and the ending of their race.
The golden sun lifts from the east, over the ever-changing sandy hills created by the fury of the wind, marking the start of another day, but who has slept? Just the dead, lying with limbs separated from their once productive bodies, bodies butchered of their once intellectual minds.
The sun has now risen to the sky standing in solitude, as a child stands alone - skin and bone. His once agile feet, with which he used to play with friends, and his never-ending childish energy, were now worn out. And friends? He wondered where they all were. He dreamt that once again he could feel the sensation of the cool water from his old town’s well, passing through his dried up body, at least allowing him to sweat under this treacherous heat, which has emptied him of every drop of fluid, but his thin blood passing through his now weak heart.
As the strong winds passed, the smell of the dead corpses assaults his senses. Ahead of him, he could see his nation’s people marching to their deaths in a straight line, as if they were boxcars emptied of their baggage, and the next stop for the train was the last. Only this train would not make a second trip the next day. The child had been left behind because he could not continue on, dragging his legs in the boiling, blood tainted sand. He had come a long way. As he stood in a trance, he remembered the happiness of his family. His mother was pregnant, and the joy they were all in was unexplainable, but this happiness turned to pain without warning. With his small, innocent eyes, he saw his pregnant mother raped and killed, and his father butchered of his head by the death soldiers. He was left alone on the land, which once was the Garden of Eden, but now had become the depths of hell.
He noticed the line of people had gotten very far by now, and was disappearing into the steam, leaving behind more groups of corpses on its way. He turned, looked back, and he saw his fate. He saw people slowly, and painfully moving to their deaths, lifeless bodies lying on the sand never to be buried, children crying with nobody to stand by them, and the old mourning with nobody to console them. As death lingered over the child, he came to his knees, and with his last breath he prayed the prayer his mother had taught him to say every night before he went to sleep. Only here there was no pillow, there was no bed, there was no mother to tuck him in…
As he closed his eyes, the weakened sun settled behind the blood wrenched sands, burying the dead with darkness, but there was always hope for another day.