“ Put the seeds in your pocket!”
A woman came. Her steps were strong, like a hammer pounding repeatedly. They could hear her miles away. She was unarmed but her aura intimidated the soldiers standing around her neighborhood. So much so, they all drew out their rifles.
The woman stopped, only because she came to close contact with one soldier. He, who was standing in front of a front yard, was a tall, young man in his early 20s in the grip of his hands now turned into a gun. The woman’s abdomen was right at the tip of the rifle, but she showed no sign of fear. They were at an impasse.
Eventually, the soldier backed down, figuratively. He did not move an inch away from where he was, instead he lowered the rifle, and let it hang around his shoulder by its strap. Taught to be vigilant, he examined the woman.
Her skin was as pale and bleak as the sky above the city. The air reeked the scent of gun powder. She stood solemnly, unbothered. Her spine was straighter than the soldiers. It could be because she was adamant, or because the soldiers were not as trained as anyone would think they were.
His eyes landed on her palm.
This 50 year-old woman stood before him, with a handful of sunflower seeds. He had never seen one. In his country, it was always winter. Anything with the scent of warmth and sunshine would not survive. He took a little longer to check her palm for any potential danger, and then a little longer to ridicule himself on the thought that a handful of sunflower seeds were dangerous.
“Put them in your pockets.” She put her hand forward. The soldier understood a bit of her language. He learnt it before the government sent him here and he knew it would come in handy. He was not good enough to speak though, nor was he good enough to understand the second half of her sentence, so he, too, opened his hands with palms facing her, signaling her to calm down and back off. His gun was once again hanging on his shoulder, swinging back-and-forth lifelessly as he put emphasis on his gesture.
The woman kept ranting, using words that were beyond the soldier’s knowledge. That got to be some culture specific swear words, the soldier pondered. The others were looking, keeping close attention to protect their comrade. The soldier noticed. He must prevent escalation of the other solders’ action as he wanted to protect her. He did not second-guess the notion, he just knew. Some things need no second-guessing.
He grabbed the seeds clumsily with his thick gloves and poured them into his pocket . Some fell to the soil. As he glimpsed at them, the gun entered the corner of his eyes, swinging. Then he grabbed it, holding it between his arms once again but no longer pointing at her.
The woman passed by him with her head up. As he turned to look at her, he understood her aggression. This was her yard; this was her house; and this was her country.
The commander called for a retreat. All the soldiers marched back to their station in silence and union. The commander briefed them about the war’s progress. All of them listened in silence and union. Only the soldier, with a pocket full of sunflower seeds, asked about the deaths, from the first day until now. Civilians kept dying, and he kept asking. At first their commander would still explain how it was necessary. He would give the usual bollocks about the sacrifice for greater good but now all the ethics and logic were reduced to the simple “ cross fire”. He knew he would keep asking, even when the commander stopped answering, relentlessly. He knew he was not looking for an answer, otherwise he would’ve stopped asking a long time ago, but he didn’t know what he wanted to hear.
The next day the soldier was dispatched to the same area. This time he took a closer look at his surroundings, the houses, the yards with bright yellow sunflowers, the people.
She returned. Oddly, he felt a slight relief. A familiar face in an alien place did offer the thinnest reassurance to the young man. He paid more attention to her physical attributes and found himself awed at her similarity with his estranged mom, the face, the fierceness, the faith. It was probably a coincidence, or his memory of his mom had become too blurred to tell. He hadn’t seen her for ages. He picked up a few more words of what she said this time. She was saying something about corpses and flowers. He jotted down the syllables in his mind, hoping to piece out the sentence when he caught a break.
The woman once again returned to her home. The soldier thought he heard some noises of mechanics and metals. Those noises sank to the bottom of his thoughts, as he scoffed at the possibility of “cross fire” in this weaponless neighborhood. He hadn’t even encountered one armed man.
No one was old enough for war, not the soldier , nor the woman.
The next day, the commander told them not to return to that neighborhood and left hastily without further instruction. A miraculous break, the soldier thought to himself. Must’ve been a Saturday. The soldiers bantered. They couldn’t keep track of dates. The only days they knew were today and the next day because that was all they needed.
On the bright side, they got to have lunch for the first time together. As he dug into the ridiculously deep pockets for a napkin, his fingers touched the ammos. The metals were freezing cold and it startled him. It shouldn’t, though. He should’ve gotten used to it by now, only his mind was occupied. He kept repeating the syllables to himself, for fear that he’d forget and never get to hear them again. The others saw and laughed at him for lowering his guard. They did not chat before. He only found out he was the youngest among them just then. He shrugged and kept digging. Instead of the fabric, he found himself holding a handful of sunflower seeds as he pulled his hand out.
He sneaked out and went to the neighborhood with a rifle between his arms. He shouldn’t, though. He only knew today and the next day. He couldn’t wait for the next day. He ran and ran and stopped abruptly as if he was struck by lightning. The reality was nothing less than that. He realized why they had a day off, as the wrecked houses, sunflowers and people unveiled before his eyes.
This place was bombed, to its ashes.
He was too young for this. He ran, frantically, until close enough to see the corpse lying in the front yard. He stopped, not out of the fear for dead bodies, but out of the sheer fright that it might be someone he’d recognize. Regardless, he found his eyes stuck on the yard. He was amazed, if he was capable of being, by the flowers. No amount of dust and stomps were able to hinder its yellow, not even the blood. They were sharp, forming a contrast with the apocalyptic surroundings. From the trail of flattened pedals, his eyes climbed onto the corpse lying on the grass that was no longer green. She was holding a rifle distributed by the government to protect its citizens. Ironically that might be the reason for the residents’ doom.
From her hands, his eyes shifted to her pockets. There were seeds pouring out of it.
He froze at the spot, failing to notice the slight movement of the “corpse” on the ground, to hear the loud noises of a gun being fired, to react to the sudden but immense pain in his abdomen.
No one was old enough for war, not the woman , nor the soldier. The only difference between them was the desire. The desire to attack, versus the desire to protect.
There was an explosion in the sky. The soldier vaguely heard. It sounded like two planes crashing into each other.
As he fell on the concrete road with the last sight being the woman’s distorted face tormented by the pain of moving her broken limbs, he finally pieced together the unfinished sentence.
“Put the seeds in your pocket, so that when you die, at least there will be flowers blooming from your corpse.”