Before Our Dawn| ongoing

twenty-five

Chapitre vignt-cinq
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For Hans, life in Berlin, Germany, had been predictable. Born into a middle-class family to a father who worked as a lawyer and a mother who devoted her days to taking care of the home, he was afforded luxuries that many could only ever dream of.

It was the sombre era of October 1940, where the whisperings of war, once distant and indistinct, had grown into an undeniable reality. The wheels of conflict, set into motion by political machinations and fervent ideologies, began to churn the world into a turbulent tempest. Hans, once surrounded by the ordinary cadence of life, now witnessed its metamorphosis into a relentless march towards violence.

A unique dissonance thrummed within Hans' household. While his parents, swayed by the prevailing propaganda, threw their support behind the rising tide of the Reich, Hans harbored a silent dissent. His convictions resisted the currents of dogma, seeking to navigate the storm with a moral compass untainted by extremist zeal. It terrified him how quickly people could change, how his parents could turn so easily on friends, neighbours, and colleagues they had spent years around.

A pivotal juncture awaited Hans, thrust upon him with an iron hand – the draft. The same hand that had reached into the life he once knew and reshaped its contours. Deemed a cog in the mechanized beast of war, he was dispatched to a realm of darkness and despair – a concentration camp. There, within the confines of humanity's unfathomable cruelty, he bore witness to the dehumanization of his fellow beings, the echoes of lives extinguished resounding through his soul. He was reminded of the cruel fate bestowed upon friends he had known; friends who would share the same fate as those he had watched his fellow soldiers murder for the glory of their country. But to Hans, this was not a country to fight for. This was a graveyard of men, women, and children. And yet he was powerless to do a single thing.

Call it luck or call it a blessing, he was later posted to Paris, France. The grandeur and vibrancy that had once defined the City of Light had been subdued, replaced by a palpable tension that lingered in the very air.

The iconic architecture that had adorned Parisian boulevards now served as a backdrop for the scenes of occupation. German soldiers, with their uniforms and authority, became an inescapable presence on the city's cobblestone pathways. The pulse of the city's cultural heartbeat, once beating with the rhythm of art, literature, and romance, now faltered beneath the weight of suppression.

Cafés and bistros which used to be vibrant hubs of intellectual discourse had been hushed into a veil of cautious whispers. The charm of Montmartre and the Seine's banks now bore traces of melancholy, as the city's inhabitants navigated the perilous tightrope of daily life under the watchful eyes of the occupiers.

This wasn't the city he remembered visiting as a young boy with his parents. There was no charm. There was no life. There was only death and misery.

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As the sun's feeble light filtered through the window, Isra stirred from her restless sleep. The autumn morning of October had arrived, yet the weight of the passing days felt unrelenting. The war's relentless grasp had stolen her husband Marcel away, casting a pall of misery over her life.

The once warm and inviting home was hollow, empty. A year had nearly elapsed since Marcel's departure in September, his absence carving a void that seemed impossible to fill. The memories of the previous year's Christmas, spent in each other's arms, lingered as a bittersweet reminder of a time that now felt distant and surreal. He had left her with a heaviness she couldn't shake and a longing for the life they had prior.