Battlefield [On Hold]

Chapter 2 : Myriam

My heart skipped a beat as I heard the long, shrill whistle of the train as it jerked forward, each second inching closer and closer to our unknown and very much feared destination. I tried to make a mind map about what I knew was going on, which wasn’t very much. I technically, wasn’t supposed to know anything at all but sometimes one can’t help eavesdropping. My family was living a perfectly normal life, in a perfectly normal neighbourhood in Amsterdam, a perfectly normal city. We never had to worry about anything as our neighbourhood had an extremely low crime rate. It was a very safe neighbourhood for children to grow up in. Everyone could trust everyone and there was never the need to feel in danger at all. But everything changed just a month or so after Hanukkah.

Our family, being as religious as we were, were still celebrating towards the end of January. We were still taking off the decorations from their walls when a very odd and ominous message came across on the radio. I didn’t understand the message properly as trying to take down the blue and silver wreath from our door, is a lot more occupying then it seems. But I understood that the radio was, strangely enough, talking about a new person a power. I didn’t quite catch his or her name but I knew it must have been shocking news, because my mother shrieked and my father dropped the glass decoration he was holding and it shattered into a million pieces on the ground and Chaya burst into tears.

Suddenly, my parents and sister, seeming to have realised they were standing there in shock ushered me and my younger brother out the room and sat on the table listening to the radio, their faces filled with a kind of fear that I couldn’t quite place. Chaya sat down abruptly, still sobbing.

I peered through the keyhole of the door that acted as a barrier in between them and us and found my mother sitting on the chair crying and shaking her head and my father pacing back and forth, wearing holes onto the floor. He had a look of worry on his face, but at the same time anger as if he was going to walk out of the door and go punch someone.  Everything was fine after that and I sometimes forgot that it had even happened.

The next time something like that happened was around five months later when we heard another upsetting message on the radio. That day the usual enthusiastic chatter at the dinner table was replaced by silence, as quiet as if someone had died. After that second message, my parents were very cautious and secretive, as if they had the most precious secret in the world. It was like we had suddenly moved to a parallel universe where all our bliss was replaced with grief and fear. We almost never left the house and they forbade it for any of us children to leave the house alone, or to wear our David’s Star outside of the house. I didn’t understand, since my parents were always very supportive of our religion, and of their children’s independence. It was especially confusing for me and my younger brother who had no idea what was going on. Before this I didn’t have much, if anything to be scared of as I lived in a safe bubble that was my neighbourhood. I knew little about fear but I knew this: There’s nothing more fearsome than not knowing what you’re afraid of.

That was, of course, before this morning. Now I understand too well.