Under the roof of an arabian house

Part 1

I was in pain. Pain all over me. Colossal pain was taking me in and I was grieving. From the top of my head, flowing down my spine to my feet. It was invading me. I could not figure out where the pain exactly was, yet it felt to me like it was everywhere.

I opened my eyes to meet the eyes of a stranger. I registered everything around me. I was lying in a bed; two people who I seemed unfamiliar to me were roaming around me doing... things I did not understand. Where am I? I asked myself, what happened? I then realised I was in an ambulance and the stranger in front of me was one of the medical caretakers. That all I remember from that situation. I remember myself trying to recollect memories from the past events, eventually finding nothing but a blank space in my head, unwillingly absent-minded . Straight afterwards I fell into another coma.

I woke up again, the agony refusing to leave my body and my soul. This time I was shouting. It had been the only thing that allowed me to expel the discomfort that I had felt. So I shouted. I screamed blue murder and my echo travelled from one corner to the other in the hospital's surgery room. An large number of doctors and nurses had gathered around me, cutting my clothes with scissors and getting rid of the rest into trash. They were cutting my beautiful floral dress. The dress my daddy had bought me from his business to Paris. The dress my mommy had helped me wear that morning, while we were getting ready for our Voyage to Great Britain. I remember being furious that they were cutting cut my dress. Why are cutting my dress? I was thinking to myself in utter trauma. Leave my dress. My daddy bought it. Leave my beige dress. Yet all I ever did was howl. They had been trying to cut the dress because my left leg have been burnt. The fabric had clung to my flesh as if it were normal for human flesh and artificial products to mingle together. It was terrorized. That view- that I still remember till this day - in front of me was surreal. So I started calling for my parents, because I was afraid and I felt alone. But I got no answer. The only thing I got was sad, sympathetic looks from the people around me, who they themselves were very disturbed by what they were witnessing. My leg was hanging up on pulleys for the doctors to cut off the burnt, black skin. I was in torture. I cried so loud the whole building could hear my voice. I then called out for my brother, but I got no answer from him either. No one was there. Just unfamiliar faces, in and out through doors like rockets. Then I fell again in a coma.

The second time I opened my eyes, I wasn't feeling pain anymore. Not physically, I did not. But psychologically, I was dying. I was dying inside, because in that exact moment, I had spotted my mother. She collapsed and she was screaming in the halls of the hospitals. She was yelling my father's name while doctors and some of our relatives surrounding me tried to calm her down. Then everything fell to place to me. The missing puzzle piece was now there: We had a car accident.

I was 7 years of age at the time. I had already suffered and faced a century's worth of circumstances and struggles. My mother had been told that my chances of living were exactly zero, for my burns were highly dangerous and I could not possibly survive the pain. Therefore, for a couple of days, she had to await tensely the final announcement from the doctors. Is my daughter going to live? ... Is my husband going to make it?

Weird how, now that I think about it, things had taken different turns on us that day we were in the car. Very unfortunate turns, our fate has taken, turning our lives upside down. Literally.

That day where I woke up in the hospital room was not better than the days before. Despite the disappearance of the pain thanks to medications that I was provided with, I eventually found myself facing this completely different world, a world I knew nothing of. It was like planting a daisy flower in the winter then forcing it to grow and blossom. Her cries were so loud in the hospital that I had only wished for her to stop. My mother's agony digged right through me, and I felt anything but safe since then. Because I understood then that my mother was just as weak as I was. She was not adjusting well to our sudden degradation. On top of that, she was not the type of person who would wear a brave face and lie: "Everything will be okay", faking a smile and wiping away tears of sorrow. I had wished she would come to me and console me with a few words, tell me the truth and that we would somehow make it work. But I would not blame her...