Letters from a Refugee

Letter 3: From Mistalia

Dear Uncle Aamir,

Right now, I am writing to you from inside a tent, in an overcrowded place. Dad says it's called a refugee camp, we've been here for the past month. The first thing the twins said when we got here was that it looked like a huge monster waiting to gobble someone up. How they came to that conclusion from a crowded place of tents, I'll never know. It did make dad laugh though, which he hadn't done since we'd left home. The trip here had been really quiet since we were trying not to get caught by the government spies,which is probably why Sun and Moon fell asleep. The whole time I kept fiddling with the pendant under my burka, the only thing keeping me calm.

This really isn't a good place to live, there is barely any food or water and my brothers have hardly any room to play. There are so many tents that it looks like some of the overcrowded cities i'd seen in one of mum's books. Also, the families in the tents and around them are bunched so close together that there's barely enough room to move through. The fence around it has super spiky stuff on it which dad calls 'Barb wire'. The limited water supply means that we barely have enough to survive not to mention use it for personal hygiene, this means we don't wash very often. Dad says that it is dangerous to spend too much outside and we have to hide because really bad stuff is happening outside. I think I heard some taliban soldiers outside the tents on on occasion, but i don't understand why dad why dad would bring us to a place that had the very people we were running away from. Another problem is that the entire place stinks and we don't have much privacy. The toilets are really open and the ones that aren't are disgusting. I am afraid of losing the twins in a place like this.

So far, we have had to weave through hundreds of people just to get food or water. I try to keep the twins entertained while dad goes and does who knows what. I thought the twins had forgotten about mum but a week ago they asked me if she had left us. They said that they never saw her and maybe she didn't care about us anymore. I had to stop myself from face palming as I took them into a corner and explained to them that mum was still with us as long as we remembered her. That she was never going to leave and that she could never stop caring about us. They burst into tears right after that, with me trying to comfort them until they fell asleep at my side from exhaustion. I couldn't really blame them, It was really hard living without a mother.

Dad came in a little while later, he said that we wouldn't be staying at the camp for much longer. He said that we are going to go to a place called Australia. I don't know what it's like there, but i've heard some things about it from the people in the camp. They say that it is a much better place than here. A place where girls can get a proper job and not get murdered. A place where you can do whatever you want, can record anything and be whoever you want. A place like what Afghanistan should be, or so I have heard, somewhere Sun and Moon can appreciate. I asked dad how we were going to get there and he said that we were going to go something called a boat. He wouldn't say anything else other than that we were leaving soon.

Today is the day that we leave, a man came in and said that he was smuggler. I don't what that is but dad was following him so we did too. I am really vary of him because he doesn't look like a nice person. He scares the twins so much that they are holding on to my burka tightly. When we were starting to leave the camp I could feel thousands of eyes on my back. I wonder what they are thinking, it's like they are judging us. I remember, sometime before mum left, she told me that I have to keep going, even if it seems that the world is against me. That, no matter what happens you'll make it through it, if you have faith. I hope she's right because as I stood there clutching my pendant with the twins next to me and dad a couple steps ahead, I had feeling that this journey was not going to be easy.

Do you think that i should trust the feeling? Am I doing what mum would have done in the situation? Should i trust the smuggler? What is Australia like? More than anything, does dad know what he is doing? Will we ever be able to live the life mum wanted for us?

Please write soon,

Your Niece,

Mistalia