My Salvation
I was walking down the road, alone. I passed the streets and the huge houses of the people in my neighborhood. I was tired. I just came back four weeks ago, and I hadn’t really slept ever since. Every night, I would go out for a walk, hoping to clear my head so that I could sleep peacefully for one night. But it never worked. It felt as if something was missing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I kept walking. I walked further this night than I walked the other nights. I don’t know why, but something was pushing me forward. I left the neighborhood a few minutes ago and was now just out of town. I was walking past the park, counting the trees on my way and looking up at the stars as I did every night.
I missed the stars. Back in Afghanistan we were sheltered under the ground for 11 months. We were only allowed to leave the bunker in the early mornings but we had to be back in half an hour. It was too dangerous to be out there without protection. I had seen multiple soldiers get shot in front of me because they didn’t make it back in time.
After about four months in the bunker, I had found a small hole that I could look through. I tried to watch the stars every night for at least half an hour. Watching the stars was something I had done since I was a little girl. My parents would take me out to the backyard and we would just lie down in the grass, looking up at the sky. My dad had shown me multiple patterns and my mom told me stories about the people who were living up there.
A few weeks before I would leave Afghanistan, my best friend got shot. Dinah Jane Hansen, captain of ground team Alpha, got shot during her last operation. Her team almost made it back to the shelter, when one of her soldiers got shot in his leg. She ran back to him and dragged him to the bunker. The guy was dragged inside by the guys of my team, but there was no sign of Dinah. She saved the life of this soldier by paying for it with her own.
She was my best friend. I had known her since we were little, and she was all I had left. Her body was sent home to her family and I got to leave earlier too so that I could attend her funeral. It was hard for me to watch her family that day, to see them so broken. She saved a man’s life that day, and she had saved many more in her years in the army, but she had also left her husband and two children that day.
I shook my head lightly, trying to push back my tears as I reached the end of the park. I saw the bridge leading to another city coming closer. Maybe I should turn around; I had almost walked three miles. But I didn’t turn around. For whatever reason, I kept walking.
I walked up the bridge and swung my arms over the bars to look at the water beneath me. I had never noticed how high this bridge was. It had to be at least 200 yards down to from up here. I sighed and looked up again. I started searching for some patterns in the stars when I heard a soft sniffling.
I looked around and saw somebody at the other end of the bridge. I took a few steps towards the figure, when I noticed that he or she was standing on the edge of the bridge. I walked a few steps towards the figure, careful not to scare them. As I slowly walked closer, I could see that the figure was a woman. She had long dark hair that was falling over her shoulders and I guessed that she was a bit taller than me.
I tried to make my steps a little louder to try and get the girls’ attention without scaring her. I guess she heard me because she turned her head around quickly. The lights of the bridge were soft, and only a few were actually working. I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel the tension growing between us the second she took notice of my presence.
