The long black sedan pulled away, leaving them standing in the glow of the red taillights. The pair turned and walked back toward the ruins of the apartment complex that stood farther down the street. The rubble was all that was left of their homes. Like their lives, nothing could seemingly get much worse.
Kerima walked back toward the place she called home. The dwelling was barely inhabitable. It was once a two story apartment building before the war. All that remained were part of a room where she stayed, next to one complete apartment where an elderly lady lived, Mrs. Kushka. She watched out for Kerima, taking treats to her when there was enough food to eat. She was Kerima’s guardian angel. Although she had a roof, nobody had windows, so curtains were the only thing that added any privacy or shelter from the outside winds. Mrs. Kushka’s curtains had been blown and whipped so much that they were mostly shreds of faded cloth, little more. It only added to the sullen appearance of the place.
At the far end of the bombed out complex lived a man that was nothing but skin and bones. His hair was long and scraggly, having the look of not having been washed as was the rest of his body. The man looked as if he could have easily crawled out of a grave, such was his haggard appearance. He sat on the ground during the day under a dead apple tree that was on the far end corner of the building. He had spent so much time under the tree the ground was worn bare. The trunk of the tree was also void of bark from where he had continually hugged it, as if being chained to the dead wood. When he fell asleep, he curled up like a dog and slept head against his knees that would be pulled up into the fetal position. All the man wore was an old dirty burlap cloth sack. His private parts would hang out in disgusting displays of sheer destituteness of being; for the man was no longer human.
Each time Kerima would walk up the broken walkway to what use to be her front door, the man-beast would stop whatever he was doing and run to his tree, hugging it and watch her intently until she disappeared from his sight into the remains of the building.
She gave him the creeps.
Kerima made it to her little room, barely free from the elements, but covered enough to provide shelter for her to sleep, rain or snow. There was a small cook stove that had a chimney which was vented just above what was left of her ceiling, which now sagged and hung limply from the few rafters that remained above. There in the stove she burnt fragments of whatever wood she could salvage from great heaping piles of bombed out buildings in their area, which there multitudes to choose from. The UN Peace Keeping forces had left the year before and with them, the international clean-up crews had also departed. Now it was up to the local authorities and their fellow countrymen to put a country torn apart by war, back together with little or no resources to do it with.
She had been away at school when the Serbian army came through her neighborhood and apartment by apartment pulled all the inhabitants out and marched them down to the city square where they were shot and then piled in massive mounds of death and set afire. Mrs. Kushka had been away visiting her sister when they came for her husband, a retired carpenter. He along with Kerima’s family were all slaughtered that sad day. In many ways Kerima had wished she had been there with them.
After she got the fire going in the stove, she lit a small candle on the sink near her bed. She looked out through the boarded up window in the corner of the room as the light in the sky faded. “May Allah find me something better in this life,” she prayed openly as she took a small piece of bread from her pocket that she had wisely saved from their unexpected trip into town. She sat there on the edge of the tiny bed, eating the remnants of another meal and then quietly and softly tucked herself into the bed, alone; so all alone. In the hopes of a distant dream, she wondered if the Dimitri had been a dream or if she really would see him again on Saturday.
Nothing seemed for real anymore except the grim realities of life; these were all too painfully obvious.
