Just another day of school finished, and it was time for my friends and I to go grab a lahmajeen (lahmajoon) from the store two blocks down from our school which made them. We all paid and got our “pizzas”. I walked down to grab the lemonade to add on my lahmajeen, and the symphony of the AK47s started. I knew it wasn’t very close to us, around 200 meters away, but the people’s words made us worry. I was in the seventh grade, and being that old, or young in a situation like that, it is very hard to concentrate on things that happen around you. First thing that happens is your body becomes a statue as you start thinking and wondering what had happened and what will happen next. The older men ran outside to see what happened, and we stood in the restaurant to watch through the dirty windows.

Three pick-up trucks passed by, full with militias who opened fire on all of the restaurants and stores around the block. I always thought that a moment like that would take forever to finish; I was wrong. The drive-by felt so fast that we all fell down, heard the shots followed by silence with the truck noises only coming after seconds. “Drive-by !” somebody yelled after around a minute of the shooting, while bleeding to death on the floor. Awkward, I thought. I’ve always believed that people show you their real selves when they’re put in a “live or die” situation, and I was right on that one. The men on the floor were trying to reach for something. Each of them tried to reach his hand to a side they couldn’t reach, but kept trying. I was scared, and detail like these scared me even harder. I looked around to find my friends; and I did. All of my group were doing alright, only the older men who went outside were the ones hurt or killed in the shooting. I left my friends after around thirty seconds, scared of another drive-by. Five men came from the back of the store and each of them had an AK47 with them. Two of them were the men who ran the store. I’ve known them for years. They ran outside to see if any of the militias stayed there. Another pick-up truck passed by and the five men ripped the car apart thinking that it belongs to the militias. Later on they realized that the driver had nothing to do with them, and fortunately was only shot in the leg.

The next day, as I was walking out of school, I heard new gun shots and, as usual, ran to find cover. I ducked behind the school’s wall until a couple of minutes passed from the shooting and enough people were outside. I got up and continued walking towards home. I saw around fifty people standing outside the restaurant I ate at every day. I walked faster since I knew something was wrong. One of the store owners was killed in a new drive-by; only this time they weren’t militias, they were the other truck driver’s, who was shot by mistake, family.

That main street was closed for three days with huge tents. That is a process every Muslim goes through after a death in the family. They install a huge tent or two in the middle of the street and relatives come in to sit, talk, and pray. This event followed up by many deaths taking the innocents’ lives in order to make the guilty feel better. Even though such an event may be described as a disaster, these were the rules. We’ve grown up going through this. It is very hard to understand the rules until you live them every day. Just like the Nazis’ hate to the Jews, just like the Turks’ hate to the Armenians, some “rules” are made up by the strongest, and are run through the people creating fear and disasters. I have gone through the fear and disasters, and have probably, without realizing doing so, practiced my own rules on the weak as well. I now understand how that term works, and I hope it is understandable enough for anyone going through trouble. Don’t bring anyone down for not knowing something. Teach them.

Apo Avedissian

It was a beautiful sunny day when we first walked in “the field” in Baghdad. It was a hot day, around 58 c’ degrees outside. The kids brought a soccer ball as the groups started cussing at each other before we played the “championship” match. The field was a huge soccer field project that took around 6 years to build due to financial problems. We, the kids of that neighborhood, used to make a soccer league and play in the street. My team made it to the finals, and since we won the champion ship, we got to play in “the field” whenever we wanted, and little by little it became a place we would hang out at every day.
As the war began, we weren’t allowed to leave our houses. I remember going up on the roof and jumping the walls that separate the roofs of others to get to a friend’s house, until one day a laser beam was pointed straight at my eye and two soldiers on top of a tank around a quarter mile away pointed at me to walk down. That was the last time I was on the roof.

Our next league never started. After almost a year of war, everyone was used to the shootings and bombings already, and we believed that if God gave you a life, he’d choose whether you get shot or survive. It never went by luck. It was faith. I remember the first time we got to see the field after many months of not even taking a look at it from outside. The fences were gone, the grass was no longer green, and the walls of the buildings around it were no longer the clean white buildings. Everything became brown or black. There were no older people playing backgammon on the side and eating seeds. There were no longer women hanging clothes on their balconies in the surrounding buildings. The field became empty, silent, and a smelly place. I didn’t even feel like walking on that field as it no longer was the field it used to be. Dead street dogs were lying around with bunch of flies flying over them. Empty bullet and rocket caps lay scattered on the ground. Later on the field became a small base for the American troops,

Getting a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in Iraq doesn’t exclude you from selling cigarettes or vegetables on the street. There’s absolutely no value for education over there, you need connections rather; in fact, the only reason a person might get a degree is to keep his/her family’s name high. I grew up in a family which had goals and strict rules about education, which made me want to study even more at times. My Arabic teacher told me once that he was very proud of me and he expected me to become an inventor once I get older, and he also said he could swear his life on it. He always told me to read books, whether fiction or not, whether a story or a how-to manual; he always asked me to read more and more.

During my eighth grade, many problems occurred which caused all of our school to be closed down for many months.

On a Monday morning, as we were heading to class from the concrete field, I heard people shouting and a group of people ran out of the building next to us. Just another man trying to shoot someone, we thought. The principal ran all the way to our fields and told us to not leave the campus and to stay away from the school buildings. We were a group of seven guys, and just like any other kids who take things for granted, we decided to find out what was going on. I remember a friend of mine and I picked up our backpacks and started running after the other guys who ran before us. For a moment, I couldn’t see anything, I remember seeing a white flash that stayed on for a millisecond and a huge pressure threw me back. I was laying on the ground. All my body felt sore. I opened my eyes while on the ground, facing up; I was still conscious. I looked around and saw nothing but smoke and fire coming out of the school building. I felt someone dragging me from my leg away from the building, and I remember trying to stand up on my own. I got up and my friend who ran late with me was still on the ground bleeding, and I noticed he was still breathing. I yelled at many people to call an ambulance, which the responds I got were “They don’t have enough cars and they’re all working”. I noticed that my leg was bleeding after several minutes, and didn’t feel a thing still. For a second I thought I was hit, but it was just the wound of me being thrown on the concrete ground. An old lady offered her head scarf to wrap my leg with, but I refused and kept walking and tried to find a way to get someone to help the injured. There wasn’t an announcement, but by that time I knew the other five guys who ran before us passed away. An ambulance finally arrived with only the driver; we had around thirty injured people, which most of them were walking around looking like they were trying to solve a puzzle. We lifted the most injured ones and put them all in the ambulance and he drove to the nearest hospital. I walked back in the school’s building where some parts of it were still burning. I remember yelling “anyone here?” many times, but an older guy walked out of a room and said he already checked many times. No one who was around the building made it.

A day later we found out that my Arabic teacher was talking to my five friends during that time, and possibly asking them to leave, and was taken away by the explosion as well. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he was killed in the explosion. “He was a wise man, this can’t be true” I though to my self for some reason. We also heard that some former student, a drop out, planted the bomb and was right next to it by the time he blew him self and others up. My friend, who survived, joined me later as we went to the church to mourn the Christian ones who passed away, and then the mosque to mourn the Muslim ones.

I didn’t go to school for the rest of the year and forgot a lot of things. By then, we were able to leave the country in late 2004 and head to Amman, Jordan. We came to the U.S. afterwords. After coming to the U.S., I realized that a degree actually does take you to places and takes you straight to your goals, even though you might need to work hard for it. All you need is studying.

I learned a lesson the very hard way. After going through many death experiences, you get used to bombs and shootings. However, my Arabic teacher made another point; a point that changed my life forever. “I could become an inventor!” I thought. “The man told me that I could.” I came to the U.S., went to high school, graduated, and now I’m working on getting a master’s degree in Computer Science.

I no longer have to be worried about finding connections in the department I want to work in. I no longer have to bribe the people who are in charge just to get a chance to get looked at for a job interview. It’s all about education and dedication now. I learned. I learned at the cost of people’s lives. I learned at the cost of my Arabic teacher’s life.

Apo Avedissian