I gasped, suffocating from internal
bile, coughing it up and then finally screaming. It was not a scream of horror
but rather one of unrestrained joy, as life overcame death struggling under the
worst scenario imaginable, clinging, scraping, and struggling for life, tethered
to my mother as she moaned with the last breath of her life pursing her lips
and imperceptibly telling me that she loved me, but that she would not be
around to care for me and love me as I deserved. She poured a lifetime of love,
comforting advice, inspiration and guidance telepathically into those few
impassioned words, as the last breath of life drained from her body and she was
gone.
My mother was an unfortunate victim of this hellish
earthquake with a huge block of cement crushing her and cheating her of
motherhood, the result of a corrupt government looking the other way as
construction companies bribed officials of that government cynically producing substandard
buildings in this Syrian-Turkish border town, along a fault line.
I seemed to lie there in the
blackness and smoke and dust entombed with the lifeless body of my mother
unable to nurture or care for me. After a very long time there was a blinding
light and movement. I could hear voices and I cried out in frustration and fear
of not being discovered.
“The mother is dead, but the child lives!”
explained the dirty grey bearded face furrowed with many lines.
“Carefully, carefully cut the cord
and tie it before she is poisoned!” said a much younger,
black bearded face.
I was carefully pulled from the
rubble and wrapped in a blanket. I sit before you today twenty years later in
this comfortable home of my adapted parents, clean, well dressed, healthy and educated,
and very grateful that my mother’s wishes for me came true.
A Syrian Orphan
Jim / 2.2023
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