Blue shoes

(Adapted from a personal story that was kindly shared with me. Thank you for your honesty and your trust).

It might have been in the middle of the night or day, at dawn or as the sun set. She must have been four or five, too young to understand, too old to forget completely. Outside, the bombs were raining down on Beirut, indifferent to the age, gender, occupations of those it struck. Inside, her and her siblings had been gathered by their mother, crammed in a corner of the house, their mother acting as a shield. They remained in that position, listening to the ominous echoes of bombs, guns and cries, feeling their home tremble. The little girl, coiled in her mother’s arms, was starring at her feet. She noticed that one of them rested shoeless, the other wrapped in a small blue runner. Outside, bombs were raining down on Beirut, unmoved by the little girl’s distress.

At the first lull, the mother stood up and started busying herself around the house, collecting a few things. It was time to leave, find shelter elsewhere, further from the treacherous city. The little girl could not flee without her shoe. She stepped on the balcony, seeing what she sought. As her hand seized the shoe, as her mother snatched her arm, a bomb fell a few feet away. A hole now stood almost where the shoe had been. It was time to leave, find shelter elsewhere, far from where bombs fall on girls looking for their missing blue shoe.