(100-word flash fiction)
The rain battering the roof sounded like dancing skeletons.
Or machine-gun fire. Both reminded him of Afghanistan.
Behind his closed sleepless eyelids rose images of families
huddled in shacks, hiding their daughters, their young sons. Their once-proud
brows shrunken by war and poverty. Their once erect backs, bent.
Only young Iqbal was different. Orphaned, rudderless,
hanging around the camp doing odd jobs, immune to the horrors, always smiling,
as though he, impossibly, saw only light everywhere.
For him, the war ended when Iqbal was found dead, hit by a
stray American bullet.
Collateral damage, they said. Bloody murder, he thought.
~~~
Written for Friday Fictioneers.
~~~
