Awakened from her dream, she stared at the empty room blankly, only to find the hour hand point to the number six on the clock. "This time again..." She sat up in bed and said to herself, "It's almost time to go to school."
A girl like her, if born 20 years earlier, not to mention going to school, even going out will be a rare luxury, which naturally made her appreciate the hard-won opportunity.
"The key, change, textbooks, everything all right." She counted the things she should bring for the day, and came across the hijab in the cabinet. "It has been put there for years, and probably won't be out in the future." 'she thought, closing the cupboard door.
Saying goodbye to her lonely home, she carried her schoolbag and walked down a dirt road.
Unlike other teens born after the war, she rarely brought food from home - During the war, every family had to survive on the donations of neighbors, and the meal school provided came a rare delicacy. But that is quite a long time ago, and all that remains is this slightly awkward habit. Every day, trucks printed in various languages speed down this dirt road, bringing food from all over the world to the school. A talkative Chinese driver once pointed to marker writing on his case as he unloaded and told her that the words meant "for Kurdish children."
For some reason, today's construction team is also exceptionally early. A few workers on the dirt road were already cranking up their machines to lay the foundations for the asphalt pavement in front of s new hospital, which was converted from a small clinic destroyed in the war.
The memory of her childhood came back to her. In those days, there were always a few craters on the road, and sometimes you could even see an unexploded mortar shell by the side of the road, and a dozen bullets could be dug out of the sand to be sold to recyclers. The only time she dared to take the dusty road home was at dusk, when there was a lull in the fighting between the Western army and the YPG, or the People's Defence Force, and she could still see the way by the setting sun. In the ruins of the small clinic, the YPG always sent two soldiers with guns to help children like her to get home safely. Later, she learned that one of the two soldiers had been killed in Afrin, during an offensive launched by the old Turkish government, to cover the evacuation of the masses. Another man was wounded in the war and now worked for the reconstruction committee near her home.
He was standing next to the construction site, full of beard, sunken eyes from years of war, with a long scar on his left arm and a few gunshot wounds healing, his right arm completely replaced with a new prosthetic leg. When the man saw her coming, he waved angrily: "Be careful, bloke! I told you not to come to the construction site, your father would beat you if he knew you were like this!"
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"Don't say that, man. How long will you be working on this road?"
"Just a month! Several machines were brought in from the north, and they made the roads much faster than the primitive methods you saw when you were a little child."
She hurried past the construction site while the man was still talking about how the new machine worked. The dirt road led to a small square where the local news were blaring:
"With the situation in the Middle East basically stable, the Union of Middle East Republics, with the strong support of human and material resources of people around the world, began orderly reconstruction. The city of Afrin, which had been at the center of the fighting, has now fully restored normal social order, and under the guidance of the Communist Party's first five-year plan, it has gradually begun to build new schools and hospitals, expand the size of collective communities, and truly enable more families to have books and houses. The Union of Workers' Parties and Communists in the Middle East makes a solemn promise to all the people: 'Let everyone live the life they deserve. '"
"About 2,000 trade unions and cooperatives from the Union of Europe and Asia and China have signed a joint declaration announcing the opening of vocational schools in the Middle East to provide much-needed technical support to workers and farmers in the region. The Bureau of Agriculture and People's Livelihood of the Union announced that the agricultural production of the whole Union has basically achieved self-sufficiency at present. The Union's Environmental Protection Agency also announced the success of Green Action 2045, which aims to eradicate dust storms, with 21 percent of the Arabian Desert now covered by forest."
The clock struck seven o 'clock, and the announcer's tone suddenly became heavy. Pause for a few seconds, then slowly:
"Today is the anniversary of the Middle East Revolution. This morning, the War History Statistics Bureau of the Military Council of the UME published the names of the martyrs of the Battle of Afrin -"
She heard the familiar name - Hassan Atas, Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army. Tears fell silently, wetting the name tag on his chest - Ayesha Atas.
A passer-by on the side murmured: "This Dirt road, I remember it was also repaired by the People's Liberation Army?"