2006, Los Angeles, California

By Nathalie Myers

I live in a small apartment building in the Thai town district of Hollywood. This place has housed artists, actors, writers, movie men and musicians since I have lived here. I live up front so I take on the title of being the self-proclaimed door greeter. I hear a lot of stories within these walls, but recently there was one of such intensity, I felt responsible for letting it be known.

There is a girl who lives across the way from me. (She is pictured on the left, I am on the right.) We would always run back and forth to each other’s apartments and exchange different types of food and let our cats play. Hers was a blind kitten she had rescued from the alley, but he would win most of the fights between him and my cat, who was a year older and three times his size. We used to eat Thai desserts and watch this spectacle laughing so hard our stomachs hurt.

The girl’s name was Amira, but I called her Mira, and she liked it. She and her family came here from Israel 10 years ago, and she always wore a Star of David made of gold and pearl around her neck. Her parents were far from orthodox, but still attended their Jewish temple with her regularly.

She would usually get off work around 7 p.m., tired and groggy from the retail world in Beverly Hills. If I was home I would welcome her in and we’d talk about the events of our day. One day, it was long past 7 and I let the hours roll by me, but I kept an eye on them with concern for her. Nine p.m., then 10, and I began to bring my worry to the surface. I looked out my window and peeked here and there at the sound of every car driving by, which is quite often in this city. I decided to do the dishes and not let myself look out the window until I was done.

I was drying the last dish when I heard the front gate slam, and heard footsteps at the pace of a run coming into the building. I ran to my door, looked out the peephole and saw it was Mira crying, in hysterics. I ran out and grabbed her, held her and rocked her. “What happened? What happened? Tell me sweets, please. Shhh, shhh, it’s gonna be OK.” My voice echoed after I said it and there was a long pause, before she told me the story.

Back in Israel, Amira lived in a small village that bordered a Muslim area. As a child she was never taught anything about them or their people, as her parents were humble, modest, and not at all extreme. They just told her to be careful over there, because the Muslims had much stricter parents. So she played over there with caution, and wouldn’t have played there at all, if it weren’t for a boy just one year older than her named Batul.

Amira and Batul played together with innocence, and Amira’s family rarely cared, but one day Batul’s did. She met him in the morning at the huge rock that separated their villages and saw his face was bruised and swollen. He was only 13, and her heart sunk at the sight of it.

When she asked what had happened, he told her his father beat him for playing with her and speaking to her. He then decided for them that their meetings would be secret from then on, and when she suggested they not see each other at all he told her that wouldn’t be possible because he would marry her one day. She blushed and ran home, and after that they continued their secret meetings at the rock, and other such places.

Then one day, to her surprise, she was awoken by her father and he told her they would be moving to America … the next morning. She met Batul at the rock and he was the first person she told, and he promised her they would never lose touch and that one day he would still marry her.

So she came to the States with her family, and Amira and Batul wrote to each other at least four times a year. It was during the past few years that he informed her of how bad the war had made things for his family and his people. The conflict had always been there, but the interference had seemed to make the Muslims more aggressive than ever.

It was hard to even get a letter to her, as the extremists kept a strong eye on him and everyone else in the village. In the last letter she received from Batul, he told her he was coming to see her and needed to get out of there fast before it got worse. People were dying every day and the bombs, tanks, and gunshots were getting closer. His uncle, a Muslim fundamentalist, was now living with them. That was four months before she lied in my arms crying. She looked up at me after all this, stared me in the eye and said only, “He died for me, he died for me.”

After calming down, she explained that the Muslims, by his uncle’s orders, found his plane tickets, travel plans, and her name and address in a bag under his bed. They forced him to fight the next day as punishment for his “sins.” His father agreed out of fear, and sent him to fight with them the next day.

That is the day that he died, and that was the day she was late coming home. His uncle had contacted her family, and threatened them to stay in the States, and never go back. She knew they never would.

Amira still lives across from me, but she has never been the same, and quite honestly neither have I. This is just one story of one life when thousands are lost every month. What happened to Batul is my proof of why war should not exist, and of how us being there might just be bringing the hate a little too close to home.

Nathalie Myers is a young writer from Los Angeles. She has written both fiction and non-fiction and is currently writing sketch, shorts, and one act plays for local theaters.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 | Email This Post

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