The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.”

A morning with humming birds and a night with stars, a place was full of happiness with beautiful moments to enjoy. People woke up to begin their lives. Some for the work, many walked their kids to schools, and some consuming food with sips of tea. There was a place called home with voices of life, where prayers were being called, laughter was echoing, and a smell of delicious food was roaming around the street. There was a girl named Fatima. Fatima, a pure soul of love and innocence, who was cuddling with her little brother in her very cozy room. The little room which was filled with her mother's warmth, her father's love, and her little innocent smiles, the room which meant the whole world to her. A room where her childhood took first step, her first words were celebrated, and shared with the family. Her world was filled with love, warmth, and smiles. A room where she grew up playing with her doll and friends, making moments each second. A room where she was painting the history of her innocence. All of a sudden her room was gone with the terrible sounds of alarms and not so welcoming sounds of attacks. All of that got lost in a blink of an eye and crumbled into ruins and smoke of grief forever.

A place, once her heaven, had turned into burning hell. The streets where she could walk with her family were no more a path of roses for her. Her home where she could gather with her family and feed the emptiness of her hunger with the bread of love and soup of comfort, a place where she was sleeping while listening to her beautiful stories from her Mama, had turned into smoke and ashes. Hours had passed, she woke up from the rumbles of stones and bricks with pain of wounds and emptiness. The sky was filled with dust and a scent of destruction. Amidst this chaos and cries from around, in isolation, she got up and started to look for her home. She spotted something. "What was there?" Was that her home? But no, it was all flat with pieces of her shattered dreams. The familiar was no more familiar anymore. She wandered aimlessly, looking for something, no, someone—but it wasn’t clear what.

The world around her felt like a bad dream she couldn’t wake from. Beautiful homes turned into rags and bones. Empty space was making jokes with what was life before.

With aches in her each step, she pushed the rubble. It was all wrong. Everything was not in place and yet, it was there at the same place. Her heart and mind unfriended each other. Her mind was screaming about the truth but the heart was living in an illusion of hope. The pillars of her strong home were not there and the broken mirrors were mourning the deep loss of her life. With an empty mind, painful heart, and a lost soul, Fatima gathered herself to look for one human touch, praying that it could be a nightmare but no, it was there in front of her empty eyes.

Her heart pounded fast, skipping beats. "Was this my home?", she asked herself. She rushed to find some familiar touches from it. How, why, who did it to my beautiful home? She wasn't thinking through it right. With her trembling body, she managed to reach the broken door lying down there with a sad face. The familiar door which was the entrance to her most beautiful world, she recognized it. She hugged the door as if it was the whole world that meant to her. It brought back her memories and a sudden loss. As she walked through the debris, all she could find, the broken and shattered pieces of dusty pink walls of her room, a little doll with black dust, and a broken bed. Everything went upside down. All her smiles got buried under the pillows of sadness and ruins.

Fatima fell down with shock, exhaustion, fear, and pain which could never be rebuilt. She lied down silently with her little heart's prayers to open up her eyes to see a familiar room but to her grief, it was all dark and unfamiliar. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn't know who and how to find anyone for help and to cry over a shoulder if left alive. With her tiny hands, she wiped her tears away, made a promise to herself that she would keep looking for her lost memories in her broken room. She would keep looking for her beautiful past, and she would build new dreams on the pile of remains but she does't know about present and future and yet, she has to fight as she has no other option but to breathe. The tragedy had taken away everything but not her beautiful heart in the little familiar room which is no more familiar anymore.

In the war of hate and greed, power and tyranny, ego and pride, we lose our innocence and purity, and never return back to what we built with love, effort, and sacrifice. We forget to forgive. The lessons of love and giving became the words of the books to be closed forever. We, the humans, were here for sharing but not for having. The purpose of life got crushed under the feet of autocracy in some parts of the world. Time flies giving us great lessons which are learnt sometimes hardway and sometimes no way. We need to build the familiar room.

On each side of the isle, there are interests. Each one is writing a history and building a future for years to come and generation to live. Who will be right or wrong? Who is going to decide the path to choose and make this world a living and livable place. A bitter truth is out there. This place is heaven for each being. Let's return to innocence.