“If the bombs had torn most of your city, most of your country, to ruins? If the house that you and your family live in had holes in the walls, all the windows broken, the roof rent off? Winter is nearing, the heating doesn’t work, and the rain gushes straight in. You can only stay in the basement. Your mother has bronchitis and yet another bout of pneumonia on its way. Your older brother has lost three fingers on his left hand in an episode with a mine. He supports the militia against the wishes of your parents. Your little sister has been wounded by grenade splinters and lies in a hospital with no equipment. Your grandparents died when a bomb struck their nursing home.”
Europe has fallen apart, the only place with peace and democracy anywhere within reach is the Middle East. A normal well off European family flees to Egypt, and the family goes through the asylum process, years in camps, finally to settle in Aswan with a total loss of and transformation of social identity. Seen through the eyes of the 14-year-old son, who must now grow up and make a life utterly different from that of his parents and all he knew from before.
- Title: “War, What if it Were Here”
- Author: Jane Teller
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