A boy with broken flag

A boy with broken flag

By Austin smith

Two faded stripes instead of three, the third scorched by fire, the edges frayed like nerves. The fabric was thin, dirty, and smelled like smoke. But to twelve-year-old Aarif, it was more than just a piece of cloth — it was the last thing left standing.

He had found it in the rubble where his school once stood. Concrete chunks covered the ground, mixed with broken pencils and bloodied textbooks. The night before, the soldiers had come. The air had screamed with jets and sirens, and the sky had burned in shades he had no name for.

His brother, Sami, had left to help injured neighbors and never returned. His mother hadn’t spoken since sunrise, rocking back and forth on a mat with her prayer beads slipping between silent fingers. His father had already been taken months ago. Aarif didn’t ask where.

But the flag… the flag fluttered.

Just a corner of it poking through the dust and brick, clinging to a broken stick like it still had something to say.

He pulled it out and held it to his chest, ignoring the ash on his fingers. He didn’t cry — he hadn’t cried since the first time the power went out and never came back. He just stared at it. And then, without thinking, he cleaned it in the nearby ditch, tied it to a longer wooden pole, and planted it in the ground where the school’s gate used to be.

Every morning after that, Aarif returned. He stood beside it, guarding it, fixing it when the wind knocked it loose. The villagers watched from behind curtains. The soldiers watched from armored jeeps.

One of them laughed once. “Go home, little boy. You’ll get yourself killed.”

Aarif didn’t flinch. “This is my home,” he said.

The laughter stopped after that.

A few weeks later, a foreign journalist arrived, camera around his neck, boots far too clean for a war zone. He snapped a photo of Aarif standing barefoot beside the crooked flag. He didn’t ask Aarif’s name — just nodded and walked away. A week after that, someone brought a printed copy of the photo. Aarif saw his face on the front page of a newspaper, beneath a headline he couldn’t read.

He didn’t care about the fame. He just wanted the flag to stay up.

Then one day, a young woman walked up to him — a teacher who used to work at the school before it crumbled. She looked at the flag, then at Aarif. “Would you like to learn again?” she asked softly.

He nodded.

And so, classes resumed under the open sky. There were no desks, only crates. No books, just scraps of paper. But there were children. And a teacher. And that same broken flag fluttering beside them like it, too, had survived something.

When winter came, the village gave Aarif shoes. When spring arrived, they painted the stone behind him with the words: "Hope Stands Tall." People started gathering — not to mourn, but to rebuild.

The soldiers no longer mocked. Some saluted when they drove by.

One evening, Aarif stood by the flag alone. The wind was softer now. The air didn’t smell like fire anymore. He touched the cloth and whispered, “Still here.”

He thought of Sami — the way he used to laugh with his whole chest. He thought of his father’s quiet strength, of his mother’s hands folding bread in silence. He thought of everything they had lost — and everything they were still holding onto.

The flag was still broken.

But so was he.

And yet, both remained standing.

"They brought tanks and guns. I brought a stick and fabric. They made fear. I made a place to learn again."