Ashes of the Quiet

I. Before the Silence

I was twelve when the war began.

At first, it was only something we heard about — names on the radio, far-off cities burning in the distance, and soldiers who never came back. My mother would quickly turn the knob when the news came on, and my father would frown without a word. They thought protecting us from the noise would protect us from the war. But war doesn’t knock politely. It seeps in — through cracks in the walls, the absence of laughter, the slow disappearance of neighbors.

I remember the last dinner we had together.

My sister, Laleh, was humming something out of tune while peeling potatoes. Father, with his dry humor, made jokes about the “dusty meat” — dry bread and a few old carrots. Mother didn’t laugh. Her eyes stayed on the window.

Then the first real bomb fell.

It wasn’t near us. But it was enough. The glass trembled. A scream ran through the floor. And silence — real silence — spread over the table like fog.

That night, I realized silence was not peace. It was terror in disguise.

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II. The Disappearance of Days

Time changed. Or maybe we changed and time just reflected us.

School stopped. The streets emptied. The market closed. Our world shrank to four walls and the smell of kerosene. Days were marked not by calendars, but by explosions, footsteps, the sound of tanks rolling far off like distant thunder.

We counted time in losses.

First the bakery. Then water from the tap. Then Uncle Daryoush. He left to find medicine and never returned.

Laleh stopped singing. She was only eight, but something inside her aged too quickly. Sometimes, I saw her staring at her doll like it was a stranger. I asked her once if she was scared. She said, “No, I’m just waiting.”

Waiting for what?

She never said.

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III. The Hidden Room

We moved into the basement when the planes started coming.

The city above turned to bones. Cracked buildings leaned like drunks. Windows gaped open like mouths mid-scream. We turned our cellar into a bunker — blankets over bricks, a radio that barely worked, and a single candle that we lit each night like it was sacred.

Father tried to keep us busy. He taught me chess by drawing a board on a piece of cardboard. I beat him once. He pretended to be shocked. “A genius in wartime,” he said. But his eyes were tired.

Mother kept a notebook. She wrote in it every evening, even when the lights were too dim to see. One day I asked what she was writing. She said, “The truth — so you remember we were human.”

I didn’t understand then. Now I do.

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IV. Resistance in Small Things

One day, a soldier came to the door. Not ours. Not theirs. Just a man with a uniform and hungry eyes.

He wanted food. He wanted shelter. He wanted silence.

Father gave him bread. Mother gave him water. But Laleh stood in front of me, shaking. I could feel her tiny hand reach for mine. That soldier looked at us like we were insects.

But he left.

That was our victory.

Not every battle is fought with bullets. Sometimes resistance is keeping your sister from screaming. Sometimes it’s lighting a candle even when it feels pointless. Sometimes it’s writing down what happened so the truth doesn’t die.

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V. Ghosts of the Living

The war dragged on. No one came to rescue us. No flag waved in our honor.

One day we heard gunfire close — too close. When it stopped, a boy about my age ran past our door. Bleeding. Alone. We didn’t open the door. We didn’t help. And I’ve never forgiven myself.

That night I dreamt of him knocking.

For years, I would hear that knock.

Guilt became another sound in the silence.

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VI. The Fall of Father

One morning, Father didn’t wake up.

No wound. No noise. Just gone. Mother said his heart had "grown too tired." I didn’t cry. Laleh didn’t either. We just sat with his body in the candlelight until the wick ran out.

We buried him in the back, beneath a fig tree that hadn’t borne fruit in three years.

I carved his name into a piece of scrap metal and laid it there. It felt like a betrayal. He had been a man of books, not rust.

But war doesn’t offer elegance.

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VII. Letters in the Dust

The notebook my mother kept — her "truth" — became our guide.

Each page was a memory. A prayer. A piece of humanity. Laleh and I read them like scripture. She had written of our laughter, of the smell of bread, of how Father once cried when I was born.

It reminded us that life had once been more than surviving.

Then one day, while foraging for dry wood, I was caught.

Three armed men. Rough voices. Cold hands. They said I was stealing. They said I belonged to them now.

But Laleh followed me. She had taken the notebook. She threw it at their feet and screamed, “This is my brother. He is not yours!”

They laughed.

But one of them picked up the notebook. He read a line. Then another. Something in his face changed — only slightly. He let me go.

I never saw them again.

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VIII. Aftermath

When the war finally ended, it didn’t feel like victory.

No parades. No songs. Only silence — the kind that fills ruins.

We stepped out of the cellar into a world of ash. The fig tree had one green leaf. Laleh pointed to it and whispered, “Look.”

Hope, like weeds, finds the cracks.

We didn’t rebuild the house. We built a small garden. We found the old chessboard. We rewrote the notebook — in our own hands.

And I learned: Resistance isn't always loud. Sometimes it’s a whisper, a memory, a seed planted in dead soil.

Sometimes, it’s surviving — even when everything tells you not to.

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IX. Epilogue: For the Ones Who Remember

Years later, when I had children of my own, I told them the story.

Not of bombs. Not of soldiers. But of Laleh's scream, the candle, the notebook, the single green leaf.

Because the world will always find new ways to fall apart.

But we must always find new ways to stay human.

Even if that means writing truth in the dark.

Even if that means whispering stories into the silence.

Even if that means — remembering.