CONTENT

Chapter 1............................................................................................3

Chapter 2............................................................................................8

Chapter 3.........................................................................................11

Chapter 4.........................................................................................14

Chapter 5.........................................................................................16

Chapter 6.........................................................................................19

CHAPTER 1

I recall now the smell of the rain-peace- coming down the alley. I must have encountered that tiny piece of bendable diamond then, for the first time in my life. I recall now the dizzying air surrounded me and followed me through the barren lands. I must have been shaken with shock preceding a dread, however, these feelings were familiar to me like an acquaintance who, sometime in the past, bothered me obnoxiously. I don’t have profound knowledge about the history of my ancestors, in fact, even my family. One of the scarce information given to me ,although it is not vital, was the detail that we were bred in a farm before we escaped from the precarious treatment of “the walking flesh” who considers himself superior just because he had a garment on. I trust, following the getaway, there was a disappointment resulting from the despair of every single creature whether an animal or human; whether free or hostage. Not to disparage, however, the intelligence of my ancestors was remarked by a permanent illness called “mercy”. I have always thought about the plausible circumstances that we could be living in, if the pound of the slyness was as abundant as the pathos. How would I see my reflection in the chief of a bullet? Would I be the owner, or the victim again? After a long term occurrence of my conflicting inner thoughts, the last time, I decided to remain indifferent. Unless, there was nothing but carnage out there; unless, there were mothers crying over their babies; unless, everyone, for the first time not only bulls, began to burn to their ashes. 

A horse with his broken saddle sitting under the rain caught my attention. Why would his owner leave him there, in the middle of the disaster? Would it put an end to my solemnity if I helped him. "Why are you sitting on the side walk instead of serving your master?" I asked sarcastically. After all, it was his duty, maybe his purpose in life. Maybe he was just another fugitive that fled a barn. "As I was galloping in the rain, I tripped and fell to the ground. Mr. White bristled up and went to seek help. Being such a schlemiel horse for my mister who nourishes me everyday pricks my conscience." My assumption was wrong, this cowardly spirit, faithful horse was not, of course, a fugitive. All the horses I've ever met have been like this but I want this timid friend of mine to be different. I will change his mindset, bring him to my side and set him free from the clutches of the order in which humans have enslaved all living things except themselves. When I asked him how long he had been waiting for the man he called Mr White, “S…” was his answer. "What if he gives up on you and doesn't come back to pick you up, will you rot your life here? Don't you want to roam free like me?" While saying this, I was ignoring the screams that came from a chaos. I was trying to pull him into a storm of ambivalence, sensing that he would be much safer with his owner. His indecisive eyes were sending me a message to take it slow. I offered to have a drink in a warm place, at least until his mister arrives.

At that moment, a gust of wind blew toward my face, whispering the answer into my ear. A hesitant reaction... After hearing the surprise good response, turning around and leaving proved unthinkable. All of this resulted in us unexpectedly finding ourselves on the route to the east. His wretched manner seems to accumulate his resentments and drove him into a profound slience.I figured out that it would be a good place to start by asking him what he does during the day. He did that as he began to explain with a peculiar expression. "Mr White sleeps considerably later than

I do. I'd be famished by now. Naturally, he has his reasons." Numerous sentences about his darling and wonderful Mr White immediately followed. As if he'd been planning our chat for years. Throughout this process, I chose to listen to him carefully.I realized it was pointless to be so devoted to someone because of what he said. He was, nevertheless, expressing himself with fancy phrases and admiration. It made perfect sense that the only thing I could connect with was a massive pile of dried clover."Is your dedication motivated by gratitude? I couldn't think of anything else "Involuntarily, I said. It was evident from the way he defended his owner that he hadn't met anyone else. Luckily, he was negotiating with someone who could shine a light on the bad areas of his brain. His face was recovered with the perplexed and weird expression it had always worn. My mission appears to be more difficult than baptizing a cat!

I have been hosting my friend for three weeks in our house built inside a cave, away from people, where fugitives lived together. I convinced Bulb Eye, who is the leader of our community, for this miserable horse to stay. He didn’t lean towards that demand due to the horse's political view and his attitude towards humankind until I offered him to use the horse as an infiltrator. He would make a prodigious terrorist for the bomb we detonated at the market in the middle of town later in the week, his mission was going to be placing a bomb and gathering people there. People would never trust bulls, therefore he was cut out for this quest. During three weeks, ideological conflicts happened between Bulb Eye and my friend. When the day came, I decided to twist our plan and explain it to him, since he was still too virtuous to harm people. As days passed, I latched on to him more, and a part of me whispered in my ear that I still had the opportunity to change his mind, but I couldn't hold on to this slender chance and betray Bulb Eye. Indeed, some of his stances had changed with the time,

which has passed with us, yet I was still thriveless. Only if my dear friend had shown the sparkles of nationalism in this process, then maybe our friendship could turn into a cause. I told him that there is an attempt coming from Germany and we will stimulate people about the hazard. I stretched him the box that I said had our warning letter in it and explained that he had to leave the box on the counter at the market afterwards he had to bring people to the market. The sense of heroism in his eyes… While I was telling this, he was shining with the pleasure of helping others. His innocence had officially prevented him from seeing our treacherous plan.

Trying to hide my bulk, I slipped into the bushes and began to follow him. He rested the box upon the dusty counter. My naïve friend put his trust in me too much to look inside it. However I had placed a letter in the box, over the bomb, to cover it, just in case. He left the shop and talked to the man, who was standing on the pavement. Even though the voices beyond the market are imperceptible in the distance I stand, I knew exactly what he was saying. Then he went to a woman who was walking with her wept baby in her arms, who could not escape the war. It was not cricket that although that woman did not have a share in the war, she and her baby in her lap would die. But she was still our enemy, a human. All the locals are in front of the market... What would the horse say, what was the letter for? He opened the box, grasped the letter, and read it aloud. "Damn people! For you, horse, please forgive me. I just wish you could be one of us." Before he could even finish his speech, a larger voice was heard, and a large cloud of dust followed by the sound of sirens…

CHAPTER 2

Woke up to a bad taste in my mouth thinking it was caused by the deep thoughts of yesterday. Washed my face, put on my suit, gathered my gadgets, then held my sword. That's when I realized nothing has changed compared to yesterday. However, I slept thinking that everything would be alright tomorrow. Tried to push aside these thoughts in my mind as I was walking towards my companion. I muttered to myself "It's desperately surprising how a person's life can change in such a short time." with a smile which felt like a big scar on my face. “A few months ago I was living a quiet and peaceful life in my father's field with my wife and my daughter.” I said to myself. “Leaving my wife and my only daughter behind wasn't easy, but I wasn't going to let my country burn before my eyes.” When the news of the men's enlistment came, I did not hesitate for a moment. “I accepted it for my daughter as a father, for my father as a good son, and for my country as someone who was born and raised here.” said to myself and dispersed the whole dark cloud of thoughts with pride in my heart. 

When I arrived at my companion the general was making a patriotic speech to erase the last speck of fear from the hearts of the soldiers. After this speech, I looked to my right and left to see if there were still those who did not like the idea of going to war and dying for their country. After the speech, everyone was for a command like a statue. The commander gave the order to march towards the front as soon as he saw the soldiers who had left their emotions and loved ones behind. 

After walking briskly for a long time, we stopped at a village to get supplies and rest.The villagers were crawling in misery. The starving children were emaciated. As I looked at them, I felt as if the responsibility for what happened was only on me. It was clear from the general's face that he felt the same as I did. I wanted to talk to every villager I saw and lighten their load a little bit. It wasn't what they needed, but there was nothing else I could do. But an old lady acted before me and held my hand with all her strength. She raised her face and asked me how the war was. The tears on her face had not yet dried.I tried to gloss over her questions, but I couldn't do it because she looked me in the eye. In the end, I couldn't find an answer to say and she told me it was all clear on my face. She said God bless us and left. Then I saw a girl crying in the middle of her street, her parents were nowhere to be seen around her. I walked quickly towards her. I didn't want to overwhelm and stress her out by asking a bunch of questions, so I sat next to her to get her attention. After crying for a few more seconds, she stopped and looked at me,her face was covered with mud. I took a candy from my pocket and gave it to her. She didn't understand what it was at first but then she ran up to me and hugged me. I looked around for the girl's family a little more, but I couldn't find them. Then I ran towards the general to beg him to allow me to take the girl with us. At first he did not accept my offer, but after falling on his knees and begging, he could not stand it and allowed it. We were ready to leave the village, now the provisions and necessary equipment were gathered. We started the engines of the vehicles and just as we were on the road, a soldier shouted and gestured for us to look up at the sky.A lot of black dots stood out from the clouds. At first, everyone thought these black dots were birds, but it was not too late to realize that we were wrong. Bombs were falling on us one by one. A great turmoil ensued. Nobody knew what to do, everyone froze. I ran to the little girl with one last hope. I would be a cover for her. I jumped towards her and hugged her. I felt like I was hugging my daughter for the last time. I closed my ears to the sounds around me, I was at peace. It didn't matter if I died or even fell to pieces.

CHAPTER 3

It was just a typical and peaceful day for the woman. There wasn’t anything special about it. She had a beautiful face with a perfect smile. As always she was the one who was making everyone's lives better; her hope for life was like a light, that made the people’s lives in Guernica brighter. 

The bakery that was owned by her was crowded as always. Her shop was visited by many people everyday because they were all so fond of the owner herself. She was exhausted because of all the work she did around that day, but she still had that dazzling smile on her face.

She had many bad things going on in her life. Her husband had passed away just a month ago and she had financial problems, but it was nothing to her. She was trying to keep up with her life, be happy and stay hopeful.

She decided to go out to get some air in the afternoon, the inside was hot and she was sweating. She started walking and dived into the crowd. There were a lot of shops around, so the people were there to take care of their needs. While she was walking, she saw a woman running in the distance. After a few seconds, that woman disappeared through a door. “That is weird.” she thought. Before she went back to her job she walked a little more and worked until the sun was not visible anymore. She 

then went back to her house. She was as tired as she could ever be, so she just sat down to relax and decided to read a book. However, she could not concentrate on the book. Her mind was roaming elsewhere. No matter how hard she tried to hide it or keep it inside, there was just something different about the night. There was something that was bothering her, something that was yet to come.

After reading for a while, she felt like she was drifting away and thought it would be a good idea to go to bed. As she laid down she saw the woman from before again through her window. She then fell asleep immediately as she put her head on the pillow and plunged into the realm of dreams.

It was a loud noise followed by screams that woke her up from her nap. She could not comprehend what was happening because of her drowsiness. Wanting to investigate, she picked up the still-burning kerosene lamp from the nightstand and looked out the window. The image before her eyes was terrifying, there was only one word to explain it: chaos.

The momentary flashes coming from the bombs that were being dropped on Guernica stunned her. She could not open her eyes for a few seconds. The blood-curdling screams were almost deafening. The woman didn’t know what to do, she was frozen in place. And the light in her hand got dimmer.

CHAPTER 4

At the moment she felt embattled. She wanted to leave the crowd. She ran her eyes all over the place. A door caught her eye. She immediately went in, didn’t care of anyone saw. There were a bunch of stairs. She couldn't see the end but climbed up anyways. At the end there was another door. She opened it and it opened to an empty room with white walls and a window. She walked towards the window. A wide view of Guernica was before her very eyes. 

At first everything seemed as ordinary as always. But suddenly she intuited fear and chaos among the crowd. A weird feeling took up her entire body. She didn’t know why. The feeling was gone in a moment but it was odd. Unbeware, she looked out the window for minutes, nothing occurred. But then, there was a huge explosion. The feeling she thought she had before, was now definitely among the crowd. Those things -bombs, artillery, etc. - were new to her. In fact they were new to everyone and the world but were going to be a painful and big part of people's lives and memories in the future. 

For a moment, she felt like the chaos was never gonna last. (But it was never like that. The chaos always had an ending. ). Rush, fear, blood and people were all over the place.  The disaster that came out of nowhere was sprawling around. She didn’t know what to do. The place she was used to, was now a stranger to her. Everything she knew was collapsing in front of her eyes. Only one thing was the same: the sun above the sky. It was still watching the city from up above and was aware of everything…

CHAPTER 5

26 April 1937. A woman woke up in Basque Town, Guernica. The sun hasn’t risen yet. She was starting to get used to the feeling of the empty cold side of the bed, where his loving past husband slept just a few months ago. Waking up to this feeling was scaring her, she didn’t want to be familiar with it. This forced her to get up from bed. This, and the fear of not being able to provide enough for her little son in the absence of her husband. But fate wasn’t asking her whether she wanted to be the breadwinner or not. First things first she went to local wells, and brought the daily water home, because of the civil war most Spanish homes during the war lacked running water at home. But this morning she had more to do on her list and went there with a basket full of clothes. She started to wash the clothes in the frost, her hands were shaking from the cold but she had no other option neither other time than twilight since she was working in the local soap factory for most of the day. But the effort she puts in soap making was not paying off, her wage was still enough for making a living. All she wanted was to make sure that her son was full, but everything was scarce. She didn’t know how many nights she spent restless, thinking about how to be enough for this child. Some say for many mothers in rural areas, the idea of being politically engaged was not possible. But not being politically engaged, did not bring the easy living, she thought. Acting blind was never an option. She went home as quickly as possible and prepared a meal for her son and her sick mom. Put the bowl on the table and saw the last few slices of bread. Her gut rumbled but she couldn’t eat anything, like one good and thoughtful mother shall do, she spare her share for tougher times. Also, this day was especially important for saving, cause it was the market day, and her home had 

needs. She wore her hand-knitted cardigan in a rush and left the home, and joined the other working ladies on the road to the factory.  She entered the lawn of the factory and smelled the supposedly beautiful, but now just mixed-up soap fragrances. It was something she was used to and can ignore somehow. She was ignoring the whole time, that she was spending in this factory and waiting for the time to get out of work. At the end of the day she got paid and then flew home, she was supposed to just get the money and get to the market before it was too late. But before she left her son begged her to take him with her, and she couldn’t resist. She was either too soft-hearted or too tired, she couldn’t decide.  Except that everything was going according to plan. Many women were there with their little children, buying the household needs. She even thought how cute of the children to help their mother. She felt proud and just for a moment looked at her son and thought how alike he was to his dad. The dream of her son and husband was just so clear, they were side to side in her vision and then a deafening noise interrupted her thoughts and an invisible force throw her to another side, apart from her son. When she comes to herself everything was just chaos. The soldiers were everywhere, the civilians were laying and bleeding crazy amounts of blood. She didn’t know what she looked like or couldn’t feel the piece of shrapnel in her chest, cause her eyes were just focused on the child, she bearly recognized from distance because of the same knitted sweater as the cardigan. She runs and runs, embracing the child. She was not wrong. It was her child, it was her child who bleeds, her child who dies, her mouth that screams, and her eyes that darken. One last glimpse... It was her husband who offers his hand.

CHAPTER 6

You can never completely understand the felling of the day which starts with a rising sun and ends with screams, earthquakes and chaos without experiencing it. It wasn’t the best rising sun of my life, but at least it was enough to have a power to start a new day with new hopes. That day I learned something big about war, it was the strongest enemy and murderer of new hopes. 

Everything began as a normal day. Living in my small town, still trying to adapt the life and learning new things every minute… I was too young to understand the situation of Guernica, the place that in I opened my eyes to life, had my first steps, felt the comfort of being in my own zone. As usual, I woke up next to my mom. I wasn’t be aware of her beauty and power those days, but I was realizing that she was a hero, my hero, day by day. Her long, yellow hair was touching my little and red nose but I wasn’t disturbed. I waited until she wakes up. She opened her eyes slowly and smiled to me. She was making cute noises, caring with me. I was feeling her love in every part of my hearth, the sense of peace was just like a human, standing by me and hugging. I remember that, I was always with people I love, before the war took all of them away from me. 

Every Monday was our shopping day. We used to go to the town center, buy some fruits from the stands, chat always with sellers. As a baby who was born new, I didn’t know anybody going around, however everybody was too similar to me. 

People were smiling to me, trying to make me smile, giving me some toys and complimenting. Before those dark clouds, we already had our all-time sun, which improves with the love of this town’s people. And then I started to feel like all of the red apples was falling down; they were crashing, losing their bright color, rotting and inhaling the dark air. Today, I still remember how those familiar people running around. They were pushing each other. I could see the anger and the fear on their eyes. It was like a part of the hell, the fires were hidden in townspeople’s hearts, everybody was trying to save themselves from this hell. 

As an adult, now I can see the results of wars better. I can never cover the scar that Guernica left to me. My left eye can not see perfectly because of the bombing, but I can see the innocence of Guernica people and the babies. 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5 

Chapter 6

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