I Did Not Want a War

When war comes, it seeps into the days. Only much later it does arrive in full.

Hardly anyone wants the war. Not the first who fall. Not the last who survive. And when the war leaves, it leaves behind ruins that look as if there had never been anything but ruins.

It does not begin with grand gestures. It begins with a different look, a hesitation that had not been there before. In the past we would have laughed about it, about the uneasy feeling no one wanted to voice. Today we do not laugh anymore. Today we know that every word can be a stone one throws.

There were those who chanted, those new songs in the stadiums, on the streets. There were the blows to the faces of the others after the demonstrations. But all of that was not yet so bad. Life went on.

The first dead. A shot from a window. A man lies on the street as if he had simply lain down to sleep. The next morning it is in all the newspapers.

Some write that a hero has fallen. Others that an enemy was struck. The truth dies with him, is buried with him, somewhere between the headlines.

There is still police. There are still questions.

Then comes the next... or some night. A house is burning. No one wants to look closely. No one wants to know who did it. One goes to sleep and pretends nothing happened. In the morning the house is only ash. There were the screams that everyone soon forgets. There is no proof.

But there are stories, whispered interpretations. A man dies in the forest. An accident, some say. A murder, say others. The police come, ask questions, but no one says anything anymore. Then the next shot. A warning call? A message? No one knows. No one asks anymore.

In the morning someone cries out that his animals lie dead in the stable. The police come, but no longer all of them. Some are missing. Those who come do not speak much. The man with the dead animals packs up. He asks nothing. Turns around only once. He is not stupid. He knows that the order he lived by no longer exists. He knows that his time here is over.

Bursts of gunfire crack, the next house is burning. The police… do not come anymore. The uniforms suddenly look different, depending on who belongs to which side. People still know each other, but they avoid eye contact. If their eyes do meet, the handshake once familiar lasts seconds too long, the greeting sounds strange. One begins to examine faces, to search for signs.

Days later, foreign newspapers will call it a civil war.

At the beginning it was only the silence after a shot. A street that suddenly seemed strangely empty. Then a neighbor who no longer greeted. Later it was a city that no longer slept.

They say a war ends with the last shot. That is a lie. War remains. In the rubble, in the names on memorials, in the looks of those who survived. In the streets where first no one lives anymore and then the new ones live — those who had to leave somewhere else, back then. All the stories no one wants to tell.

I survived. I do not know why. I only know that it does not matter. In the end, survival is nothing more than a delay.

I am writing this, but there is nothing to say, only this: I did not want a war.