I haven't slept for two days now. The nights pass by slowly as I am in deep thought, my grandmother’s radio plays at full volume in the other room, and my parents and uncle talk loudly into the ears of their loved ones an ocean away.
I hear my father tell his brother to search for his son among the bodies of the dead, I hear my mother asking for the latest news and picture her standing there holding her breathe as she listens to the tired frantic voice of the person on the other end of the line, and I play the scene over and over again where my grandmother walks slowly into my room, with a back, hunched because of years of hard labor. She stares at me with a wrinkled face and a look in her eyes that I recall seeing only a few times but only when she speaks of her past, during the rough times.
She asks me if I know what's going on, and I tell her yes. Then she begins to summarize anyways, speaking in a lowered voice so that is just above a whisper enunciating each word clearly and I understand despite the usual misunderstandings between me and her, I nod my head, and release noises known worldwide to reassure someone who is speaking that the audience is listening.
And as her words become separated by seconds that tell stories in themselves, and that look in her eyes, she says in a grave voice and in a language that seems so familiar yet foreign, “chi we dak, chi we dak” then she turns around and walks out of the room in the same fashion in which she came in.
I ponder her words as I sit there.
“The world has broken, the world has broken.”