Dreams of war: Not your average teenage drama
Published 8:42 pm Monday, January 19, 2009
For almost three weeks now, I have been waking up each night from nightmares filled with armies, death, war crime, and terror, all with a focused purpose: destruction.
For 15 years, my dreams have been warless until the breaking of the ceasefire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even though it’s far away, it’s affecting me here in Redmond.
This has also impacted my family, especially relatives in Libya and other countries. I worry about them and that is all my dad seems to talk about.
Every year I learn about a new war or review an old one, and I take down notes about the numbers of casualties, crimes committed, and its rank in comparison to other wars. But I dismiss it as soon as that test is over, except this year.
We haven’t addressed a war yet that has kept me tossing and turning all night since the recent conflicts in Gaza began. The conflicts have shown me some of the most graphic images of war I have ever seen.
My dreams have put me into the position of the teenager who tries to sleep one night and wakes up in a cold sweat at the sound of an explosion that just missed her and her family.
As a teenager, adults often believe that we just worry about relationships, school and who to ask to the dance. But global issues do affect us and this conflict has really hit home for me.
I keep thinking about war and how scared the people who are experiencing it are, and that scares me too.
It scares me to the point when I can’t even get a good night’s rest. In my dreams, I feel I am becoming a civilian who may die tomorrow.
This conflict has changed my life plans. My mind’s simulations of war make me never want to see or experience it. I’m afraid of visiting family and new places.
My dreams are trying to make me see how terrifying war is, but I don’t want to know what war is and I don’t want anyone else to know either.
Hopefully, the war will end soon.
Teen talk is a new column in the Reporter, which will feature a different teen author each month. Leila Elkhafaifi is a sophomore at Redmond High School and she is a volunteer at the Old Fire House Teen Center.
