We defied our government; we were a crowd of strangers staring at a screen, watching, as the music took over our souls and men rose from the Mediterranean Sea.
I leaned my back against the wall accidentally bumping into a painting that stared back at me in shame for making her known...I apologized and moved ever so slightly away.
"Would you like a chair?" asked a voice in the darkness sitting to my left, all I could make out were curls, to which I answered "oh no that’s okay thanks", my response was ignored, he stood up and walked out into the light where I noticed the bluest of eyes; he brought a chair over and placed it next to his – I smiled – We never spoke again.
"Bashir was to them what David Bowie was to me" my stranger and I laughed. We were the only two to understand the joke it seems.
As the film reached its final scene the images were no longer an animation, I could not help but cry as these people that went through a horrific massacre, screaming in agony, anger and pain as dead bodies of their fathers, sons, daughters, wives and grandparents were piled on top of one another like sardines and then the image of a little girl, no older than 8, buried in the rubble.
The lights went on; I wiped my face of tears shed for a past that should have been long before acknowledged. I had only one cigarette left, I offered it to someone to which she responded "you live here, you deserve that cigarette more than I do".