Junior School Magazine - Edition 6 (NOV 2018)

Y ear 5 - N arrative - continued

CHAPTER 4 - SYLVIA Everyone was surrounding this boy when a refugee group came. They had carried him in from the shore. He looked about 10 years old, with brown eyes and brown hair. He was a little on the tall side and was alarmingly skinny. I thought he was kind of cute, but I shook the thought off. When he finally woke up, he looked dazed and confused and he asked, “where am I?” I answered, “you’re in America!” I showed him around as he asked a lot of questions. He questioned, “who is helping us?” I was ready for this question. “Well,” I replied, “UPS has supported us by raising 14 million dollars for our blankets and food, IKEA have raised more than 33.4 million dollars on renewable sources for us and Airbnb have put 1.6 million dollars to improving the health and medical services provided in refugee camps.” He kept glancing at me and then looking away and I knew I had a crush on him. We became best friends very fast and we hung out a lot. He was funny and nice, and I had learnt that his name was Abood. There was this girl at the refugee camp that was very nice. Her name was Sylvia. She had black hair that was as wavy as the sea, quite tall and was about 11 years old. I had a massive crush on her. I didn’t know if I should tell her or not. She had dark blue eyes, they looked like the deepest part of the ocean. I was showed around and I was so surprised that anything could be so different to Syria. This was a new beginning for me. One night, Sylvia showed me something spectacular. She woke me up and led me outside into the dark, freezing night. She had a torch in her hand, but when we were a little way from the camp, she switched it off. There in the coal black sky, were billions among billions of stars. They were so beautiful, I could hardly speak! I could for the first time in my life, see the milky way. We were staring up at the stars when something caught my eye. “A shooting star!” I gasped. I made a wish that someone will adopt me sometime, but not just me, Sylvia as well. We stayed there until dawn. It was that night that I learnt that even though things may look bad, there’s always something to make you smile. There and then I knew that I would never forget the time I first saw the stars. Every night from then, we would go see the stars and I always made the same wish every time I saw a shooting star. One night, I learnt that Sylvia’s parents were from Uganda and they had moved to Afghanistan before Sylvia was born, but when the war started in Afghanistan, her parents were killed and she had just managed to escape to America. She was so close to not coming to America. If she had not sprinted like there was a cheetah behind her, she would not have been there with me the first time I saw the stars. It was also on that night that she told me that 6.3 million people had already fled Syria and it was clear that we were included. I became aware of the fact that Syria is the leading country with people fleeing, ahead of Afghanistan with 6 million refugees, South Sudan with 2.4 million refugees, Myanmar with 1.2 million refugees and Somalia with 986,400 refugees. I was getting quite worried and a little discombobulated because this refugee camp started to get a little over crowded. More and more refugees came, until I had hardly any space to myself! Continued over page.. . CHAPTER 5 - ABOOD

JSM Edition 6

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