I have a mental image of a pretty girl with light brown hair wearing a white and blue dress. She's skipping with her friend and her ponytail bounces up and down with each step. She was in my journal writing class and I hope that some of the exercises I gave her might have sparked an interest in writing.
Later we are on the bus driving back to the hotel. I'm tired and thirsty, I forgot to take a bottle of water from the caretakers fridge before we leave. It's hot and dusty. I look out of the window, ignoring the chatter of my colleagues and looking forward to dipping into the cool pool in our mediocre hotel. I see the girl walking past the local Turkish graveyard on her way home. The blue and white of her dress stand out vividly from the dusty drab streets and the hard faces of other pedestrians. She is making her way daintily down from the high pavement and is looking to cross the street. I sit up in my seat and peer out of the window, I tap my hands on it but we've already moved on. We drive away and she is still looking to cross the road. A delicate flower in the middle of a drab dusty town in the middle of nowhere.
The next day I see her in the school courtyard. She smiles and recognises me. I say to her that I saw her going home the other day and she nods her head. I ask her name. She says it is Walaa. I think to myself what a coincidence it is that her name is the same as that other girl I met in Atmeh camp last December. They are almost the same age. They are both wonderful, both full of life. I've left them there. One is somewhere in a refugee camp in Syria, the other is somewhere in a border town in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a region that is going nowhere, in a maelstrom. They are lost in a sea of desperate humanity.
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