Flight

I felt sick as I hugged my mum goodbye. All around me, hundreds of
other children were doing the same. Lots of them were crying. Others,
like me, were trying to pretend they weren't afraid, their smiles fixed
as if by glue to their faces. The sounds of gunfire in the distant
hills seemed to echo the beating of all our hearts.
I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay here, in my own country, in spite
of the bombs and the fighting and the war. It suddenly seemed a lot
less frightening than being sent miles away to France, where I knew
nobody.
I wondered what the people would be like that I would stay with. Would
they have children? a boy, or a girl like me? Would I be able to make
friends? It didn't seem likely, when I was no good at French. I
wouldn't be able to understand what they were saying to me.
I murmured the few words and phrases I knew under my breath.
"Bonjour? Je m'appelle Anna? Merci? S'il vous plait? J'ai treize ans?
Au revoir? "
I frowned. I was sure I knew more than that, but my mind had gone
blank. I hadn't been to lessons for a long time, after my school had
been hit by a bomb seven months ago. I hadn't realised how much I'd
forgotten.
There was an announcement that our flight was about to depart.
Nervously, I picked up my suitcase and clutched it tightly. I had
fitted as many of my belongings as I could inside, and it was bulging
at the seams.
"Good luck," my dad said. "See you soon?"
I knew that 'soon' was a lie, but I didn't say so. Instead I tried to
believe his words, to kill the sickening ache somewhere inside me that
I might never see my parents again. I shifted uncomfortably, trying to
think of something to say other than the final 'goodbye'.
"I'll write," I said. My voice came out as a croak.
My mum nodded, and hugged me again. Tears pricked the back of my eyes,
and I turned to wipe them away.
"I'd better go," I said. One of the stewardesses was gently tapping my
shoulder. Reluctantly, I let her lead me away.
"Love you!" my dad called after me.
I nodded without looking back, so they wouldn't have to see me
crying.

* * *

From the window next to my seat I could see a crowd of parents, all
waving at the plane. It was like watching a field of long grass stalks,
rippling back and forth in the wind?
I scanned the faces of the crowd, looking for my mum and dad. Finally I
spotted them. They were still bravely trying to smile, and were waving
so hard it was as if the world would end if they stopped. They couldn't
see me waving back. There were so many windows along the plane that
they wouldn't have any idea which one was mine. That made me wave
harder, hoping that they might just catch the movement out of the
corner of their eyes and spot me, but they didn't. It took nearly five
minutes before the plane began to move, and in all that time they never
stopped waving and neither did I.
As the plane started to move down the runway I saw my mum wipe her eyes
with one hand, the other still raised and waving. That was the last
thing I saw before the crowds slipped from my view and the plane lifted
into the air. By the time I'd blinked away my tears the airport was
nothing more than a dot, which disappeared altogether as the plane rose
up into the sky, carrying me and all the other evacuees away from the
dark cloud of war like a flock of migrating birds.