Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever

BY HELENA TANG , YEAR 7, 2021

So little time left. Storm clouds gathered all around her like a pack of wolves surrounding their prey. The threat of thunder echoed through the night air, as streaks of silvery lightning illuminated the darkness. The storm was far away, for now, but it still filled her heart with fear.

“Nera.” She heard it. It was barely a whisper, but she turned around and saw her brother Noah looking at her, pale faced. “We need to go.” He spoke in a rush, putting his hand on his forehead as if it hurt, “The storm will come, and they will find us. Besides, they could tell that we are Jews.” He glared at the azure darkness engraved onto his arm – tattoos. Nera winced at the reminder of being Jewish and nodded without saying anything, after all, there was nothing to say.

Suddenly, a loud bang pierced in the air. Nera turned around immediately and widened her eyes as two silhouettes grew bigger and bigger – Nazis. “Stop right there!” one of them barked loudly. Noah grabbed Nera’s hand and began to run. Terror stabbed Nera hard in the chest and panic flared in her eyes. The thought of that wretched concentration camp began to regrow in her mind as the Nazis came closer and clenched her jaw. Paris was supposedly a beautiful place, the city of love it is named, but there was not much love there for her. She left her ill mother all alone just for a slim chance of survival. Her face flushed red of guilt and anger, contemplating whether she could take it anymore.

Panting, Nera tried her best to keep up with Noah’s pace. Gut-wrenching, heart pumping— after several thrusts forward her legs became tired. But she knew she mustn’t stop. Bang! The Nazis continued to chase them and shot in the air. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Nera wasn’t planning to stop, but Noah suddenly stopped running and turned around.

“What are you doing!” Nera hissed. “Go!” he whispered urgently in a hard tone, “I’ll save time, you run while I let them catch me. You can escape!” Nera’s eyes welled up with tears. How could he ask her something like this? Just to abandon him like they were strangers? She shook her head stubbornly and looked at Noah straight in the eyes. “No.” it was all she said.

Noah sighed in frustration and whispered again, this time she could see him trying to control his temper, “Listen here, they have guns they can shoot us, if we both run, we both will die! If they catch me, I could save you time! For God’s sake, run!”

Before Nera could even protest, he ran towards the Nazis. “No!” she shrieked, but somehow, she couldn’t move. “Move, you idiot! Move and help him!” she thought angrily to herself.

The Nazis looked surprised at the bravery of Noah; perhaps they had never seen anyone so brave running towards them. Under a different circumstance, Nera would’ve been proud, she would’ve smiled and felt grateful that he was her brother. But things have changed, and right now she could do nothing. Tears were already threatening to spill down her cheeks. She stared at Noah and saw him look back one last time, and the look on his face almost broke her heart. There was no fear, only pure sadness; that he was sorry that this had to happen, but there was also love. His hazel eyes were so kind, it was like the radiated sun with inner gold, they were the softest brown infused with green, as if he held the new spring growth inside. There was something in his eyes that brought Nera home, it reminded her of the good old days when she was little.

There was so much to say, but Nera knew there wasn’t time. She could not believe that the hardest thing she would ever do was to do nothing at all. Tears shimmered in her eyes, and with one last look, she turned and started running, without any thoughts of where she was running. She wiped her tears and bit her lip hard, trying not to burst into tears while running. Nera’s shoes pounded heavily across the ground causing mud to splash up her leg. She was going to climb up to a tree but her actions were stopped when a loud bang echoed. Nera turned around as quickly as a cheetah, and saw something that almost killed her. It was Noah, and the Nazis were nowhere to be seen.

Historical fiction

Noah was lying on the ground, blood streaming down his chest. He was not moving. People would have thought that he was sleeping, but the wounds made it impossible to think that. The colour drained from Nera’s face, and a nameless dread engulfed her, and she felt something disappear in her – the hole in her heart was almost as real as the hole on Noah’s chest. He was gone. Gone forever.

Realising that she will never see his smiles again, Nera’s world collapsed, the light turned into shadows, and pain came and went like waves on an icy beach. Ever since the beginning, Noah had been by her side. If she looks back to the roads and paths they’ve traveled, there will always be one pair of footprints next to her. And now, even though she called Noah’s name, the connection had disappeared... he disappeared… Finally, she knew that the time had come for her to travel alone.

Nera sat on the ground, staring endlessly into the cold grounds of Earth as if her whole world had been torn in half. Pain and hatred burned in her heart. The brightest star in her sky had disappeared, like a meteor, disappeared in the blink of an eye. She loved Noah more than anything in the world, but it looks like heaven loved him even more.

In Nera’s life, there were four people that she loved and would have done anything for. Her Papa was one of them. She remembered that his laugh was always full of happiness, she could almost see his face in her mind: greying hair, hazel eyes like Noah’s. She also thought of her Mama, the kind, selfless mother who had done everything she could for her children, her blue eyes that always reminded Nera of freedom, and her smile warmer than the sun. Then there was little James, the little boy who was always in his room, playing with his toys and treating them like they were his most precious treasures, and Nera loved the way his face would brighten up whenever he heard the doorbell ring, which meant that his parents had come back from work. At last, there was Noah, the older brother who was always protective of her. Many of Nera’s friends had complained about their annoying brothers, but she never did. Her brothers were angels sent from God to her.

Four people she loved so fiercely, and the Nazis had taken them all away. Now, all that was left was pain. Suddenly, Nera felt something drop onto her skin. She looked up and saw gray clouds over her head. Rain was dripping from the trees, whooshing as the heaven opened.

Nera curled up into a ball and settled herself against a tree, knowing that this time no umbrella would go up and cover the rain, no Noah would draw her closer and try to protect her from the rain.

Nera sat there for hours, lost in sadness and memories. Her skin was so pale because the rain had kissed it too hard. But she was not even cold anymore, for her heart was empty already. The rain had stopped, but the emptiness and pain were still there. A silhouette of a person interrupted her thoughts, it was a woman walking towards her. Nera scrambled up from the ground and stared at the woman with intensity. She put her hand on the tree trunk to steady herself, as if she had already lost the strength to stand properly. “Who are you?” Nera demanded, surprising herself with her steady voice. The woman looked at her back, and let a moment of silence pass between them, then said gently with a heavy French accent, “My name is Mary. I live in the white house over there,” she pointed at a house upon the hill, “I am sorry for what has happened, I saw everything from my bedroom. Please come with me, for I have food and I could hide you under my cellar. And you also need new clothes,” she added.

But Nera could see that her eyes were already set on the tattoo on her arm. She didn’t say anything at first and her face went blank. Another choice to make. Could she trust this woman who she knew nothing about, now that the woman knew her identity? She stayed standing for a long time, looking at the woman as if trying to read a book. The woman looked nice enough. She had scruffy, brown hair and blue eyes with a lighter shade than her mother’s, but Nera had learned the lesson where you can’t see people from the way they look. In the end, she decided to trust this woman, after all she was exhausted, hungry and desperate for new clothes. Nera gave Mary a firm nod and mumbled a quick “Thank you”.

“There is an organisation where people come and help Jewish children”, Mary told her. “We are trying our best to save as many as possible, but it’s hard to do something good when there are people watching your every move.” Nera didn’t reply, instead she just nodded and looked back at the place where Noah fell, one last time…

When she arrived at Mary’s house, she was scared and cautious, afraid that Mary could betray her and hand her in to the Nazis. But after a few days of living under the cellar, she began to trust the woman. Mary was very kind to her, she gave Nera enough food and water and sometimes came up to clean the cellar.

The actions of giving her food and cleaning up the cellar meant something. It didn’t make Nera trust her completely, but it was a start.

The cellar was dirty, sometimes under the moonlight she could see rats and cockroaches. Every night, at first it usually seemed pitch black inside, but a tiny, barred window near the ceiling would always admit a sliver of light. Then Nera would get used to the dark, she sometimes would be woken up by the noise of running, then she would realise in the end that it was a large rat. But Nera learned to be grateful for what she had – a hiding place. Every day around six o’clock, Mary or her husband would come up and give her some water and bread. The bread wasn’t as good as the ones at home, but again, Nera wondered if she still had one. Each night Mary would come and tell her things she had read from the newspaper. A group of people called the Judenrat are causing problems for the Jewish people, and people are being removed from the ghettos to go to the concentration camp. The ghettos weren’t so pleasant with hard work every day, but there’s always something worse for the Jews. “The Nazis are cunning,” Mary sighed. “They organised a group of Jewish people called Judenrat like the rabbis and tried to create conflicts and hatred between the Jews, so they don’t have the ability to fight back or start an uprising. Isn’t it awful?” Mary was not a Jew, but she was a kind-hearted woman. She told Nera that last year she rescued another Jewish girl, but unfortunately they were caught and the girl was killed. Luckily, she and her husband escaped and moved to the edge of the border in France in the unoccupied zone.

Often, when Nera felt a huge sense of longing in her heart of her family and past, she would reminisce about them in Paris, walking down the streets, her Papa laughing and saying ‘hello’ to even strangers. Mama would usually hold little James’ hand while he begged and begged for her to let go, so he could run around. Nera always looks around and sees what’s going on. Sometimes they would pass her best friend Sona’s house and she would open her eyes trying to see if she could see Sona from the window. And Noah would walk in the front, leading the way. Nera could often hear girls who walked past giggling and pointing at him. He was quite handsome at the age of fifteen, with his shoulders broad and looking like a young man. Nera was proud of him, proud that he was her older brother. She might be homeless now, but there was a time for her where happiness glowed inside her, where there’s no running, no crying, no loss.

Nera remembered the start of the war. There had been rumours, but who knew that war could start so quickly? She could almost remember what it smelled like in the ghettos, the crying and the yelling. Nera thought of James’s dead body, lying on the floor like an abandoned doll, unwanted. She thought of Papa’s smiles that were taken away, the Nazis had taken away the sparkle in his eyes and left them a sober grey. They have also taken the red in Mama’s lips and cheeks. The labour was too harsh. Everyday people came back from work and collapsed on the floor, never to move again. One day, Nera and her family saw a cart coming into the ghettos and took many Jewish men with them, papa was one of the taken men. The following day, her family were taken to a concentration camp in Paris. They all suffered hunger and desperation, and unfortunately, little James did not make it to the end.

Nera looked up to the night sky many times and counted all the stars, she counted the times where people were kind, so that she could remember what it’s like to be grateful.

Sometimes things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried; grief and loss are one of them. You cannot let all the hatred and pain inside you wrap you around. It’s like an old saying of drinking – “At first a man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man”, It is sad but true. We do lose ourselves in pain and sadness – it prevents us from loving again. And what’s the point of a life without love?

What is humanity? It is a word for the qualities that make humans humans. During the war, Nera has seen so many horrible things. People were being selfish, cruel and unkind. But even in the darkest of times, there’s light in it. After all, like what her favourite quote always said, “Stars can’t shine without darkness”. Nera had seen so many beautiful things, she has seen someone treat people kindly like Mary who helped her who no one else could. She has seen her own brother, who was the kindest person she’d ever known, sacrifice himself just to give her time.

Historical fiction

She saw people being cruel, like when the Nazis shot Noah without hesitation. She had seen people being greedy like when Hitler was trying to take over the whole of Europe, even the whole world. But isn’t that what humanity is? And isn’t that what life is about? Trying to find light in the darkness. Trying to be the light. War really brings out the best and the worst from people.

Nera remembered one day her mother asked her, “Do you know why I named you Nera?” She had shaken her head, puzzled. And then her mother told her the answer, “In Hebrew the name Nera means light and candle. I want you to be the light and also be able to see the light even when days are dark and stars don’t shine”. Those words had followed her since.

So just like this, she hid in the cellar after days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months. During the time, Nera cried for her family, but she smiled when she thought of the gifts God had made her, her family, her friends and Mary. After years of living together, Nera felt great love for Mary, without her she would not be here, hiding in a cellar, with bread and water. Even though she had lost so many things, Nera was willing to love. Slowly and slowly, Nera even began to call Mary “mother”.

In the end, Nera wrote what she had thought and learned in her life on a piece of paper. When she wrote it, she felt like she just gained all the pieces she lost in her life. “My family would be proud,” she thought to herself as she wrote on the paper. When she finished, she kneeled down on the floor and said softly, but clearly, “Mama, Papa, Noah, Jamie. I realised something important, so important that I need to tell you this now”.

Nera took a deep breath, and began, “I realised that as humans, we should all love, and try to see that there are so many great things right in front of our eyes, even when times are dark. We as humans should open our hearts and eyes wide, and try to find the beauty in life. We should look at the beauty of nature like the blossomed flowers and the gentle whispers of the forests as the wind dances past. We should look at the beauty of words when someone just comes and says hello and smiles that beautiful, bright smile. Look at the good side of humanity, even though sometimes we are drawn to the darkness”. And if I can tell my younger self one thing, I would say, “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever – for there are so many great things in our lives even in the dark, waiting to be discovered. “Because after all, it’s what makes humans different from other organisms on Earth – humans have the ability to see”.