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This isn't my home. It can't be. Where are the buildings? Where's the bakery down the street? Why don't I hear children playing around? It's dark. It's still noon, but it's dark. The clouds are heavy, looming over what used to be my home. There's smoke and dust everywhere. I can hear my footsteps, I can hear the crushed bricks crackle under my shoes.

Where's my home? It's all gone. The narrow alleys between the houses, the smell of freshly baked bread, the sound of women gossiping from their balconies, they're all gone. There are no houses to be seen, no sign of life anywhere, just the wreckage of everything I used to know. I look around and I can almost see the ghost of everything. There's the pharmacist smiling at his customers, but once I blink he's gone, and all that's left is a pile of bricks and broken glass, covering what used to be our town's beloved pharmacist. It's a corpse now, nothing but a corpse. I walk towards it and I see a Quran held tightly between his hand, and a bullet hole, right between his eyes.

Where's my home? This isn't what it used to be. Where are the taxis, quickly whizzing through town? Where's the central mosque, where people would flock to pray five times a day from every part of town? Where is it? Where is everything? Where's my family? My mother, my father, my grandparents, my baby sister? Where?!

They're all gone. It's all gone. I hear a voice, a soft cry, a lost child maybe? I follow it, and it is a lost child, a survivor. The only survivor. She's so little, maybe four, five years old. She looks up at me and the first thing I see in her eyes is fear. No, not fear, terror. Through all my years as a war photographer, I've never seen this much fear in such a small being. I can only imagine the things she's seen.

I bend down and look at her. I try and show her I'm not the enemy, but I haven't been home in twenty years, I've lost my language, and she doesn't understand me. I pull out a granola bar out of my pocket and offer it, and she quickly snatches it out of my hand and starts eating, and I know she hasn't eaten in days. Her face is dirty, and there's blood all over her clothes, but I don't think it's hers. I point at the blood and she quickly responds, ' Mama! Baba! Dam Mama wo Baba! ' My language is gone, but my heart breaks just looking at her.

What do I do with her? I'm here alone, and with not much food to spare. My jeep is almost out of fuel, and I don't know where else to go with her. The entire town has been wiped out, but I can still hear the distant noises of them celebrating their latest massacre. They're the same as all of us, they grew up in the same towns, ate the same food, spoke the same language, but they're not like us at all. They hunt and they kill, but game is not what they aim at.

I am a grown man, and men don't cry. But right now that's all I can do. All I can do is weep for my country, weep for my home, weep for this little girl. My heart aches for all the the lives that were taken; the mothers whose lives were taken in the sight of their children, the fathers that were humiliated in front of their sons, the daughters that were violated in the presence of their families. How could this be? How could this happen? How?

Where's the rest of the world? They know this is happening. They've seen it on their television screens, so why are they silent? My home has been wrecked, destroyed, and completely wiped out, and there is not a single peep from anyone. This little girl is wearing her parents' blood on her clothes. This little girl is starved. This little girl has seen what can only be described as unspeakable. So where is everyone? Why are they mute?

Where's my home?

 Bring back my home. Bring back the alleys and the houses. Bring back the bakeries and the coffee houses. Bring back the women on the balconies and the men arguing about sports. Bring back the times where children were once innocent. Bring back the time when people would walk by, and smile at the beautiful weather.

Bring back my home

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