The Hut | Teen Ink

The Hut

December 13, 2012
By Tom-Walmsley SILVER, Forest Lake, Minnesota
Tom-Walmsley SILVER, Forest Lake, Minnesota
7 articles 0 photos 2 comments

“Why did you come to this land. Why did you leave your country, your people, your wife. Why did you not shut your eyes to all of this around us, as all other men do.” The old Muslim man spoke slowly in Arabic to the American. The American stood in the shaft of light, streaming into the dusty hut, looking out the glassless window of the small mud hut, rifle slung over his shoulder. The old man sat on the floor, his hair falling around his head in long greasy locks, watching the American with bloodshot eyes. He was rolling opium in paper on the packed dirt floor of the hut. When he finished, he raised the short cigarette to his lips and lit it with a wooden match. Grey-white smoke curled slowly before his face in the air. The American answered without turning. “I do not close my eyes to all of this because if I forgot, if I allowed my self to forget, then they will have won. Then the evil in this world will have won. To shut my eyes to it will have allowed it to win.” The Muslim did not answer. He sat smoking silently on the dirt floor of the hut.



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